Charles Darwin's Anniversary & Our Current Issue

Born 200 years ago, the great work On the Origin of Species – one of the few books that really did change the world – was first published in 1859. Just over two decades later, Darwin was laid to rest beside Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey. Though some doubts were raised about his religious beliefs – he died an ‘agnostic’ – the Church of England had few qualms about placing Darwin on the highest pedestal of scientific genius, until then occupied by Newton alone. The Reverend Frederick Farrar, in his sermon at Darwin’s funeral, sought to explain that the theory of evolution was entirely consistent with the idea of a Creator. Only fundamentalists – religious or atheist – seem to be agitated by that rather banal observation which has been repeated with regularity ever since. For most people, regardless of their beliefs, Darwin is simply not a controversial character.

The real question to ask – as History Today does – is why the most vociferous and sustained opposition to Darwin’s ideas is to be found in what is arguably the world’s most scientifically advanced nation, the United States. Thomas Dixon, in a groundbreaking study, suggests it is a matter of unintended consequences, that in keeping religion out of the classroom through its policy of separation of church and state, the US federal government inspired ingenious Christian fundamentalists to smuggle religion into the school laboratory in the guise of Intelligent Design.

History, it seems, is full of unintended consequences, the distortion of ideals. Blair Worden, one of our most distinguished historians of the Civil Wars, considers the execution of Charles I in 1649 and, among other questions, asks whether the regicide ensured the long-term survival of the monarchy.

The consequences of the current economic downturn have yet to become apparent. The credit crunch which affected the France of Louis XIV – caused by ever more elaborate, indeed Baroque methods of finance and debt – led ultimately to revolution and the death of the French monarchy. Guy Rowlands recounts a cautionary tale of excess and folly with verve and wit.

Material excess has been a defining characteristic of recent decades, in the West at least. We may now be entering a period when our ability to differentiate ourselves from one another depends a little less on vulgar display and a little more on good taste. The origins of this subtle and elusive concept are the subject of our cover story, a typically rich and wide-ranging study by the esteemed historian of early modern culture and society, Keith Thomas.

I hope you enjoy this month's offering...

The Wonders of the British Museum

Almost every day I walk past the British Museum on the way to the History Today offices. I long lost count of the number of times I have stepped through its doors with family and friends, or just killing time in the most civilised way imaginable, always learning something new. Familiarity does not breed contempt. It is simply the finest museum of its kind in the world, and one that has largely resisted the patronising palaver of lesser establishments. Today is the 250^th anniversary of its opening, a moment worthy of wild celebration. Anyone who happens to be in the vicinity this afternoon might wish to head to the Enlightenment Gallery, for a celebration of the life and work of the BM’s founder Sir Hans Sloane, at 2.30pm and 6pm.

1759 was an extraordinary year for Britain, an annus mirabilus recounted in Frank McLynn’s study 1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World (Cape). Edward Hawke’s victory over the French at Quiberon Bay was arguably the key encounter, giving Britain complete command of the sea to act against the colonies of first France then Spain. The Americas, the Caribbean, India and the Pacific were open to British forces. But military endeavour and trade was accompanied by a remarkable curiosity to which the British Museum is testimony.

An Embarrassment of Riches

As a Brummie, that most disparaged of creatures, I was delighted to receive the Happy Anniversaries 2009 card from Heart of England, the tourist board charged with the challenging task of promoting the West Midlands. It’s not in the nature of the good folk of the area to brag, but let me make an exception. In 2009 the West Midlands celebrates the bicentenary of Charles Darwin, born in Shrewsbury, and arguably the greatest scientist of all time. It is 300 years since the first coke smelting furnace was developed in Ironbridge, an event that marked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The lexicographer and wit, Samuel Johnson, was born in 1709 in Lichfield. The visionary industrialist Matthew Boulton was born exactly 100 years later, a key figure in Birmingham’s Lunar Society, architects of the modern world, whose remarkable story of empiricism and entrepreneurship is told so well by Jenny Uglow in The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future (Faber).

This year also marks the bicentenary of the birth, in Much Wenlock, of Dr William Penny-Brookes, who anticipated Pierre de Coubertin’s revival of the Olympic Games. On a more melancholy note, it is 250 years since Josiah Wedgwood founded the eponymous and recently deceased pottery works in Stoke on Trent. Oh for his mix of commercial nous, immaculate craftsmanship and pioneering production techniques, or for those that resulted in the first Mini, which rolled off the Longbridge production line in 1959. And then there’s Shakespeare, always Shakespeare. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of his Sonnets. It’s not a bad legacy. Most countries would be proud of it, many would never shut up about it.

But I will, to comment on an article published in the Guardian last Saturday by the gifted essayist and novelist Andrew O’Hagan, entitled ‘What Went Wrong with the Working Class?’ It begins with a wry account of a visit by English relatives to O’Hagan’s family home 25 miles from Glasgow. He remembers being both appalled and fascinated by their ‘riot of individualism with no real sense of common purpose and collective volition as a tribe’, and this theme of the English inability to ‘embrace a notion of collective responsibility’ is a constant of the essay. But perhaps individual responsibility is more akin to English sensibilities (if we can speak of any people, especially one as diverse as the ‘English’, in such terms). And it is individual responsibility which has been lost, amid a welter of consumerism and sedation, and the loss of a common historical narrative and reference points. Even among those English who do know their history, there is an embarrassment about the past, not just about the ‘bad’ things, but, more strikingly – and possibly uniquely - about the good. All this is compounded by an ignorance fostered by top-down changes in education, which have poured cold water on aspiration. The English working class know their place once again because, in the absence of such motors of social mobility as grammar schools, it is the only place they now have (current debate about social mobility seems to me to be little more than political posturing).

Last year saw the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Milton, the second greatest English poet, whose line ‘Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live’ O’Hagan found ‘intolerable’. We were treated to a marvellous reading of Paradise Lost by Anton Lesser on Radio 3 over the Christmas period. But not much else. This year sees the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robbie Burns, O’Hagan’s hero, and a worthy one, though where he comes in the canon I couldn’t possibly say. What I can say is that Burns will receive greater coverage in Scotland (and possibly England) this year than Milton received on either side of the Tweed.

I’ll be listening in to the programmes and reading the articles celebrating Burns, but I doubt that they will be as thrilling as reading Jonathan Bate’s new study Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare (Penguin). One of the most interesting subjects of this fascinating book is Shakespeare’s creation of what Bate calls Deep England, rooted in the Bard’s origins in rural Warwickshire. Like all Shakespeare’s ideas and writings, it expands the parochial to become universal. He taught nations how to live.

Blair Worden discusses the Civil War on BBC Radio 3

As a addendum to yesterday's post, here is a link to a historical discussion from BBC's Night Waves programme. The historians Justin Champion and Blair Worden, whose new book I previewed yesterday, discuss with the host Rana Mitter the long-term significance and legacy of the English Civil War.

The discussion is introduced with this blurb:

The figures of Cromwell, the executed King Charles I, roundheads and cavaliers, have come to represent the English Civil War in the public imagination.

But what was it really fought for, and what, in the long term, did it achieve?

Click here to launch the programme in BBC's iPlayer

Skip to around 11 minutes 40 seconds to reach the discussion and miss the first item in the programme.

Two Civil War Titles

The weekend was spent reading two excellent new books on the eternally fascinating topic of the English Civil War. Part of Palgrave/Macmillans's excellent 'Problems in Focus' series, The English Civil War, edited by John Adamson, is a fascinating collection of essays by leading scholars which now represents the best overview available of current thinking on the topic.

The editor's opening essay, 'High Roads and Blind Alleys', a fine introduction to current historiography, remind us just how much the revisionists of the 1970s and 1980s owed to the work of S R Gardiner. Other stand out essays include David Scott on the neglect of Royalism and Philip Baker's contention that more work is needed on the relationship between the Bible and Classical works if we are to better understand the ideas and inspirations of the time.

Adamson's collection is not for the beginner, but Blair Worden's authoritative and lively volume, The English Civil Wars 1640-1660, is. Worden, one of our most distinguished scholars of the period (whose essay on the regicide of Charles I is a highlight of our forthcoming February issue), has written a chronological narrative of the upheavals, which deals with its origins, the military conflict, the killing of the king and its consequences, which linger to this day (as readers of our February edition will discover). It is hard to imagine a better introduction to the subject. The English Civil Wars is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson on 29 January.