My very brief career as a beggar

Some years ago I visited Florence. On my last morning there, I had to carry my luggage from the hotel to the railway station. It was very hot and my bags were heavy, so I stopped for a rest at the Baptistry.

I sat on the steps by Ghiberti's great door, fanned myself with my hat and then put it on the ground by my feet. I must have looked dreadful, because a passer-by dropped a small coin into it.

Despite this evidence of the extreme ease of making money by begging, I have not repeated the experiment.

My Early Life, by Winston Churchill

This must be one of the most entertaining autobiographies of all time. Churchill wrote in in 1930, when he had already served as a Liberal cabinet minister under Asquith and Lloyd George, and as Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer under Baldwin, but was now embarking on nine fruitless years out of office. The book covers the time up to the start of his Parliamentary career in the first years of the 20th century.

Churchill passes quickly through what he portrays as his distinctly unpromising youth: an appalling prep school, years of underachievement at Harrow, then Sandhurst (where he needed two attempts, and the services of a "crammer", to pass the entrance exams), a commission in the Fourth Hussars and a posting to Bangalore in India. There, he tells us, his education really began, with a programme of serious reading in his leisure-time. (It is interesting that a hundred years earlier the future Duke of Wellington had embarked on a very similar campaign of self-education under much the same circumstances) Churchill developed his sonorous prose style by devouring the great classic historiansGibbon and Macaulay.

This is where the story really starts. The book is largely taken up with Churchill's adventures, which took the form of searches for battle. The odd thing is that none of these stemmed from his normal regimental duties He first came under fire in Cuba, of all places, where he travelled to witness the attempts of the Spanish colonial forces to put down a rebellion on the island. He then obtained leave to join a campaign to crush some troublesome tribes on the north-west frontier of India, where he witnessed his first killings and had the first of his many narrow escapes from death. This expedition enabled him to write his first book, "The Story of the Malakand Field Force". A map shows us how depressingly familiar that region is today, for Churchill was writing about the Swat valley and the "Tribal Areas" of Pakistan on the Afghanistan frontier. Churchill's comments on the outlook and behaviour of the tribes still hold true today, though nowadays we blast them from drones in the sky rather than deter them from rebellion by burning their villages and destroying their crops as Churchill's expedition did. (Oddly enough, he makes no reference to Islam at all in this book)

Next came the Sudan, where General Kitchener had been sent to destroy the power of the Dervishes and avenge the killing of General Gordon at Khartoum. Kitchener was most reluctant to allow Churchill anywhere near the campaign, considering him an pushy young self-publicist (which he was, of course!). Only after intense lobbying by his mother and friends (even the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, was persuaded to put in a good word for him!) did Kitchener surrender with an ill grace and allow Churchill to join the expedition as a supernumerary unpaid Lieutenant in the Lancers. There he took part in the last cavalry charge ever made by the British army at the battle of Omdurman, where he shot two Dervishes and again narrowly avoided being killed himself. This led to another book: "The River War", which was again very well-received.

Churchill's next step illustrates his limitless ambition. He resigned from the army in order to fight a bye- election at Oldham as a Conservative candidate. M.P.s at this time were still unpaid, and he proposed in future to support himself by his writing. As it happened, his attempt to enter into Parliament failed, but this enabled him in autumn 1899 to go to South Africa, where the Boer War was just starting, as war correspondent for the "Morning Post", at the extraordinarily high salary of £250 a month plus expenses.

More adventures followed. He was in a troop train derailed by Boer artillery, was taken prisoner and interned, escaped, was a fugitive with a price on his head ("£25: dead or alive"), hid in a coalmine and on a goods train which took him to safety in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. From there he returned to South Africa, rejoined the army, survived the disaster of the battle of Spion Kop and took part in the relief of Ladysmith. The publicity gained from all these exploits led to his election as M.P. for Oldham at the general election of 1901.

So, at the age of 26, Churchill found himself already famous as the hero of many adventures, a popular writer and journalist, and now a Member of Parliament. Before taking up his seat, he embarked on a hectic lecture tour of Britain, and then of the United States and Canada, which left him with £10,000 in the bank: an enormous sum for the time, which preserved him from financial worries for many years. Few young men could ever have achieved so much in so short a time, and his meteoric career was only beginning, for in less than ten years he would be a Cabinet minister.

    But none of this could have been achieved without Churchill's family connections. His grandfather was the Duke of Marlborough; his father, Lord Randolph, (who died shortly before Churchill joined the army) was the most charismatic young Conservative politician of his generation; his mother was a great society beauty. From his infancy he had been introduced to everyone who mattered. As a young subaltern he was invited to a private dinner where the Prince of Wales was a guest - and contrived to irritate his future sovereign by arriving twenty minutes late! His early books were read and praised in the highest circles.The great Joseph Chamberlain, cabinet minister and apostle of Imperialism, came to Oldham to speak on his behalf in the election campaign.
    Throughout the book Churchill takes pains to contrast the view he had of the world as a gung-ho young army officer with how he now perceives things as an experienced government minister in his fifties. Looking back, he regrets that he never had a chance to go to university, but feels that what he lost in academic education was more than compensated by what he gained in experience of life.  

When one reads a biography of Churchill, such as the splendidly-written one by Roy Jenkins, one realizes how much of the story Churchill left out. One could hardly expect him to have publicized that his father apparently died of syphilis, or that by the time he was a rising young politician his mother (described by Jenkins as a "serial adulteress") was married to what we would nowadays call a "toy-boy", scarcely older than Churchill himself. His younger brother Jack receives barely a mention. His years at Harrow were not as unproductive as he implies. I used to know a history master at Harrow, who told me that some of Churchill's essays were preserved in the school archives, and that they were very good. Churchill dismisses in a single line the fact that he won the Public Schools Fencing Championships; whereas he devotes several pages to his exploits on the polo field as a young army officer. (For some reason, successful English people take a delight in positively boasting about how useless they were at school. I cannot imagine a German or Japanese behaving like this!)
     The last sentence of the book refers forward to September 1908, "When I got married and lived happily ever after". Not only does Churchill not give the name of his wife, but there has been no mention in the book of any girlfriend whatsoever! In fact the only woman apart from his mother appear  in the book is his old nurse, Mrs Everest. What are we to make of this?

It was inevitable that such a dramatic story should be made into a film: "Young Winston", with Simon Ward in the title role and Robert Shaw and Anne Bancroft as his parents.

Bean casserole made easy

This is my mother's recipe. It looks a rather muddy mess, but is actually very tasty!

Serves 2 good helpings

400 gm tin of butter-beans
400 gm tin of tomatoes
8 or more dried apricots
1 onion, grated or chopped
2 bay-leaves
1 full teaspoon of Marmite
Salt and pepper

Mix all the ingredients together the night before, cover and leave to stand, so that the apricots can absorb the flavour. Add more liquid the next day if necessary. Cook in the oven for one hour at 180 degrees.

The Gunpowder Plot in Staffordshire

Many people know that most of the Gunpowder Plotters were killed or captured at Holbeach House, near Dudley, in south Staffordshire. But what were they doing there? This essay attempts to answer that question.

This famous engraving shows eight of the plotters: Robert Catesby, who was the leader and inspiration of the enterprise, Thomas Percy, Guido Fawkes (who at this stage of his life did not answer to the name "Guy"), the two sets of brothers, John and Christopher Wright and Robert and Thomas Winter (more properly, "Wintour"), and Bates. Four other major plotters are missing from the picture: Robert Keyes, Ambrose Rookwood, Francis Tresham and Sir Everard Digby.
    What had these men got in common? They were all Catholics, driven, as they saw it, to desperate measures because King James I, who had seemingly promised to relax the penal laws against Catholics, had now reverted to strict enforcement. (At that time, ruinous fines were imposed on anyone refusing to attend Church of England services, and any Catholic priests who were caught were liable to be tortured for information and then executed). Of the twelve men, Guido Fawkes, a Yorkshireman, had been a mercenary soldier in the Spanish service, Thomas Percy was a relative and dependent of a great nobleman, the Earl of Northumberland, and Thomas Bates was Percy's servant, which is why he was only given a surname in the picture, and was depicted without a hat. The other nine were all landowning gentry, mostly with property in the Midlands, related to each other by a complex network of marriages between the old Catholic families. They were mostly in their mid-thirties, though Digby was ten years younger than the others.

Everyone knows the story of how the plot to blow up Parliament was betrayed to Lord Monteagle, a Catholic nobleman (probably by Tresham), how Monteagle then passed the message on to the King and his chief minister, Robert Cecil (who must surely already have known that something was going on), and how Fawkes was discovered with the stock of gunpowder around midnight on November 4th /5th, 1605. But the blowing-up of Parliament was only to be part of the plot. Some of the plotters were waiting at Dunchurch, near Rugby. It was hoped that the explosion would kill not only King James but also his heir, Henry, Prince of Wales, and perhaps even his four-year-old younger son, Charles (later King Charles I). This would leave as heir to the throne James's daughter, Princess Elizabeth: just nine years old, but already with her own miniature court at Coombe Abbey, nine miles away from Dunchurch. With James and his sons dead, the plotters intended to kidnap Elizabeth, proclaim her as Queen and bring her up a Catholic. They hoped to spark off a mass rising of English Catholics, and maybe also foreign intervention by Spanish troops. All this was, to say the least, highly optimistic. Any priests who got to hear of the plot were horrified and urged its abandonment, the Pope favoured conciliation with England, and King James and Philip III of Spain were beginning to negotiate the peace treaty which they both wanted.

When the plotters learned of the arrest of Guido Fawkes they would have been well-advised to abandon all their plans and take cover, but many of them still hoped that part of the plot would succeed. They accordingly fled back to their power-base in the Midlands and seized war-horses from Warwick castle, and also a supply of gunpowder, in the hope of starting an armed rising. Not surprisingly, only a handful joined them, including John Grant, Henry Morgan and a Staffordshire landowner, Stephen Littleton. On November 8th most of the group were trapped at Holbeach House, Stephen Littleton's home, by 200 men under Sir Richard Walsh, the sheriff of Worcester. In the fighting Catesby, Percy and the Wright brothers were killed and Thomas Winter, Rookwood, Grant and Morgan were wounded. The others were captured individually over the next few weeks. Meanwhile Guido Fawkes, after savage torture, had revealed most of the details of the plot. Francis Tresham died in the Tower of London of a urinary infection two days before Christmas.

After a treason trial at which they were not permitted any defence lawyers, the surviving plotters were sentenced to the full penalty for traitors, which was execution by hanging, drawing and quartering. Accordingly on January 30th 1606, Digby, Grant, Bates and Robert Winter were dragged by sledge to St Paul's churchyard and, one by one, partially strangled on a rope, then, whilst still alive, castrated, disembowelled and chopped into pieces. The next day Fawkes, Thomas Winter, Keyes and Rookwood suffered the same fate at Old Palace Yard next to the Houses of Parliament (not, of course, the present building!) There were other executions in different parts of the country: Stephen Littleton and Henry Morgan being executed in Stafford.

Holbeach House still stands: it is now a care home.

There is a final ironic twist to the story. Little Princess Elizabeth, who was intended to be the plotters' puppet ruler, of course never did become Queen. When she grew up she married a German Protestant prince: Frederick, Elector Palatine; and in 1714 her grandson became King of England as George I, thus ensuring a Protestant succession to the throne. All later British monarchs are descended from her.

Shrewsbury panorama

We have recently moved to Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire. The old part of the town lies within a loop of the river Severn, and includes a tangle of alley-ways with very strange names: Grope Lane, the Dogpole, even the Pig-Trough!

This is the view from Shrewsbury school. The buildings in the foreground are the school boat-houses. Across the river are, from left to right: St. Chad's, the redbrick tower of the modern market hall, the spires of St. Mary the Virgin and St. Alkmund's, and the tower of St. Julian's. St. Chad's was built by George Steuart in the 1790s. St. Mary the Virgin has some exceptionally fine late-mediaeval stained glass  The Abbey is off the picture to the right.

Between St.Chad's and the river is a particularly charming place: a formal garden in in old quarry, known as the Dingle.

The centre of the town is The Square, with its mediaeval market hall.

This is the old Grammar School, built in the early 17th century; now the town library. The statue in front is Charles Darwin, the school's most famous former pupil. Others include the Elizabethan poet-statesman Sir Philip Sidney, and, less happily, the dreaded Judge Jeffreys from James II's reign.

    (See also: a later post on Shrewsbury's black and white buildings)

A Third World Slum

In 1984 I went on a trip to the Soviet Union, which as well as taking us to Moscow and Leningrad also included crossing the Caucasus mountains down to Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. I have written a full account of the trip on an earlier blog entry, and I want to focus here on just one aspect.

 In Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, I had my first and only experience of observing an actual Third World slum. We were amazed to find that our hotel, which was a very large new building, backed onto a slum; a revolting area of little cabins made of bits of board and corrugated iron, packed together all higgledy-piggledy and housing several hundred people. There were television aerials and even a few cars amidst the squalor, but I also saw large rats foraging in broad daylight.

These are a couple of photos I took from the hotel, one being the view from my room.

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Apart from the slums, there were few old buildings in Yerevan. The pride of the city was clearly the new football stadium just down the road from our hotel: the home of Yerevan Ararat, one of the best teams in the USSR.
      It was the sight of the slums in Yerevan which sparked off the most discussion in our party. The whole lot could have been cleared away for the cost of building our hotel, and the new football stadium must have cost millions. So why were the slums still there? Of course, it is likely that before the war Yerevan was ALL slum, and that the rehousing done so far was actually an impressive achievement. I suspected there just weren’t enough civil engineers in the Soviet Union assigned to such projects. The building sites we saw in the other trans-Caucasian cities, Tbilisi and Baku, were primitive operations which would have horrified any British bricklayer. There were no wheelbarrows on site, the scaffolding looked most unsafe, and some of the ladders were just bits of wood nailed together. We were all surprised that the authorities had given so little thought as to what the tourists would make of the squalor staring them in the face.

 I was saddened how fast the tourists fell into an entirely patronising attitude towards the slum-dwellers, on the general theme of, “Well, we wouldn’t like to live there, but the people seem happy enough, and they probably prefer it to living in blocks of flats”. (this view, interestingly enough, was expressed in these very words by an East German.) Judging by the extreme grottiness of the flats we saw under construction, I could understand people not wanting to live in them, but those slums were a plain and simple health hazard, and should have gone long ago. Besides, refraining from demolishing slums on the grounds that the inhabitants still want to live in them was hardly the approach one would expect from the Soviet planning authorities! I was more convinced than ever that the Soviet Union was a very inefficiently run country, still escaping from ancestral poverty and backwardness, and that trying to conceal this not-too-disgraceful fact was the cause of a great deal of pretense and dishonesty. Long before the end of the tour, we were starting to laugh at the latest display of incompetence, though a French lady in the group kept exclaiming “Oh! What a country!” in a tone of despair.

The Soviet Union disintegrated six years after our visit. Perhaps our experiences should have led us to anticipate this, but we proved no more prescient than the professional commentators. Whether the collapse of the U.S.S.R. really benefited the Caucasus and Trans-Caucasus might be questioned, because there has been endemic warfare there ever since. Whether the Yerevan slums are still there, I do not know.

Admiral Benbow

John Benbow was born in March 1653 at Coton Hill in Shropshire, a village which is now a suburb of Shrewsbury. His father, who seems to have been a tanner, died when he was still young.
    Benbow joined the navy at the age of 25. In those days, the navy was one of the few institutions in which a man from humble origins could rise to a position of wealth and importance; especially when there was fighting to be done, which was the case during his career.

He quickly saw action in the Mediterranean in 1678-81, when Admiral Herbert led attacks on the corsairs operating out of the ports on the coast of Algeria: the notorious "Barbary Shore". These corsairs were a serious threat: they had in the past raided as far as Cornwall, and kidnapped whole villages to sell as slaves. The campaign was successful, but disputes over prize-money led to Benbow transferring to the merchant service for the next few years. But the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688-9, which brought William of Orange to the throne, quickly led to war with France, and he returned to the Royal Navy. He was appointed captain of HMS "Sovereign",and later promoted to Rear-Admiral, and then to Vice-Admiral. He took part in the naval battles at Beachy Head, Barfleur and La Hogue, and in raids on St. Malo, Dunkirk and Calais; and his courage and tactical skill were noted and admired. It was in this war that the British navy established a supremacy over the French which was never subsequently lost.

When peace was eventually signed, Benbow was sent to American waters, to protect trading vessels against piracy. But within a few years, it became clear that hostilities with France were about to resume. This would become known to history as the War of the Spanish Succession, and may justifiably be considered as the first-ever world war, with fighting not only in Europe but also across the Atlantic. In 1702, in anticipation of this, King William dispatched Benbow in command of a small fleet to the West Indies. There in mid-August he fought a running battle of several days against a French squadron under Admiral Jean du Casse. But some of Benbow's captains, led by Richard Kirkby, apparently refused to follow orders, and the action proved indecisive. The British ships which did go into combat were outnumbered, and some sustained heavy damage. Benbow's leg was shattered by chain-shot. He was determined to continue the fight, but to his fury Kirkby and other captains refused. The squadron had to return to Jamaica, where Benbow ordered the arrest of the captains, branding them cowards and traitors.

    In a development which seems extraordinary nowadays, Benbow received a letter from du Casse, acknowledging that Benbow ought to have won the battle, adding, "As for those cowardly captains who deserted you, hang them up, for by God they deserve it". Was this a case of a chivalrous relationship between commanders, or was du Casse simply trying to stir up trouble?

 Benbow died of his wounds in Jamaica on November 4th. His tombstone, with an appropriate inscription, is in St. Andrew's church, Kingston. Captains Kirkby and Wade were tried by court-martial for cowardice and disobedience of orders, and condemned to death. They were shot on board HMS "Bristol" in Plymouth on April 16th 1703. Others of Benbow's captains were also convicted, but were later pardoned.

Benbow quickly became a popular hero. One would have thought that a commander who could not persuade his subordinates to follow orders had failed in the most fundamental way, but it was Benbow's final disaster rather than his earlier successes which inspired the balladeer:-

"Come all ye sailors bold, and draw near, and draw near,
And listen to my lay without fear.
It is of an Admiral's fame
Great Benbow was his name,
How he fought out on the main
Ye shall hear, ye shall hear.

Brave Benbow he set sail for to fight, for to fight,
Until Du Casse's ships they came in sight.
Brave Benbow he set sail
In a fine and pleasant gale
But his captains they turned tail
In a fright, in a fright

Said Kirkby unto Wade, We shall run, we shall run,
Said Kirkby unto Wade, We shall run,
For I value not disgrace
Or the saving of my face,
but the French I dare not face
Or his gun, or his gun"

            -  and so on for several more verses.

Those who know that great classic adventure story "Treasure Island" may recall that the first chapter opens with Billy Bones, First Mate to the legendary pirate Captain Flint, turning up at the inn called the "Admiral Benbow" and living in fear of encountering a mysterious seafaring man who has lost a leg (Long John Silver, of course!)

   Benbow remains well-known in his native Shrewsbury, with a memorial tablet in the church of St. Mary the Virgin

and a pub named after him (though I don't think he would have worn this kind of wig).

There has been a move to erect a statue of him in the town, though so far without result.