Goldsmiths, University of London: Journals Online
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‘The Staff College candidates are not right yet’: The Importance of Nomination to British Army Staff College Entry, 1919-1939
Get PDFBetween 1919 and 1939, entry to the British Army Staff College was via a dual process of competitive examination or nomination by a panel of senior officers. Recent historiography has scorned the latter, arguing that by allowing entry to the less academically gifted the Staff College\u27s place as an elite institution was undermined, calling into question the belief that the Staff College represented the most academically rigorous educational institution within the Army. This article contends such an interpretation of the process of nomination to the Staff College is incorrect. Using fresh analysis and underutilised sources, it argues that officers obtaining vacancies via nomination often performed better than those entering on competitive vacancies. Furthermore, it will argue that, far from being a flaw in the system of entry, the process of nomination represented a means to achieve a balanced staff, not only in terms of representation by arm of service but also in terms of the type of personality required
Loyalty and Rebellion: Irish soldiers in the British military during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
Get PDFIrish participation in the British Army has a long and complex history. The tradition firmly took hold during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars where Irish soldiers and sailors may have represented roughly one third of Britain’s armed forces. This article examines how this tradition developed from one of Irish emigration to European armies to enlistment in the British military. It explores how internal pressures including Catholic Relief and rising Protestant loyalism, external pressures including the French Revolution and the demands of Britain’s war effort, combined to accelerate Irish enlistment, despite the threat of emerging nationalism, and even separatism, republicanism, and rebellion
Marc Van Alphen, Jan Hoffenaar, Alen Lemmers, and Christiaan Van Der Spek, Military Power and the Dutch Republic: War, Trade and the Balance of Power in Europe 1648-1813, translated by Paul Arblaster & Lee Preedy
Get PDFLesya Ukrainka’s ‘Your Letters Always Smell of Withered Roses’ (1947): A New Translation
Get PDFLesya Ukrainka (1871-1913) was a Ukrainian poet, dramatist, and political activist, who transformed Ukrainian literature by expanding its range to include a whole array of characters from classical mythology, scripture, and world literature. ‘Your Letters Always Smell of Withered Roses’ is one of several pieces, unpublished during her lifetime, written after she met and fell in love with Serhiy Merzhynsky in 1897 while both were receiving treatment for tuberculosis. It is likely to have been composed in November 1900. Ukrainka was a staunch believer in her country’s freedom and worked with her brother to promote Ukrainian literature and translation of foreign classics into Ukrainian. Her strong female characters toppled the patriarchal model of the literature of the time, yet she remains one of the most under-translated authors of her day
Matthew Hefferan, The Household Knights of Edward III: Warfare, Politics and Kingship in Fourteenth-Century England
Get PDFMichael Howard and the Historian’s Craft: An Introduction to the Michael Howard Special Issue
Get PDFThis introduction to the Michael Howard Special Issue offers a short background to his life, contextualises the themes found across the contributions to this issue, and then provides a more detailed analysis of Howard and his two ‘careers’ as a Captain and a Professor. Howard’s life as a soldier is too often compartmentalised from his work as a historian; this introduction examines where and how Howard’s military experiences shaped his later intellectual interests, academic career, and historiographical ideas. It then moves on to look at Howard’s landmark lecture and article ‘The Use and Abuse of Military History’, the influences on his methodology, and two prominent lectures he gave at Oxford as Regius Professor of History. The picture that emerges of Howard is one of a life dedicated to understanding the past and nurturing through good faith the generations that would follow him
The Unrepentant Historian: Sir Michael Howard and the birth of War Studies
Get PDFSir Michael Howard is widely recognised as the founder of ‘War Studies’, a Department of Kings College, London, which embodied a new intellectual agenda for the study of war. Yet whilst his influence as a founder was significant, it has been overstated. In this article we contextualise the emergence of War Studies as part of a longer series of attempts to establish war-oriented study at the University of London and situate Howard’s endeavours alongside those of more senior colleagues. In so doing, we also emphasise the limited and pragmatic approach to war studies that Howard developed during this period
Review: A. S. G. Edwards, Peter Mendes, and John Stokes, Ian Fletcher, Poet and Scholar: A List of His Publications (Nottingham: Shoestring Press, 2019)
Get PDFIt must have been the autumn of 1973 that I first met Ian Fletcher. Evening was coming on and we were both giving papers at a Pater or Beardsley conference in Brasenose College, Oxford. As we crossed one of the inner quadrangles on our way to the lecture theatre this tall, gaunt man bent over me, said: ‘I won’t be a minute’, and disappeared into the door which led to the college chapel. I waited a few moments and he emerged murmuring to me, ‘That should be all right then.’ It was clear that he had been consulting the ghost of Pater about his forthcoming piece and had received a blessing from the other side. He hardly needed it for as soon as he began to speak my jaw dropped in wonder at such eloquence
Review: Baudelaire, ‘La modernité mélancolique’ (Bibliothèque nationale de France, 3 November 2021 – 13 February 2022)
Get PDFThe title of the latest exhibition devoted to Charles Baudelaire at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) may leave one unsatisfied – the emphasis on melancholy has more of a tinge of our conflict-ridden contemporary times than of the bustling and somewhat optimistic nineteenth century. Title aside, however, this is a well-conceived, richly illustrated exhibition, replete with material such as manuscripts, newspapers, and magazines where Baudelaire’s poems first appeared, various editions of his works, and visual material such as paintings, lithographs, engravings, drawings, photographs, and daguerreotypes
British Army Cold Weather and Mountain Warfare Training in the Second World War
Get PDFWhile the British Army fought the Second World War in the temperate climes of Europe, the deserts of North Africa and the jungles of Malaya and Burma it devoted considerable resources to training and equipping troops to fight in cold weather and mountain warfare. This article will review three different scenarios where the British Army sought to develop units to fight in this specialised environment, the methods they utilised, and the lessons learned from each attempt