Historians in the News Archive
This page includes, in addition to news about historians, news about political scientists, economists, law professors, and others who write about history. For a comprehensive list of historians' obituaries, go here.
SOURCE: Time Magazine (1--1-06)
TIME: This is almost a dual biography of two lions—Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lyndon Johnson—very powerful men who are being marginalized. Why did you decide to do it that way?
Taylor Branch: Well, of course, some of that is imposed by the history. I mean, there's the fact that the first Marine combat units land within hours of the first march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge [in Selma. Ala.] You've got the march in Selma and the landing of the troops in Danang, both with garlands around their necks, to me it's very poignant about an era of two different choices about how you foster democracy but starting off with such hope and promise. I didn't realize when I started the book, how closely the two things were going to parallel, but essentially Johnson's presidency is destroyed over Vietnam, and to have him essentially give up and King killed in the same week, you know, I think history itself is telling us these are parallel stories. You put these two stories together and try to examine Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement as models for America, where did we go right, where did we go wrong.
TIME: I was struck by the meeting between Bobby Kennedy and Johnson when basically Kennedy is trying to elicit an endorsement [in his run for the Presidency].
TB: Right, or at least a neutralization. It's the very day before King is killed. In that incredible week. In the great sweep of things, Bobby Kennedy and Johnson agreed about a heck of a lot more than they disagreed about, and once they're no longer rivals, you feel that. Whereas in history, we don't think of that. We think of them as complete opposites and, to me, that's the measure of our cynicism, that we don't really care about the substance of politics. We care about the rivalries and the spitballs.
TIME: Do you think people have a real sense of King's life, or has it become mythologized ?
TB: I think a certain amount of mythology is inevitable when you have great overarching figures like this, but I think there's more than normal with King because he didn't come from mainstream culture and because a lot of people were profoundly uncomfortable with what he was doing, there's a greater need to make him a comfortable mythological figure. And of course, in one sad way to me, there is a tendency to make him a leader of his people, to reduce him to just doing something for black people. When you see him interacting with Johnson and negotiating with congressmen and marching with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, we realize how ecumenical he was. The overall lesson here is he's a leader, and the movement is leading all of America. And that's the real emotional resonance that you get even with Rosa Parks, where we have this paradox that we have an emotional connection, that we know they did something significant but because the tradition is not that it was significant for all of America but was somehow compartmentalized for black people, we falsify and simplify the myth.
TIME: This volume is so sad, not just because of King's death but because it seems as though he was being marginalized—everything was being heaped on him. The FBI is getting uglier with its dirty tricks, his most loyal lieutenants are scrabbling and pulling back. Do you think he would have recovered his strength, his force, because here he seems besieged from all sides?
TB: I don't know, that's a hypothetical, would he have survived. I don't really know. I think a lot of his message and a lot of the energy from his movement really went overseas after he died, more than here in the U.S., but South Africa, the end of the Berlin Wall. I think the energy went there and it certainly would have very likely drawn his attention as well. Whether his health would have withstood—talk about a candle burning on both ends—on top of all the psychological pressures, just his schedule was a killer. TIME: Incredible.
TB: And so I don't really know, but I do think that the vision and what he was talking about, if he survived his health—his health and his sanity—through the end of the movement period, I think he would have had a lot to say about the world and about the end of apartheid in South Africa....
Taylor Branch: Well, of course, some of that is imposed by the history. I mean, there's the fact that the first Marine combat units land within hours of the first march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge [in Selma. Ala.] You've got the march in Selma and the landing of the troops in Danang, both with garlands around their necks, to me it's very poignant about an era of two different choices about how you foster democracy but starting off with such hope and promise. I didn't realize when I started the book, how closely the two things were going to parallel, but essentially Johnson's presidency is destroyed over Vietnam, and to have him essentially give up and King killed in the same week, you know, I think history itself is telling us these are parallel stories. You put these two stories together and try to examine Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement as models for America, where did we go right, where did we go wrong.
TIME: I was struck by the meeting between Bobby Kennedy and Johnson when basically Kennedy is trying to elicit an endorsement [in his run for the Presidency].
TB: Right, or at least a neutralization. It's the very day before King is killed. In that incredible week. In the great sweep of things, Bobby Kennedy and Johnson agreed about a heck of a lot more than they disagreed about, and once they're no longer rivals, you feel that. Whereas in history, we don't think of that. We think of them as complete opposites and, to me, that's the measure of our cynicism, that we don't really care about the substance of politics. We care about the rivalries and the spitballs.
TIME: Do you think people have a real sense of King's life, or has it become mythologized ?
TB: I think a certain amount of mythology is inevitable when you have great overarching figures like this, but I think there's more than normal with King because he didn't come from mainstream culture and because a lot of people were profoundly uncomfortable with what he was doing, there's a greater need to make him a comfortable mythological figure. And of course, in one sad way to me, there is a tendency to make him a leader of his people, to reduce him to just doing something for black people. When you see him interacting with Johnson and negotiating with congressmen and marching with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, we realize how ecumenical he was. The overall lesson here is he's a leader, and the movement is leading all of America. And that's the real emotional resonance that you get even with Rosa Parks, where we have this paradox that we have an emotional connection, that we know they did something significant but because the tradition is not that it was significant for all of America but was somehow compartmentalized for black people, we falsify and simplify the myth.
TIME: This volume is so sad, not just because of King's death but because it seems as though he was being marginalized—everything was being heaped on him. The FBI is getting uglier with its dirty tricks, his most loyal lieutenants are scrabbling and pulling back. Do you think he would have recovered his strength, his force, because here he seems besieged from all sides?
TB: I don't know, that's a hypothetical, would he have survived. I don't really know. I think a lot of his message and a lot of the energy from his movement really went overseas after he died, more than here in the U.S., but South Africa, the end of the Berlin Wall. I think the energy went there and it certainly would have very likely drawn his attention as well. Whether his health would have withstood—talk about a candle burning on both ends—on top of all the psychological pressures, just his schedule was a killer. TIME: Incredible.
TB: And so I don't really know, but I do think that the vision and what he was talking about, if he survived his health—his health and his sanity—through the end of the movement period, I think he would have had a lot to say about the world and about the end of apartheid in South Africa....
Wednesday, January 4, 2006 - 23:59
Comments
SOURCE: BBC News (1-4-06)
David Irving, the infamous British war historian, is today sitting in an Austrian jail, accused of denying the Nazi Holocaust. So why is an American Jewish academic who dramatically crushed Irving in the British courts saying he should be released?
When you ask Professor Deborah Lipstadt for her thoughts on David Irving's forthcoming trial, the very last thing you expect her to say is: "Let the guy go home. He has spent enough time in prison."
Lipstadt, the American Jewish academic who exposes Holocaust deniers is not exactly David Irving's greatest fan.
But five years after she famously defended her own reputation in the High Court, and in doing so shredded Irving's, she is arguing that the Austrian authorities should probably let him go, saying the far-right will find a martyr if he goes to jail.
David Irving, 67, who made his name as a World War II historian, became infamous for suggesting that the Holocaust didn't happen.
But in November last year he was arrested in Austria for two speeches he made in 1989, during which he allegedly claimed there had been no gas chambers at Auschwitz. ...
When you ask Professor Deborah Lipstadt for her thoughts on David Irving's forthcoming trial, the very last thing you expect her to say is: "Let the guy go home. He has spent enough time in prison."
Lipstadt, the American Jewish academic who exposes Holocaust deniers is not exactly David Irving's greatest fan.
But five years after she famously defended her own reputation in the High Court, and in doing so shredded Irving's, she is arguing that the Austrian authorities should probably let him go, saying the far-right will find a martyr if he goes to jail.
David Irving, 67, who made his name as a World War II historian, became infamous for suggesting that the Holocaust didn't happen.
But in November last year he was arrested in Austria for two speeches he made in 1989, during which he allegedly claimed there had been no gas chambers at Auschwitz. ...
Wednesday, January 4, 2006 - 23:47
SOURCE: New Yorker (1-2-06)
On the train up from Philadelphia the other day, Bryant Simon, a professor of history at Temple University, overheard two conversations about Starbucks. When he reached Penn Station, he made a pit stop at the Starbucks at Thirty-fifth Street and Seventh Avenue. Then he began walking toward Grand Central, to catch a Metro-North train uptown, and passed a group of kids on the street, also talking about Starbucks. (“I guess a lot of people like twelve-dollar coffee,” one said.) He was headed for the corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue: the site of Harlem’s only Starbucks.
Simon, who is forty-four, is writing a book—a cross between “Bowling Alone” and “Fast Food Nation,” he hopes—about the world’s largest, and seemingly unavoidable, coffee-shop chain, which he has called “the corner bar of the twenty-first century.” Over the past year, he estimates that he’s been to three hundred Starbucks outlets in six countries. He sits in Starbucks for at least twelve hours a week, observing. In the course of his research, Simon has detected the occasional regional variation—in Guadalajara, for example, the Starbucks offers valet parking. But a few basic and universal mores hold true: moms predominate in late morning, teens take over after 3 p.m., and strangers who are not moms or teens must never engage one another.
At the 125th Street Starbucks, Simon quickly noticed a couple of irregularities, such as the hoop earrings belonging to one barista (“She shouldn’t be allowed to wear those”) and the lack of any ambient music or CDs for purchase. (Simon has obtained a copy of the employees’ manual, and is contemplating applying for a summer job.) The store was busy and cramped—too cramped, he thought—and lacked the usual niceties like upholstered furniture. The dinginess struck him as more than coincidence. “It’s a classic American story,” he said. “African-Americans get less of everything.”
Simon and a guest each ordered regular coffees, size Grande. All the tables were occupied, so they waited by the milk dispensers until a man in overalls sitting near the window got up and, in apparent violation of Starbucksian etiquette, approached. “There’s a chair right here, and a chair right there,” the man said, pointing at a couple of empty seats about ten feet apart. “Come on, it’s a community thing.”...
Simon, who is forty-four, is writing a book—a cross between “Bowling Alone” and “Fast Food Nation,” he hopes—about the world’s largest, and seemingly unavoidable, coffee-shop chain, which he has called “the corner bar of the twenty-first century.” Over the past year, he estimates that he’s been to three hundred Starbucks outlets in six countries. He sits in Starbucks for at least twelve hours a week, observing. In the course of his research, Simon has detected the occasional regional variation—in Guadalajara, for example, the Starbucks offers valet parking. But a few basic and universal mores hold true: moms predominate in late morning, teens take over after 3 p.m., and strangers who are not moms or teens must never engage one another.
At the 125th Street Starbucks, Simon quickly noticed a couple of irregularities, such as the hoop earrings belonging to one barista (“She shouldn’t be allowed to wear those”) and the lack of any ambient music or CDs for purchase. (Simon has obtained a copy of the employees’ manual, and is contemplating applying for a summer job.) The store was busy and cramped—too cramped, he thought—and lacked the usual niceties like upholstered furniture. The dinginess struck him as more than coincidence. “It’s a classic American story,” he said. “African-Americans get less of everything.”
Simon and a guest each ordered regular coffees, size Grande. All the tables were occupied, so they waited by the milk dispensers until a man in overalls sitting near the window got up and, in apparent violation of Starbucksian etiquette, approached. “There’s a chair right here, and a chair right there,” the man said, pointing at a couple of empty seats about ten feet apart. “Come on, it’s a community thing.”...
Wednesday, January 4, 2006 - 11:42
SOURCE: The New Zealand Herald (1-4-06)
Massey University historian James Watson was awarded an "Ig-Nobel" in October for his investigation of why Hawera farmer Richard Buckley's trousers exploded in August 1931.
Before you laugh, the study wasn't obscure, nor was it lightweight - more on that in a moment.
And the Ig-Nobels themselves are not a complete mickey-take: the annual awards, say organisers, are given out to those whose work first makes you laugh, then makes you think.
Dr Watson, 53, the head of the university's department of history, philosophy and politics, was reportedly a bit embarrassed when he heard of his award (other prizes went to the inventors of an alarm clock that rings then runs away so you have to get up, and artificial testicles for neutered dogs).
But he went to the ceremony at Harvard University and changed his mind, having met "many amazing and very, very clever people".
The paper is called The Significance of Mr Richard Buckley's Exploding Trousers: Reflections on an Aspect of Technological Change in New Zealand Dairy Farming, published in North Dakota State University's Agricultural History journal.
It outlines how farmers of the era raced to embrace sodium chlorate as a ragwort killer.
Unfortunately, when mixed with the cotton or wool fibres of a farmer's work clothes, sodium chlorate - a white crystal also known as chloric acid and sodium salt - formed compounds that detonated at the first sign of a spark or knock. Washing was no protection.
Mr Buckley's trousers were drying in front of the fire, when, according to the Hawera Star, "they exploded with a loud report".
"Although partially stunned by the force of the explosion, he had sufficient presence of mind to seize the garments and hurl them from the house, where they smouldered on the lawn with a series of minor detonations".
Mr Buckley was lucky, says Dr Watson: one farm worker went in to his baby's room one day after work and, in order to better see the child, struck a match. Boom! He died of his injuries.
Before you laugh, the study wasn't obscure, nor was it lightweight - more on that in a moment.
And the Ig-Nobels themselves are not a complete mickey-take: the annual awards, say organisers, are given out to those whose work first makes you laugh, then makes you think.
Dr Watson, 53, the head of the university's department of history, philosophy and politics, was reportedly a bit embarrassed when he heard of his award (other prizes went to the inventors of an alarm clock that rings then runs away so you have to get up, and artificial testicles for neutered dogs).
But he went to the ceremony at Harvard University and changed his mind, having met "many amazing and very, very clever people".
The paper is called The Significance of Mr Richard Buckley's Exploding Trousers: Reflections on an Aspect of Technological Change in New Zealand Dairy Farming, published in North Dakota State University's Agricultural History journal.
It outlines how farmers of the era raced to embrace sodium chlorate as a ragwort killer.
Unfortunately, when mixed with the cotton or wool fibres of a farmer's work clothes, sodium chlorate - a white crystal also known as chloric acid and sodium salt - formed compounds that detonated at the first sign of a spark or knock. Washing was no protection.
Mr Buckley's trousers were drying in front of the fire, when, according to the Hawera Star, "they exploded with a loud report".
"Although partially stunned by the force of the explosion, he had sufficient presence of mind to seize the garments and hurl them from the house, where they smouldered on the lawn with a series of minor detonations".
Mr Buckley was lucky, says Dr Watson: one farm worker went in to his baby's room one day after work and, in order to better see the child, struck a match. Boom! He died of his injuries.
Wednesday, January 4, 2006 - 11:09
SOURCE: South Coast Today (12-30-05)
The story of the UMass Dartmouth undergrad who lied about being questioned by agents for the Department of Homeland Security had everything.
It played directly into the split between Red and Blue states. It was made for the Internet and Fox television and talk radio.
And it was timed perfectly because of the firestorm that erupted two weeks ago when The New York Times broke the news that the Bush administration had authorized federal agents to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens calling abroad.
Critics of the Bush administration threw themselves in front of microphones and reporters with notebooks to charge that the president had broken the law, while Bush supporters leapt to the president's defense, saying that his first job as commander in chief is to protect Americans from attack, and that in times of war it is proper and prudent to use almost any means to get information that might derail an enemy's plans.
Standard-Times editors asked one of our best political reporters, Aaron Nicodemus, to contact people for their reaction to the Times story.
Among those he called were two local experts, UMass Dartmouth history professors Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand.
Professor Williams, who has traveled and researched the Middle East extensively, was asked whether he believed the president's authorization for tapping the phones and e-mails of U.S. citizens talking with foreigners was going too far. He told reporter Nicodemus that he believes his own calls were tapped while he was speaking once with the foreign minister of Chechnya, scene of a bloody civil war with Russian forces and numerous acts of terrorism..
Almost as an aside, professor Williams told the story of one of his students who said he had been visited by FBI agents after he tried to take out a library book by the infamous Chinese premier, the late Mao Zedong.
Mr. Nicodemus recognized immediately that that was a pretty good story and started to check it out. Dr. Williams provided the student's name, and Mr. Nicodemus did a little research to find his home address and telephone number. He spoke with the student's father, who would not talk about the case and referred our reporter to his son, saying the student was in the shower but giving Mr. Nicodemus his son's cell phone number.
When Mr. Nicodemus called the son several times, he didn't answer and did not return phone calls, so Mr. Nicodemus went to the house. Nobody answered.
What he had for a story then was a tale from a single UMass Dartmouth professor -- someone who has been an excellent source on numerous occasions. It made me uncomfortable, however, and we decided not to publish the story without corroboration. Mr. Nicodemus went back to work and found a second source, professor Pontbriand, to whom the student had told the same story, but with one important difference: The agents were from the Department of Homeland Security and not the FBI, as professor Williams had said.
Troubled by that inconsistency, Mr. Nicodemus called back professor Williams, who said he had been wrong the first time and that, in fact, the student had said the visit was from representatives of Homeland Security. Otherwise, the professors' stories corroborated one another.
"I knew depending on a second-hand source was problematic," but professor Williams had been reliable previously, Mr. Nicodemus said. ...
It played directly into the split between Red and Blue states. It was made for the Internet and Fox television and talk radio.
And it was timed perfectly because of the firestorm that erupted two weeks ago when The New York Times broke the news that the Bush administration had authorized federal agents to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens calling abroad.
Critics of the Bush administration threw themselves in front of microphones and reporters with notebooks to charge that the president had broken the law, while Bush supporters leapt to the president's defense, saying that his first job as commander in chief is to protect Americans from attack, and that in times of war it is proper and prudent to use almost any means to get information that might derail an enemy's plans.
Standard-Times editors asked one of our best political reporters, Aaron Nicodemus, to contact people for their reaction to the Times story.
Among those he called were two local experts, UMass Dartmouth history professors Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand.
Professor Williams, who has traveled and researched the Middle East extensively, was asked whether he believed the president's authorization for tapping the phones and e-mails of U.S. citizens talking with foreigners was going too far. He told reporter Nicodemus that he believes his own calls were tapped while he was speaking once with the foreign minister of Chechnya, scene of a bloody civil war with Russian forces and numerous acts of terrorism..
Almost as an aside, professor Williams told the story of one of his students who said he had been visited by FBI agents after he tried to take out a library book by the infamous Chinese premier, the late Mao Zedong.
Mr. Nicodemus recognized immediately that that was a pretty good story and started to check it out. Dr. Williams provided the student's name, and Mr. Nicodemus did a little research to find his home address and telephone number. He spoke with the student's father, who would not talk about the case and referred our reporter to his son, saying the student was in the shower but giving Mr. Nicodemus his son's cell phone number.
When Mr. Nicodemus called the son several times, he didn't answer and did not return phone calls, so Mr. Nicodemus went to the house. Nobody answered.
What he had for a story then was a tale from a single UMass Dartmouth professor -- someone who has been an excellent source on numerous occasions. It made me uncomfortable, however, and we decided not to publish the story without corroboration. Mr. Nicodemus went back to work and found a second source, professor Pontbriand, to whom the student had told the same story, but with one important difference: The agents were from the Department of Homeland Security and not the FBI, as professor Williams had said.
Troubled by that inconsistency, Mr. Nicodemus called back professor Williams, who said he had been wrong the first time and that, in fact, the student had said the visit was from representatives of Homeland Security. Otherwise, the professors' stories corroborated one another.
"I knew depending on a second-hand source was problematic," but professor Williams had been reliable previously, Mr. Nicodemus said. ...
Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - 13:48
SOURCE: Secrecy News, the newsletter written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists (1-3-05)
"All I can say is that Roazen is a menace whatever he writes," wrote an exasperated Anna Freud, referring to Paul Roazen, the historian of the psychoanalytic movement who died November 3.
In fact, Roazen was an exemplary scholar who opened up new avenues of inquiry regarding the founding and development of psychoanalysis. He posed questions that had never been asked before and, by dint of scholarly fact-checking, he corrected errors in the historical record, and in his own early works.
Based in Cambridge, Roazen could periodically be found at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, examining newly opened records in the Library's Freud collection, portions of which remain sealed for years to come. And his traces are all over the occasionally fierce historical debates over psychoanalysis in the last three decades.
"Real work entails, in my view, a willingness to engage in controversy," he once wrote. "Although acrimony in itself should seem undesirable, it is often necessary to combat what one genuinely regards as mischievous." (On the Freud Watch, 2003, p. 123).
In fact, Roazen was an exemplary scholar who opened up new avenues of inquiry regarding the founding and development of psychoanalysis. He posed questions that had never been asked before and, by dint of scholarly fact-checking, he corrected errors in the historical record, and in his own early works.
Based in Cambridge, Roazen could periodically be found at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, examining newly opened records in the Library's Freud collection, portions of which remain sealed for years to come. And his traces are all over the occasionally fierce historical debates over psychoanalysis in the last three decades.
"Real work entails, in my view, a willingness to engage in controversy," he once wrote. "Although acrimony in itself should seem undesirable, it is often necessary to combat what one genuinely regards as mischievous." (On the Freud Watch, 2003, p. 123).
Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - 13:17
SOURCE: NewScotsman (1-2-05)
An expartriate Scottish historian provoked fury yesterday by calling for the land of his birth to be put into "liquidation" because it had become "the Belarus of the West". Professor Niall Ferguson said Scotland's glory days were long over, leaving it a "small, sparsely-populated appendage of England".
The Glasgow-born academic, who is now based at Harvard University in Massachusetts, said that Scotland's assets should be broken up, with the Scottish Parliament closed and the Scottish Football Association taken over by its English counterpart.
The Glasgow-born academic, who is now based at Harvard University in Massachusetts, said that Scotland's assets should be broken up, with the Scottish Parliament closed and the Scottish Football Association taken over by its English counterpart.
The Glasgow-born academic, who is now based at Harvard University in Massachusetts, said that Scotland's assets should be broken up, with the Scottish Parliament closed and the Scottish Football Association taken over by its English counterpart.
However, a leading fellow historian condemned his views as "tripe", while the Scottish National Party said they would be "unrecognisable and unsupported by the vast majority of Scots".
Prof Ferguson said the "ridiculous" Holyrood parliament building - which he described as a "risible and over-priced folly" - should be turned into a multiplex cinema or shopping mall, while Rangers and Celtic should "go where they belong": to "pretty near the bottom of the [English] Premiership".
The Laurence A Tisch Professor of History at Harvard, who moved to the US from Oxford University in 2002, has long been an arch-critic of Scotland, but his latest tirade in a Sunday newspaper marks a new level of hostility towards the country.
Writing from South Africa - to escape his "Caledonian heritage" of Auld Lang Syne, kilts and whisky - Prof Ferguson said Scotland must "face up to some harsh realities".
He said the country's weather is "impossibly wet", most of the land north of Loch Lomond is "barren rock", and said that educational standards have mostly collapsed.
He added: "When it comes to sport - and I do not count the one decent tennis player - Scotland is the Belarus of the West. In fact, when it comes to just about everything, it is the Belarus of the West."
Prof Ferguson said Scotland had been cursed by a misplaced "superiority complex" that it did things better than south of the Border.
He said that rather than a "Scottish cringe", there was a "Scottish swagger", which he admitted he had been guilty of in the past.
However, the academic said it was time to cut Scotland down to size. He said: "Those who called it 'North Britain' in the 18th century had it right."
Prof Ferguson said the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament after 300 years had created a "glorified county council" rather than restoring the country's political independence.
He said: "The idea that Scotland might one day 'be a nation again' should simply be dropped.
Monday, January 2, 2006 - 11:43
SOURCE: Newsday (1-1-06)
Alison Weir has been fascinated by the British monarchy since she was 14, when she read what she unabashedly calls a "pretty trashy" novel about Katherine of Aragon. "It was the sex and the executions that got me into it," she says cheerfully. "I know it's terrible to admit it!"
There's plenty of sex and several very gruesome executions in Weir's latest foray into royal history, "Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England" (Ballantine, $27.95). And those 14th century intrigues seem as near as the next table when the author begins vividly expounding on them in between bites of eggs Benedict at the Bryant Park Grill.
It's her ability to capture the personalities of her aristocratic subjects - and to deliciously catalogue their clothes, food and entertainments - that have made Weir such a popular historian. In "Queen Isabella," as in the bestselling "Eleanor of Aquitaine," the author sympathetically profiles a strong-minded female monarch she feels has been unfairly vilified by historians. Yet she stoutly insists, "I don't go into a project with an idea. I do it because it's a fascinating story that needs to be told. With Isabella, I didn't even like her until I got into the research; I was going to write the book as a cracking good tale, not a whitewash."
Daughter of France's King Philip IV, married at age 12 to Edward II of England, Isabella in 1326 led an invasion of Britain with her lover, forced her husband to abdicate in favor of their son, and has been judged by most historians as an accessory (at the very least) to Edward's murder a few months later. Weir, on the contrary, comes to the startling conclusion that Edward escaped from imprisonment and that the would-be assassins - sent by Isabella's lover, not her - substituted another body, which was buried in pomp without anyone noticing the switch. "I was very dismissive of the claims that Edward wasn't murdered," she comments, "but I came round full circle. You have to go with the facts, and you never know how a book's going to turn out until you actually analyze all the source material."
It takes a lot of self-confidence to dissent from several centuries of received wisdom, but Weir's personal history reveals a character as formidable as any of the royalty she's written about. After that trashy novel got her interested in the past, she began reading "proper history," and by age 15 had amassed a three-volume compendium of facts about the Tudors. This was not exactly the approved curriculum at her English secondary school. "There I was in the library, beavering away researching kings and queens, when I was supposed to be doing the Industrial Revolution! I just couldn't get on with factory acts and unions; I needed people. I was always doing my own thing; I never wanted to do what I was supposed to."
Undaunted by being told her grades were too poor to study history at an advanced level, she went to teacher-training college - and specialized in history. Her first book was rejected, but she kept writing, and "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" eventually appeared in 1991 (substantially cut from the original single-spaced, double-sided, 1,024-page manuscript). Meanwhile, she'd married, had two children and grown increasingly frustrated by the British educational system's inability to provide for her son, who had a condition known as dyspraxia that affects motor and social skills. In the end, Weir simply founded her own school for children with special needs. "We converted part of our home, we were inspected by the Department of Education, and eventually the authorities were sending me children they couldn't place! I ran it for seven years, and feel quite militant about it, because there's just no provision in Britain for children who can't cope with mainstream schools."...
There's plenty of sex and several very gruesome executions in Weir's latest foray into royal history, "Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England" (Ballantine, $27.95). And those 14th century intrigues seem as near as the next table when the author begins vividly expounding on them in between bites of eggs Benedict at the Bryant Park Grill.
It's her ability to capture the personalities of her aristocratic subjects - and to deliciously catalogue their clothes, food and entertainments - that have made Weir such a popular historian. In "Queen Isabella," as in the bestselling "Eleanor of Aquitaine," the author sympathetically profiles a strong-minded female monarch she feels has been unfairly vilified by historians. Yet she stoutly insists, "I don't go into a project with an idea. I do it because it's a fascinating story that needs to be told. With Isabella, I didn't even like her until I got into the research; I was going to write the book as a cracking good tale, not a whitewash."
Daughter of France's King Philip IV, married at age 12 to Edward II of England, Isabella in 1326 led an invasion of Britain with her lover, forced her husband to abdicate in favor of their son, and has been judged by most historians as an accessory (at the very least) to Edward's murder a few months later. Weir, on the contrary, comes to the startling conclusion that Edward escaped from imprisonment and that the would-be assassins - sent by Isabella's lover, not her - substituted another body, which was buried in pomp without anyone noticing the switch. "I was very dismissive of the claims that Edward wasn't murdered," she comments, "but I came round full circle. You have to go with the facts, and you never know how a book's going to turn out until you actually analyze all the source material."
It takes a lot of self-confidence to dissent from several centuries of received wisdom, but Weir's personal history reveals a character as formidable as any of the royalty she's written about. After that trashy novel got her interested in the past, she began reading "proper history," and by age 15 had amassed a three-volume compendium of facts about the Tudors. This was not exactly the approved curriculum at her English secondary school. "There I was in the library, beavering away researching kings and queens, when I was supposed to be doing the Industrial Revolution! I just couldn't get on with factory acts and unions; I needed people. I was always doing my own thing; I never wanted to do what I was supposed to."
Undaunted by being told her grades were too poor to study history at an advanced level, she went to teacher-training college - and specialized in history. Her first book was rejected, but she kept writing, and "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" eventually appeared in 1991 (substantially cut from the original single-spaced, double-sided, 1,024-page manuscript). Meanwhile, she'd married, had two children and grown increasingly frustrated by the British educational system's inability to provide for her son, who had a condition known as dyspraxia that affects motor and social skills. In the end, Weir simply founded her own school for children with special needs. "We converted part of our home, we were inspected by the Department of Education, and eventually the authorities were sending me children they couldn't place! I ran it for seven years, and feel quite militant about it, because there's just no provision in Britain for children who can't cope with mainstream schools."...
Sunday, January 1, 2006 - 14:40
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