Skip to main content
Read page text
page 10
h i s t o r y Beyond the Call of Duty: Army Flight Nursing in World War II Judith Barger At the height of World War II, five hundred US Army f light nurses served as members of medical air evacuation squadrons. located throughout the world on both the European and Pacific fronts. Author Judith Barger interviewed 25 pioneering women about their service experiences during WWII. Their stories and the accompanying photographs bring to life this long-overdue tribute to Army f light nursing $28.95/£18 Cloth • 312pp Available from The Kent State University Press, Eurospan Limited, 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU For information: Tel: +44(0)20 7240 0856 Fax +44(0)20 7379 0609 email info@eurospangroup.com For ordering Tel: +44(0)1767 604972 Fax +44(0)1767 601640 email eurospan@turpin-distribution.com The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242, USA made by the Stuart kings, ultimately produced the revolts in Scotland in 1638 and Ireland in 1641, and thereby the volatile and unstable circumstances in England that made the slide into war possible in 1642. Civil war in England, in this view, becomes almost accidental. As the parliamentarian lawyer Bulstrode Whitelocke, who provides the epigraph to Harris’s final chapter, puts it: ‘It is strange to note how we have insensibly slid into the beginning of a civil war by one unexpected accident after another, as waves of the sea which have brought us thus far and we scarce know how.’ Harris’s command of the Scottish and Irish histories of 1603 to 1642, and his ability to interleave these narratives with developments in England, constitute two of Rebellion’s greatest strengths. Many previous works on the problems of early Stuart government have made passing reference to Scotland or Ireland as incidental to the ‘main story’ of developments in England. Here, the narratives proceed on terms of near equality, with as much attention devoted to Ireland and Scotland’s experiences of Stuart rule as to England’s. For anyone wanting a succinct and reliable guide to the impact of the Stuart government in all its constituent territories, this book will henceforth be the starting point of choice. His narrative also takes us down into the life of the parish – the world of cheap print, local feuds and provincial gossip. This is more than just picturesque period detail. The book conveys a keen sense of the growing importance of the ‘public sphere’ in early Stuart England: a realisation, as much by the makers of news as by its peddlers, that there was a voracious market for political information in early-17thcentury England (and, to a lesser extent, in Scotland and Ireland) which ranged well beyond the court and the metropolitan elites and created a potential constituency for political argument and debate that extended to the ale house, the conventicle and the parish pump. Perhaps inevitably for a book that attempts so much in so concise a compass, there are oddities of inclusion and omission. In a period when the Stuarts’ fortunes were so thoroughly enmeshed in the politics of continental Europe, is it really justifiable to devote so much space to events in Aberdeen and Galway while almost wholly ignoring what was happening in Paris and Madrid? Moreover, for all that the text is peppered with quotations from ‘ordinary’ men and women, the book remains conspicuously top-heavy. Almost the only personalities who emerge in more than two dimensions are James and Charles. And while the intermittently convened institution of parliament (whether English, Irish or Scottish) figures prominently, there is barely a word about the political institution that was almost continuously in session: the court. This omission is all the more puzzling in a work with a professedly ‘British’ emphasis, as it was James’s success in creating a Scottish domain within the English court – the Bedchamber, with an almost exclusively Scottish staff – that provided the king with one of the most effective means for reconciling his Scottish elites to the realities of absentee rule. Court faction is also treated cursorily. The complex processes by which government policy was formulated tend to be glossed over, as are the often sharp ideological divisions – which sit uncomfortably with the arguments for the essentially consensual character of early Stuart secular politics – within the political elite. The result is a strangely depleted dramatis personae, an approach that continues, with austere consistency, to the book’s index. Here, no one beneath the rank of a sovereign is deemed worthy of mention. Thus there are index entries for James I’s ‘embalming’ and Charles I’s ‘speech impediment’, but the reader hoping to find references even to such major figures as Bacon or Salisbury, Strafford or Laud, Warwick or Pym, will search in vain. None of this detracts from the scale of Tim Harris’s accomplishment. Rebellion is a work of ambitious range, elegant concision and unfailingly stimulating argument. Even on its own, it would be a formidable achievement. Placed beside its two companion volumes, Restoration (2005) and Revolution (2006), which offer similarly detailed three-kingdom narratives for the years from 1660 to 1720, it leaves him unquestionably our leading exponent of the Stuarts’ British and Irish history. In that field, he has no peer. To order this book for £24, see the Literary Review Bookshop on page 10 Literary Review | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 4 8
page 11
h i s t o r y dav i d g e l b e r What a Beard-Off The Field of Cloth of Gold By Glenn Richardson (Yale University Press 275pp £35) For one unavoidable reason, the plains of northern France will lie heavy in the public mind this year. In 1914, English and French soldiers repudiated ancient enmities and took to the field together. This union of arms – on territory where each nation had drained so much of the other’s blood – was not, as Glenn Richardson recalls in The Field of Cloth of Gold, unique. A little under four hundred years before, the nobilities of France and England, led by their monarchs, Francis I and Henry VIII, met on a stretch of farmland between the towns of Guînes and Ardres to proclaim everlasting concord between their nations. For two and a half weeks in June 1520, some 12,000 English and French courtiers lodged, jousted and junketed together in a carnival of splendour. A temporary city of tents, pavilions and a hastily constructed palace was planted on the site, which lay inside England’s last surviving French enclave. Golden fountains spouted perpetual claret and tables bowed beneath masses of pork, venison, pheasant, peacock and even dolphin. In the months preceding the meeting, whole industries were absorbed with sewing costumes, setting jewels and forging armour for the occasion. Bishop John Fisher observed that ‘never was seen in England such excess of apparelment before’. The glittering display of finery lent the summit the name by which it has since been known: the Field of Cloth of Gold. Since Francis had ascended the French throne in 1515, his relationship with Henry had been characterised by competitive curiosity. Both monarchs devoured information about the other. It was said that when Henry jousted at his palace at Greenwich, his first concern was that the French ambassador would make a fair report of his prowess. The two kings were similar in age, education and appearance. They shared a passion for the chase and a love of courtly revels. Above all, both monarchs thirsted after honour and renown. This appetite could not be sated at home, but only on the international stage – in full glare of their only true peers, their fellow sovereigns. As Richardson observes, foreign policy in an age of personal monarchy was motivated not, as in later times, by strategic considerations, but by the pursuit of fame and reputation. To most observers, war – the traditional pursuit of kings – seemed the likely consequence. The two nations had unfinished business. Henry, in the tradition of his Plantagenet forebears, styled himself king of France and spoke about renewing the Hundred Years War. Francis craved the return of Tournai and other territories Henry had seized from his predecessor, Louis XII, in 1513. But the international tide had, for a brief moment, turned against war. In London, Paris, Brussels and Rome, humanists were in the ascendant, exalting the glories of peace. In the Mediterranean and the Balkans, the forces of the Ottoman sultan seemed poised to engulf Christendom, without regard for frontiers or alliances. The meeting between Francis and Henry was two years in the making. The driving force was Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s chief minister, and Richardson follows the complex diplomacy that preceded the event with sure-footed command. In 1518, Wolsey engineered an entente between England and France, subsequently joined by other European states, which resolved outstanding differences. Outwardly, the Field of Cloth of Gold was intended to solemnise Anglo-French friendship by allowing the two kings to make a personal demonstration of affection. In 1519, Francis declared that he would come to meet Henry accompanied only by his ‘page and his lackey’ if it meant guaranteeing peace. Henry responded by vowing not to shave his beard until they had met. But, as Richardson persuasively argues, peace was only a means to an end. He unpicks the apparent paradox of a peace treaty celebrated with war games by documenting the suspicions that persisted on both sides, despite the extravagant declarations of friendship. The whole conference was conducted in a ‘spirit of ostentatious rivalry’. Henry and Francis hoped to awe each other with displays of military might. Their first meeting, on 7 June, resembled a battle charge, the two kings running at each other on horseback, only veering off course at the last moment to dismount and embrace. Henry had most to gain from the meeting, which accounts for the energy with which Wolsey pursued it. As the monarch of the smaller and poorer of the two countries, it was enough for him to appear the ostensible equal of the French king. To this end, Wolsey engaged in prolonged negotiations to ensure precise parity between the two parties. Francis I’s agenda was subtler. He had already proved his mettle on the battlefield with the capture of Milan in 1515. Despite Henry’s bluster, he had little to fear from English aggression. But a hostile England might prove a nuisance were he to resume his wars in Italy. Francis’s greater self-confidence was expressed through demonstrations of magnanimity and calculated acts of whimsy. He agreed to do Henry the honour of crossing into English territory to meet him, and on the second Sunday of the festival appeared in Henry’s chamber uninvited and declared himself his prisoner. Glenn Richardson is rare among scholars of Tudor England in approaching the subject from an international perspective. The story of Henry VIII’s reign can sometimes seem stale, but Richardson’s confident use of French archives and grasp of the diplomatic hinterland freshens the tale. There are occasional longueurs: the extended descriptions of materials, retinues and foodstuffs might be useful to convey the opulence of the occasion, but they obstruct the narrative. Nonetheless, Richardson’s interpretation of the improbable marriage of humanist grandiloquence and military posturing is convincing. He argues that the event marked the climax of Renaissance personal diplomacy, without making grand claims for its long-term political significance. It ’s just as well he doesn’t, for within two years France and England were at war again. To order this book for £35, see the Literary Review Bookshop on page 10 f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 4 | Literary Review 9

Page Text

View plaintext

h i s t o r y

Beyond the Call of Duty: Army Flight Nursing in World War II Judith Barger At the height of World War II, five hundred US Army f light nurses served as members of medical air evacuation squadrons. located throughout the world on both the European and Pacific fronts. Author Judith Barger interviewed 25 pioneering women about their service experiences during WWII. Their stories and the accompanying photographs bring to life this long-overdue tribute to Army f light nursing $28.95/£18 Cloth • 312pp

Available from The Kent State University Press, Eurospan Limited, 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU

For information: Tel: +44(0)20 7240 0856 Fax +44(0)20 7379 0609 email info@eurospangroup.com

For ordering Tel: +44(0)1767 604972 Fax +44(0)1767 601640 email eurospan@turpin-distribution.com

The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242, USA

made by the Stuart kings, ultimately produced the revolts in Scotland in 1638 and Ireland in 1641, and thereby the volatile and unstable circumstances in England that made the slide into war possible in 1642. Civil war in England, in this view, becomes almost accidental. As the parliamentarian lawyer Bulstrode Whitelocke, who provides the epigraph to Harris’s final chapter, puts it: ‘It is strange to note how we have insensibly slid into the beginning of a civil war by one unexpected accident after another, as waves of the sea which have brought us thus far and we scarce know how.’

Harris’s command of the Scottish and Irish histories of 1603 to 1642, and his ability to interleave these narratives with developments in England, constitute two of Rebellion’s greatest strengths. Many previous works on the problems of early Stuart government have made passing reference to Scotland or Ireland as incidental to the ‘main story’ of developments in England. Here, the narratives proceed on terms of near equality, with as much attention devoted to Ireland and Scotland’s experiences of Stuart rule as to England’s. For anyone wanting a succinct and reliable guide to the impact of the Stuart government in all its constituent territories, this book will henceforth be the starting point of choice.

His narrative also takes us down into the life of the parish – the world of cheap print, local feuds and provincial gossip. This is more than just picturesque period detail. The book conveys a keen sense of the growing importance of the ‘public sphere’ in early Stuart England: a realisation, as much by the makers of news as by its peddlers, that there was a voracious market for political information in early-17thcentury England (and, to a lesser extent, in Scotland and Ireland) which ranged well beyond the court and the metropolitan elites and created a potential constituency for political argument and debate that extended to the ale house, the conventicle and the parish pump.

Perhaps inevitably for a book that attempts so much in so concise a compass, there are oddities of inclusion and omission. In a period when the Stuarts’ fortunes were so thoroughly enmeshed in the politics of continental Europe, is it really justifiable to devote so much space to events in Aberdeen and Galway while almost wholly ignoring what was happening in Paris and Madrid? Moreover, for all that the text is peppered with quotations from ‘ordinary’ men and women, the book remains conspicuously top-heavy. Almost the only personalities who emerge in more than two dimensions are James and Charles. And while the intermittently convened institution of parliament (whether English, Irish or Scottish) figures prominently, there is barely a word about the political institution that was almost continuously in session: the court. This omission is all the more puzzling in a work with a professedly ‘British’ emphasis, as it was James’s success in creating a Scottish domain within the English court – the Bedchamber, with an almost exclusively Scottish staff – that provided the king with one of the most effective means for reconciling his Scottish elites to the realities of absentee rule.

Court faction is also treated cursorily. The complex processes by which government policy was formulated tend to be glossed over, as are the often sharp ideological divisions – which sit uncomfortably with the arguments for the essentially consensual character of early Stuart secular politics – within the political elite. The result is a strangely depleted dramatis personae, an approach that continues, with austere consistency, to the book’s index. Here, no one beneath the rank of a sovereign is deemed worthy of mention. Thus there are index entries for James I’s ‘embalming’ and Charles I’s ‘speech impediment’, but the reader hoping to find references even to such major figures as Bacon or Salisbury, Strafford or Laud, Warwick or Pym, will search in vain.

None of this detracts from the scale of Tim Harris’s accomplishment. Rebellion is a work of ambitious range, elegant concision and unfailingly stimulating argument. Even on its own, it would be a formidable achievement. Placed beside its two companion volumes, Restoration (2005) and Revolution (2006), which offer similarly detailed three-kingdom narratives for the years from 1660 to 1720, it leaves him unquestionably our leading exponent of the Stuarts’ British and Irish history. In that field, he has no peer. To order this book for £24, see the Literary Review Bookshop on page 10

Literary Review | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 4 8

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content