This year marks 10 years of writing the Historier’s Miscellany. I have written 48 articles, which isn’t that many. The last year I hardly wrote any as I’ve been working on something else. I started because I wanted to explore certain themes around my work in heritage. I never intended it to be a regurgitation of history, with facts and dates. That’s what Wikipedia is for. I wanted to talk about my experiences and thoughts I constantly get when working with collections, archives, historic buildings, archaeological sites and even landscapes. I like making stuff too, the craft in writing for an audience, putting together images and content, and producing a post. And, above all, I wanted to prove to myself that I could do this.
It’s been a slow process. I am a bit of a perfectionist; I spend a lot of time writing and re-writing. What I’ve done isn’t really blogging, but taking more time to get my thoughts sorted out, and out into the world. There are many posts I’ve written that just haven’t “cut the mustard” and are hanging there in my folders. I put them to one side and perhaps come back to them when the time is right. For myself, I have a good number of followers, have reached the dizzy height of just under 5000 visits last year, and really enjoy the comments.
I often wonder about the first piece I wrote, The Tudor Man and would I have written it differently now. Is it naive, is it dated, do I have more to say on the subject 10 years on?
Heritage Anniversaries
I thought I would mark this year, a 10-year anniversary, by writing about anniversaries. We love them in heritage, my line of work. An anniversary happens every year of course, but to make something of it, it has to be a nice round number divisible by 25. Unless of course, it is under 25, then 10 works. 5 or 15 doesn’t for some reason.
This year is the 25th anniversary of the 21st Century. I wonder if we will all be talking about 2K0 the Millennium bug, and our first mobile phones. Mine was an Ericsson T10, and was très cool. Some of the biggest anniversaries we keep coming back to are:
- The Second World War – the end of it will be 80 years this year.
- The Great Fire of London (every September there is something about it)
- Anything to do with Shakespeare and the Tudors – 450 years ago, on 21 January, 1575, Queen Elizabeth I of England granted a monopoly on producing printed sheet music, to Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. No doubt we’ll hear about that somewhere on Radio 3.
Anniversaries are useful hooks to look at new subjects and topics. We need frameworks to hang exhibitions and events on, and anniversaries do just that. What is the reason for talking looking at “this” now? Because it is exactly 450 years since the Raid of the Redeswire, or the Redeswire Fray, which was the last battle between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland. Sir John Carmichael (Kingdom of Scotland) defeated Sir John Forster (Kingdom of England).
It is thanks to anniversaries that I’ve been able to get closer to subjects, and more confident in them. In 2007, Britain marked the bi-centenary of the UK abolition of the slave trade. I was working in a museum and local archive at the time, and was asked to do something for the anniversary. Before then, I had viewed black history in trepidation. I am white, middle class, English. What if I got it wrong, what if I used the wrong terminology, what if I insulted someone? But instead, the anniversary gave me background knowledge and connections that resulted with and an article on the slave trade and a local figure in Kingston, Cesar Picton. For this I interviewed Anne-Marie Olufuwa, director of then then black culture community group MeWe, and asked her opinions on the subject. I ended up lecturing about Picton’s life and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Moving forward 17 years, in my work today, I use that knowledge and extend the subject to include how insurance supported the slave trade and plantations during the 17th and 18th century. I talk about it on my tours around the City of London. The anniversary, albeit 17 years ago, has given me traction, gravitas and confidence about the subject, that allows me to talk in public about it.
The problem with dates and time
There is a slight problem with anniversary dates, as in 1582, most of Europe changed their calendars from Julian to Gregorian. There were a more calendar changes over the next few decades, resulting in anomalies. For example, England did not initially take on the change of calendar leaving it a few days behind. When William III set out for England from the Netherlands on 11 November 1688 (Gregorian Calendar) he arrived in Brixham, Devon, on 5 November 1688 (Julian Calendar). Similarly, Shakespeare died on the same day as Cervantes (23 April 1616), but Cervantes predeceased Shakespeare by ten days in real time.
To add further complications, if any anniversary was before the changes of Calendars, then we will not be celebrating it on the exact day. Best not to dwell on the detail and keep it simple.
My anniversaries
For me personally, this year marks a few anniversaries. It has been 30 years since I started working in heritage. 35 years since I saw Nirvana. 50 years since I started school. I will leave the reminiscences and nostalgia there. The next anniversary topic I’m going to look at it the Great Fire of London. This is my challenge I am setting myself. I haven’t written it yet and I don’t know what form it will take, but the Fire has been something that I have come back to time and again throughout my career. I’ve taught it to Year 2 school children for many many years. I ran events, talks and webinars on it. I have even curated an exhibition on the Fire. I know the subject very well, but who knows in which direction this next article is going to take me.
An Historier's Miscellany 