A Brief History Ramble
I am reading a history book at the moment, it’s a really good one that I bought for Neil for Christmas. (Tip: always buy them something you can share, it feels like you are halving the price of the purchase.) The book has a rather in-depth title: “Great Tales From English History: Cheddar Man to DNA: A Treasury of True Stories of the Extraordinary People Who Made Britain Great” and was written by Robert Lacey. It’s informative, funny at times, easy to read and gives you some amazing little stories.
The stories are not as in-depth as the title, but they provide you with interesting outlines of things from English history. He also puts different spins on some of the tales, while showing up some as myths. Alfred and the cakes for example: not cakes and probably not a real event, but shush, don’t tell anyone. I’m back in the dark ages at the moment, in terms of where I am in history, and it’s all very interesting. Did you now the Vikings got as far as Spain and that Russia is named after a Viking settlement? Hmm, interesting. Each chapter or tale is only a couple of pages long making it a perfect ‘pick up and put down’ book. You can catch a story while waiting to use the loo (or while on it), or you can read a whole century’s worth while waiting for a bus. There are three volumes in total and you could probably read all three several times through while waiting for a hospital bed in certain parts of the kingdom, so there you go.
While thinking about history in general, and while taking a break from writing ‘Donkeys’, I had a quick check up of what else happened on this day in history, January 6th – Epiphany in the church calendar, the day after the 12th Day of Christmas and the day local men are, as we speak, throwing themselves in the cold grey sea to retrieve the cross, after the church service and blessing of the waters and boats, before parading said cross around the town and village and raising money for their church. (Search the blog for more detailed posts about Epiphany on Symi.) But before you do that, what else went on, on this day in history?
1066: Yesterday, Harold has his eye on becoming king. Today, January 6th, 1066, Harold II was crowned king of England. He didn’t last very long in the post as someone else had their eye on the throne and, on October 16th, Harold said, ‘No!’ and William said ‘Aye!’ And someone shouted, ‘Keep your eyes peeled for arrows.’ But Harold didn’t and the eyes had it. Allegedly.
The news didn’t travel very fast because Morse had not yet invented the telegraph (or any other national newspaper). He didn’t get around to demonstrating it until today in 1838, by which time we’d had a few more Williams on our throne and no more Harolds. In other disturbing news, it was on this day in 2001 that a Bush won the USA elections and, in 1975, 2,000 Led Zeppelin fans trashed a theatre in Boston. And finally, here’s one for Neil, though he probably knows it already: Superman made his debut in a comic strip on this day in 1939 – and although you won’t find that in Robert Lacey’s excellent book, you will find all kinds of other fascinating history. Check the book out here.
