It's not often a book comes across my desk that deserves high praise, but Oskar Jensen's Vagabonds is worthy of just that. Compellingly written, this account of the loves, lives and losses of the people who navigated the warrens and thoroughfares of Oskar Jensen Regency and Victorian London is utterly captivating. It's part of an important body of works that focus on "history from below" the lives of ordinary folk rather than the deeds of great men.
Jensen's book is stuffed to bursting with original voices and sources alongside his well-crafted expert analysis. In it we meet renegades and professional criminals as well as embattled elders, all of whom lived, worked, and loved on London's streets.
As Jensen investigates and dissects the characters we might come across while wandering this great city, we first meet the abandoned babies and lost infants Charles Dickens was so fond of depicting. But, as Jensen makes clear, what he really wants his readers to do is to turn their "backs on Dickens and the rest" - ignore what they think they know about the lives he has found and instead prepare to be surprised. This is not a new idea: academic historians have been pushing back against our cultural reliance on Dickens for some time. His fictional version of the past often ignored the realities and agency - especially of women - that can be found during this exciting an explosive era of our history.
Indeed, this is not a book written in praise of those hand-wringing social reformers to whom we are so used to listening as Victorian voices of authority. Nor does it laud those who wanted to moralise about the actions of the people who lived and worked on the streets of the metropolis. Instead, this is an exploration of real life. Jensen’s subjects are not there for us to gawp at, but set out so that we see the world through their eyes as if we walked along those cobbles and pavements alongside them.
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The Long Road Back - The Election Was Tough for the Conservatives but the Past Holds Clues on How Parties Can Return From the Brink
Itâs election night 1997, and Jeremy Paxman is grilling Tory grandee Cecil Parkinson. âYouâre the chairman of a fertiliser firm,â the famously pugnacious broadcaster asked Parkinson. âHow deep is the mess youâre in?â Twenty-seven years later, as the Conservative party comes to terms with another landslide defeat, itâs worth applying the same question to the present day. How does this result compare with previous devastating losses â not only those suffered by the Tories themselves, but also those experienced by the other major parties? And what can history teach us about the tools that politicians use to dig themselves out of the dung heap and set themselves back on the road to power?
"We Need a Meaningful Story for the New Generation - Our Composite Union"- There has been much talk of national renewal, and in due course we'll see what that means. But it felt like a watershed.
What a summer itâs been so far, with an astonishing election result. There has been much talk of national renewal, and in due course weâll see what that means. But it felt like a watershed. The new prime ministerâs dad was a toolmaker, his mum a nurse; the cabinet is majority comprehensive-educated, with more alumni of Parrs Wood High School than of Eton. Among commentators â not just on the left â thereâs been a growing feeling that 14 years of Tory rule, compounded by Brexit, have undermined what the great medieval historian Ibn Khaldun called asabiyyah: group feeling â the glue that makes societies work. And watching TV on election night, I found myself wondering whether, like sediment settling in a glass, the time has finally arrived for a new national narrative
Parthian Chicken - Eleanor Barnett recreates an ancient Roman dish that borrowed flavours from a rival neighbouring empire in the Middle East
According to ancient Roman natural philosopher Pliny the Elder, Apicius was âthe most gluttonous gorger of all spendthriftsâ. The cookbook attributed to him, known simply as Apicius or as De Re Coquinaria (On the Art of Cooking), is one of the oldest collections of recipes surviving from antiquity. Its author may have been Marcus Gavius Apicius, a Roman gourmet of the first century AD who reputedly travelled all the way from Campania to Libya on the hunt for the largest, juiciest prawns.
Eastern Promises- Lured by rich trading prospects, from the 17th to the 19th centuries Britain attempted to cultivate relations with China
Lured by rich trading prospects, from the 17th to the 19th centuries Britain attempted to cultivate relations with China sometimes successfully, but often disastrously. Kerry Brown explores the troubled but ultimately vital links between two ambitious realms
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Henryâs wary nature is typically attributed to his shaky claim to the throne. The first Tudor monarch was unable to escape the taunt that he was a usurper with no right to call himself king. In fact, his renowned paranoia was the inevitable consequence of a traumatic youth â a trait ingrained long before he harboured ambitions to wear a crown. If we delve deeper into Henryâs background, we can draw a fuller picture of one of our most circumspect of monarchs â one that might elicit sympathy for a long misunderstood king.
The Spy Who Hoodwinked Hitler - Dummy tanks at El Alamein. Bogus generals in Algiers. Sham armies on D-Day. All were ruses masterminded by Dudley Clarke. Robert Hutton tells the story of the British soldier who made an art form of duping the Nazis
Examining the reconnaissance photos, Behrendt was convinced that the Allies werenât in any hurry. They were constructing some kind of pipeline towards the southern end of their line, probably to carry water, which was barely halfway completed. There were supply dumps appearing in the south as well â always a telltale clue about where an attack would come. True, a large number of trucks were parked at the northern end of the line, about 25 miles back from the front, but they hadnât moved for weeks.
"People have achieved all kinds of crazy things at the age of 18â³
ALICE LOXTON talks to Danny Bird about her book on 18 individuals who left an indelible mark on British history before they were out of their teens
A Pole apart
ROGER MOORHOUSE is absorbed by a little-known but politically significant Polish princess whose life encompassed the major events of the later 18th and 19th centuries
Medieval England's p olitical miracle
From Magna Carta to parliament, taxation to the law courts, the 13th and 14th centuries laid the foundations for the modern British state
THE GENIUS IN THE SHADOWS
Ãthelstan is one of the greatest of all Anglo-Saxon monarchs. So why, asks Michael Wood, does the first king of the English remain so fiendishly elusive?
