HISTORY ZONE: Autobiographical fragments

Autobiographical Fragments: Why medieval?

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 21:40:16 GMT

You may well ask why I have started to include blogs on the Normans and, later, more general materials on medieval history. Well, largely because I was trained primarily as a medieval historian and I returned to it at various times in my teaching career. This despite the fact that all my published works and much of my research has been based on modern history and politics. Perhaps because I came from a village five miles north of Ely and travelled past the wonderful octagon every day on my way to school I always felt a close link to the medieval past. Perhaps it's because the teaching of medieval history at Reading when I was there was perhaps the best in the country...well at least that's what I believe. Perhaps because medieval history, since it relies on the interpretation of limited sources often in Latin, proved a good grounding in evidential analysis for modern history. Finally, of course, the curriculum in secondary schools places little emphasis on medieval history or at least did until the National Curriculum made it more a part of our national heritage.

In the 'new' Europe, having an understanding of medieval history is essential. The first European Union was the medieval notion of Christendom and the empire of Charlemagne. Although we place great emphasis on the importance of the Roman past in our heritage, it is our medieval past that should have greater resonance today in both positive and negative senses. It was a time of mass migrations as peoples moved in search of security, wealth, land and prosperity. This had its downside as existing inhabitants of land were either pushed aside or integrated with the new peoples and their customs. Later, it was a period of expansive Christian colonialism as land hunger and evangelistic and aggressive faith sought new lands through crusading ventures inside Europe and beyond; today revived in disastrous venture in Iraq and elsewhere. We daily see the results of medieval building and use the ideas of medieval thinkers who grappled with many of the problems of political and social philosophy that we still ponder. Just as we seek to resolve the impact of global warming, so medieval people too faced the vagaries of the weather and the ever-present threat of famine and disease. My point is that many of the problems were face today, were faced by people living across the millennium.

If it is true that unless we learn from what has happened then we are condemned to continually repeating the mistakes of the past, then examining medieval history is something that is important to us all.

Autobiographical Fragments: On Writing

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 09:29:28 GMT

I've always enjoyed writing, ever since I was in primary school. It always seemed the logical outcome of my researches as well as a means of getting my ideas and opinions into the public domain. I've never subscribed to the view that you need to get your research absolutely finalised before you put pen to paper (or in these days, fingers to keyboard). I remember meeting the medieval historian Macfarlane not long before he died in the mid 1960s when I was at a conference for grammar school students at Oxford on History. I'd read a couple of his articles, courtesy of Bill Rennison and asked him why he'd never produced the book he'd promised in those elegant papers. 'I just need to look at a few more sources and then I can get down to it', he said but, of course, he never did. I doubt whether, even had he not died, he would ever have done so...he wanted to produce the definitive book on the fifteenth century. So all we have are his essays but, good as they still are, we were never treated to a longer and more detailed analysis. Even if your ideas are wrong or need to take account of this source or that, it's always seemed better to get your work out and then, as a result of comments and criticism, modify your thinking and move on. Writing about history is always tentative and though I'd like to produce the definitive study on some aspect of the past I know I never will.

For those of us who spend our lives doing this type of research and writing (I was going to use the word ‘choose’ but then I’ve never felt I had a choice), there are somewhat contradictory feelings in doing what we do. On the one hand, there is an intense joy in doing the research and writing about things hopefully from a different perspective to others. On the other, there is a sense of sadness in knowing that we will never complete our project and that ultimately what we do will always be tentative, a chimera and pallid reflection of reality.

Autobiographical Fragments: Into the Classroom

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:14:29 GMT

5th September 1972...my classes arrived for the first time. There was the nerve-racking reading of the list of names in the school hall in front of 300 students...did I get the names right? Probably not. Then back to the classroom that was both my teaching bases and tutor room. It was a Year 10 class..or 4th Year as it was before the National Curriculum reared its head. Lots of rather resentful faces since they were first year that couldn't leave at 15, it being the process known as ROSLA (raising of the school leaving age)...I was told rather bluntly by three of them that they'd hoped this was going to be their final year, so loads of potential problems there then. I had the morning with them. It seemed a very long time but actually went remarkably quickly. Fortunately there were two things that took up a lot of the time. First, in the days before handing out individual printed timetables, there was the process of dictating the timetable. I quickly learned that it was better for students to do this on a piece of rough paper and then copy it on to the timetable template. With a tutor group of thirty-five students, this could take up to two hours. You first had to provide the students with information about the sets they were in, generally only for English and Maths, and then sort out which Foreign Language(s) they were doing. Then it was a case of going through each lesson (40 in all) one by one making sure that they had the right group, right room and right teacher...and, in my experience, there were always problems and little point in hoping that the student had the solution. Once that was done, it was a case of copying, something many students were not very good at. I soon learned to tell students to keep both the timetable and the draft until one cycle of the timetable had been completed just in case they'd copied thing incorrectly. Yet, the first time I did this, it went remarkably well, don't ask me why!! Secondly, there was the obligatory tour of the school. Most of the students, especially those from the secondary moderns knew more than I did...the new school was in their old buildings so that's not surprising. To say it was organised chaos is an understatement ... hundreds of students wandering round the school trying to find where things were but we survived and out of that unintended chaos came some sense of group solidarity, of needing to help each other find their way to A13 or D25.

What about the tutor group itself? An interesting bunch. They say you never forget your first classes and they're right. Thirty-five students split roughly evenly boys and girls; twenty-five from secondary moderns and ten from the grammar school; seven students were from secondary moderns outside Bury as we bused students in from about a fifteen miles radius. Several stick in the mind: Anthony who spent most of his life outside school stealing mopeds (more on him later), Fiona, a rather listless but mature girl who later became pregnant; Dougie, a forthright and very bright student...and so on. They were a cross-section of Suffolk's society, some from working class backgrounds, others with middle class aspirations...most had both parents. Yet they soon gelled as a group and were very supportive of each other and of me as a new teacher. I've always considered my role as a tutor as being there to 'protect' my students against others whether parents, other students or teachers..as I remember saying on that first day, 'if there's a problem I want to know about it first. I don't want someone else telling me.' This seemed a good idea at the time but had it's downsides. About two months into the term, Fiona asked to speak to me and said she was pregnant but she didn't want me to tell anyone. 'Who else knows?' 'You and my doctor.' I then told her I had to tell the head of year...imagine the situation when it becomes obvious and your parents ask who knows and you say my doctor and Mr Brown...Fortunately, Fiona's parents were very supportive and having Justin gave her life a focus it had previously lacked. I was surprised when asked to be one of his god-parents; it doesn't happen that often to teachers for students. Thirty-five years on, she's married with two more children and a very successful businesswoman...and Justin...he went into teaching, though not History. This seemed to set a trend and over the years I seemed to get the students who had already had children or were pregnant...and they all proved very successful in whatever they did.

So having dealt with my tutor group for the first time...as the afternoon began, I started teaching.

Autobiographical Fragments: Finally into school!

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 23:41:09 GMT

Bury St Edmunds is about twenty miles from my home in Cambridgeshire but, as I was at that time without a car, commuting while living at home was out of the question. Mark you, after four years in Reading, the prospect of living at home did not fill me with glee. Yes, there were advantages but having tasted the freedom of living in a flat on my own, it was something I was not prepared to contemplate. Still, having finished at Reading I had little option but to return home for the summer and hope I could get a flat in Bury as soon as possible. I still had lots of contacts in the area and access to the family car most evenings so I was looking forward to a good summer before entering the classroom.

For the last time, there was the summer job to find. Without some ready cash for September I was either going to have to borrow from my parents (and I now valued my independence sufficiently not to want to do this) or get a job. I'd planned to work for about a month and then get down to planning lessons. I already had a good idea of the classes I was teaching though in those days teacher induction simply meant turning up on the day! Dad was able to get me a job at a plastics factory in Ely; shift work but it paid well by the standards of the time £40 a week (in fact more than I first earned as a teacher). It was perhaps the most boring summer job I ever did and that's saying something having spent a month when I was in the sixth form counting pamphlets!! The first two weeks were fine but the week when I was on the night shift was a disaster. I expected to be working but most of the rest of the workforce were sleeping! It all came to a head on the Friday evening, the last night on that shift. I was lucky enough to get two tickets for a concert at Ely Cathedral and as it finished at 9.30 I still had time to get to work. Sir John Barbarolli was conducting and the programme included some Vaughan Williams and Brahms, both of whom I've always enjoyed. So great concert and great company (a philosophy student from Ely who I'd known for years; she was always good company when we were both down from uni). Then to work...foreman 'you'll be operating one of the plastic-making machines tonight' 'I've no idea how to do that'....'You're educated, you've got a degree.' 'Yes but...in history not plastic making' 'Don't worry, it's easy, you'll soon pick it up'. Catastrophe! I managed to break a £50,000 machine, I suspect irreparably...I don't know because at about three o'clock I walked out and never returned except to get my wages from a none-too-pleased manager who found my explanation incomprehensible....'even an idiot can operate that machine.' Well, I remember saying 'well meet the idiot who can't.'! In many respects, this became a liet-motif for me as far as technology and do-it-yourself was concerned...if it's broke, don't fix it find someone who can!

Finding somewhere to live in Bury Sr Edmunds proved difficult. There were no flats available that I could afford and so I had to plump for a bedsit. It was an interesting room! The width of the room was the bed and the door, so about ten feet and the length about eight feet...I could sit on the bed and have a wash in the miniscule wash-basin. But I managed to get in a small table, a bookshelf and a few crucial books and a very small television. From the window I could see the school's main entrance and it took about three minutes to amble slowly down Grove Road into school each day. I lived (and the word is relative) in the room for six weeks before getting a studio-flat in the middle of the town that was actually cheaper to rent than the bedsit. Still, it was somewhere to live.

As King Edward VI was a new school combining two secondary moderns and the grammar school, the first three days were spent acclimatising everyone to the new situation. A good move by the dynamic and sadly short-lived head Mark Pullen: he tragically died not long after I left the school. There were lots of tensions in the school to begin with especially as people who had held positions of responsibility in the previous three schools had not always retained them in the new establishment. Some staff had presumably left or retired but many had not. So the History department consisted of five very different people: Don Hunt, the previous head of History and Chris Daniels from the grammar school, Bev Labbett from the boys' secondary modern, Monica Place from the girls' secondary modern and now Head of History and myself. It was, however, one of the happiest departments in the school and what tensions there must have been rarely surfaced largely because of Monica's knack of getting on with everyone. It was great preparation for when I led my own departments.

Those opening three days were memorable for three things. First, the welcome in the department. Secondly, the fact that twenty-five of the teachers were, like me, just starting out on their careers. With 1300 students and a staff of over a hundred, we made up a substantial proportion of the staff. Thirdly, there was a meeting of all new staff at the end of the first day scheduled to last ninety minutes led by Edgar Bignell, one of the deputies who had been teaching since the early 1950s. He clearly didn't really want to run the session and I suspect that after a day of meetings most of us didn't want to be there either. He gave one piece of advice I have never forgotten and then called the meeting to a close: 'remember, if you think you have a class of absolute little bastards in front of you, you'll never be disappointed.' It was perhaps the best advice I was ever given. Whether you like it or not, you will only ever succeed with some of your students. Yes, it will be the overwhelming majority but with a very small number in my experience, no matter what you do, you will not succeed...and you just have to hope that someone else will.

It was with some trepidation that I went to school on the Thursday morning...it was the first day the students were in and my first day with both a tutor group and classes to teach.

Autobiographical Fragments: Training for teaching

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 10:40:12 GMT

Although I had already spent some time teaching in London while I was doing my degree, entering the profession was not my first choice. Given the opportunity, I think I would have preferred research but it was not to be...at least not then. Deciding to remain at Reading to do the PGCE was a decision determined by laziness as much as anything else. I had been happy there fore my degree and most of my friends remained and there seemed little point in going somewhere else for nine months. Also, for the first time I was going to have to be self-sufficient, no longer in halls of residence but in a flat (a little pompous of me as it was a large room with a bathroom round the corner) half-way between the Whiteknights and London Road sites. But it was home for nine months or at least a base in Reading as I spent a lot of time in London. I'd always enjoyed cooking and I was surprised that many of my peers either didn't know how to cook at all. I remember an incident when I first went to university of being invited to a friend's for tea but she had no idea how to brew it: the butler had always done this at home!

The summer was spent preparing for the course using the short, but pithy reading list to get some idea about what was involved and spending a week in a primary school. This proved an interesting experience if only because I succeeded in falling over some of the children twice! Though I've never wanted to teach young children and spent all my teaching career in 13-18 schools, that week taught me one thing that I have never forgotten: the importance of story. Watching young children devour the daily story and seeing their obvious enjoyment from a tale well told proved invaluable. Since then, I've always tried to enliven history lessons not with the somewhat mechanical analysis of sources but by stories from the past. It gets students interested and helps motivate them and they always remember a good story, well told. I also learned...and this is almost a heresy today...that allowing students to take you off in directions you'd not planned for is perhaps the best way of getting them to learn. You have to have the confidence as a teaching to throw away the teaching plan when students get their teeth into something in which they're interested.

Term did not start until early October and the schedule was hardly frenetic unlike the ways in which initial teacher training works today so you have lots of time to think about the job. There were three lectures a week on the history, sociology and psychology of education and two three hour subject based seminars. Teaching experience was confined to the whole of the second term. Assessment was based on three extended essays and reports from teaching practice. I was fortunate to have in Ray Davis a subject tutor of considerable flair, something cut short by his premature death in the late 1980s. Ray was one of those individuals whose memory remains fresh throughout your life. He was quiet but inherently interesting and a teacher of remarkable ability. I learned more from him than anyone else on the course; in fact within a few weeks his were the only sessions I bothered to go to spending much of the week in London and coming up to Reading for his two sessions on Mondays and Thursdays and his lecture on the history of education on the Friday morning. Writing the extended essays proved an interesting experience. The philosophy paper was on the development of western political philosophy (something I'd done as part of my degree) so it was simply a case of rethinking and recasting ideas that I'd already explored. The history essay was on education 1914-1928 and was a piece of fairly original research. However, it was the paper I did on sixteenth century education theory focusing on the writings of Jean Bodin and Guilleme Bude that proved the most challenging and the most interesting. The problem was that my supervisor for this freely admitted that he knew nothing about the subject and showed little inclination to find out! His 'help' was therefore minimal and much of the work was done on my own.

I have never quite understood why I ended up a Bracknell FE College to do my teaching practice. Still, I couldn't complain as I did not teach until 2.30 on the Monday and the most of Tuesday and Wednesday finishing by 10.00 on the Thursday. When I asked my college supervisor what I should be doing for the remainder of the time, she basically said I should go home. At least it gave me the opportunity of teaching at my uncle's school in London on the Friday and getting paid! I suggested some observation but was told that would be difficult as most teachers didn't like this. It proved an interesting eight weeks. In addition to teaching History, I taught English to a class of largely female hairdressers. I remember asking them what a metaphor was to be told (I never worked out whether this was wit or ignorance), 'it's something my mother's going through'! Ray came to see me on several occasions arriving just before lunch so we could then go to a local hostelry for feedback and refreshment. Passing the teaching practice never posed a major problem though I doubt whether I learned much from the experience.

The final term was brief lasting six weeks and was really about tying up loose ends and completing any assignments for final assessment. Some of my colleagues had already fallen. One I remember wasn't sure whether she wanted to teach Art or not and her teaching practice was so bad that an external moderator was brought it to see whether she should pass at all. She chose to do a lesson in which the students produced printing blocks...bad choice! One of the students promptly cut himself badly and with blood gushing all over the place, she fainted...she never went back into a classroom again. Several others decided that they didn't want to teach at all despite their initial enthusiasm...it wasn't what they expected or they found discipline an issue. I've always thought they made the right decision. Teaching is not for everyone and even if you want to teach, it doesn't mean that you can. There is nothing worse that doing something you simply don't enjoy and job satisfaction is as important in teaching as any other job...long holidays are not enough. Later, when I was involved in mentoring students in the 1980s I remember telling one prospective teaching that she would be better doing something else...she was not surprisingly very upset but it was the right decision. She went into law and ended up as one of the most able corporate lawyers in the country; so much so that when we meet and have a meal I let her pay!!! Well, not always!

The final term was also about getting a job. In 1972, there was a surfeit of teachers and so considerable competition for every post. I'd enjoyed my four years in Reading and hoped to teach in the town or in its immediate vicinity. So I started scouring the Times Educational Supplement for jobs and applied for one in Reading and was called for interview. It proved a salutary experience. Arriving, I found three other candidates all on my course and we were then told there were two jobs not one. Great I thought...I'm the only male candidate and they're certain to appoint me...wrong. Returning to the TES, I applied for a job at a new school in Bury St Edmund's, well I say new school, in fact the county was going comprehensive and the local grammar school and the boys' and girls's secondary moderns were being amalgamated. This time I was far less confident but being local (relatively) actually helped and I got the job. It was now simply a case of finding somewhere to live and beginning to teach.

Autobiographical Fragments: Towards teaching

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 08:03:51 GMT

The remaining two years of my degree course was spent focused on history. My experience in the first year of the course pushed me towards medieval rather than modern history. It was certainly where I felt the best teachers lay. This was combined with choosing either a British or European-based course. I went for the four paper British course plus the early medieval European one plus the compulsory History theory paper. This left me with two additional units to choose (medieval social and economic history and political theory) plus a special subject, which counted as two units, on the Normans in southern Italy in the eleventh century. Paddy taught the early medieval unit and the ancient and medieval sections of political theory plus the special subject. Anne taught the early modern British paper plus the remainder of political theory. And so it began again.

One of the major differences between the first year of the degree course and the remainder was the significant reduction in lectures and seminars (though these often went on far two hours rather than one and with much smaller groups). There were no attendance registers and as long as you handed in the work (for some students very occasional essays) you were left largely on your own. University education in the late 60s and early 70s did not have the intensity that it appears to have today. You were allowed, almost encouraged to get out of a degree course want you wanted and if this did not entail a great deal of work then your final degree would inevitably be at a lower level. The drop-out rate was low as a consequence. University was an ‘experience’ not simply a target to be achieved, a tick on the inevitable individual action plan. In those two years, I became a historian, at least a very junior one. Being a historian, I was once told by a venerable Oxford don, is a lifetime quest and that historians are like good wine, they mature with age!

Those two years, like the two I spent over a decade later at Cambridge doing my M.Phil and the national research project on history teaching, were among the most enjoyable years of my life. The work did not generally prove too taxing and left ample time for reading, writing and discussion. Most of the lectures were good; the seminars stimulating and the company affable. However, it was the time I spent with Paddy and three other students doing the special subject on the Normans that was most memorable and that taught me most. Paddy’s approach was eccentric even by the standards of the day. The five of us met every Wednesday for two years beginning at 10.00 in the morning with a session spent translating this source or that. My Latin was sound, my Greek weak and my Norman French yet weaker. I always deplore my ignorance of language beyond the basics and still, when translating have recourse to dictionaries for even the simplest words. Around 11.30 we would stop for coffee and croissants, followed by another session of translation. Lunch was around one and lasted on and off until three. The remainder of the afternoon and early evening was spent discussing and debating the translations done previously. At 6.30, we adjourned to Paddy’s flat for dinner (she was a superb cook) and the discussions continued interlaced with copious quantities of alcohol generally into the early hours. It really was a hard life as a student!

Paddy’s approach to history has played a major part in my own development as a historian. She laid emphasis on three things. First, historians needed the mind of a surgeon dissecting sources, whether primary or secondary, as the only real way of coming to any understanding of the past. Secondly, historians must know how to write and express their ideas in ways that are accessible to people, whether fellow historians or the public at large. Finally, historians have a public responsibility to place the present in the context of the past: one of her favourite quotation was ‘those who fail to learn the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them in the present or future’. To be a historian, she said, places an enormous burden on the individual. It is not enough simply to tell the story, no matter how important that is. She was not an individual who believed in ‘history for its own sake’.

Talking to her about my future played an important part as I considered the options open to me as I headed to wards the end of the courses in the spring of 1971. What I wanted to do was very clear; I wanted to do something with History. Precisely what was more problematic. I quickly dismissed one option, working in archives. Though I enjoyed this type of work especially translating and editing material, it struck me that this would not necessarily involve much contact with the public. In the early 1970s, record offices were far less open in their approach to society at large than they are today. Family history was in its infancy and few could have predicted its massive growth in the 1990s. Archivists were seen as ‘dry’, their lives spent surrounded by dusty manuscripts and books. This was not for me. Research was a possibility. Paddy certainly saw me doing research on southern Italy, then a barely touched subject in British universities and I went so far as to produce a proposal for research in the Amalfi archives on the relationship between Lombard and Norman feudal land tenure. There were two problems. First, there were financial constraints. My parents had been extremely generous in my three degree years and although I had worked for a significant part of each vacation, I did not feel I could ask them for more help. Yes, there were government grants but even with one it would have been difficult, though not impossible to make ends meet. Then there was the problem of getting a university post in medieval history. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly was the indifference (or even opposition) of Jim Holt who I’d upset earlier in the year when I chaired the joint staff-student committee. Holt was a curriculum progressive and wanted to change the departmental curriculum and the committee was given the job of coming up with a workable solution. This took three months of fairly strenuous work looking at other universities in Britain and elsewhere to see what they were doing and then coming up with a workable proposal. This we did. Discussions among students and staff showed that it had a wide degree of support. But Holt didn’t like it, perhaps because it would have reduced the compulsory medieval element of the course and rejected it out of hand, with no satisfactory explanation. I was not the only one who was furious but he had a long memory and effectively blocked my proposal despite Paddy’s vociferous lobbying. Perhaps he did me a favour as it pushed me towards my third option, teaching.

So by the summer of 1971, I had my degree and was about to start on a PGCE History course at Reading. I decided to stay there because most of my friends were still there; some also following PGCE courses though not in history. I’d already had some experience teaching in both my mother’s and uncle’s schools (going to London for a couple of days a week in the second and third years of my degree course and teaching was a good way of re-establishing my finances) but could I also be a historian as well as teach? Was teaching a good stand-by until something more to my liking came up?

Autobiographical Fragments: To university

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 08:41:02 GMT

I arrived at university at just the right time! Student politics were in the air and Reading was an important centre of radical protest at least from 1968 through to 1971. I knew several of the older students because of my involvement in the Vietnam demonstrations. I suppose I had a choice in my three years studying history: I could either focus on developing student autonomy at the university or I could concentrate on the history. Though I was involved in protests about grants and about giving students a greater say in the university, I tended to concentrate more on the writing and research than on the political life. History at Reading in the late 60s was dominated by two contrasting heavyweights: J.C. ‘Jim’ Holt, a formidable medieval historian later ironically Master of Emmanuel and Hugh now Lord Thomas, a modern historian who had just completed his magnum opus on Cuba. Medieval history was strong at the university largely because of the legacy of the medievalist Sir Frank Stenton, Holt’s predecessor though Thomas was beginning to make headway with the development of a strong modern element within the department. In the first two terms at Reading students take three subjects: I chose History, English and Politics, three intensive courses.

All three courses were well taught and opened up areas that I had not really examined before. The English course concentrated on modern writers like E.M. Forster[1], D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf as well as poets such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. The lectures were poor but the seminars electrifying especially if you were lucky enough to have Professor Bell, an eccentric almost adolescent scholar. Politics was better taught. The lectures, especially Leonard Schapiro on Russian government were excellent though the weekly seminars with Les Holden seemed more concerned with him publicising his new book on democracy than with broader political issues. By contrast, lectures and seminars in History were almost all excellent and brought me into contact with the two individuals who were to play a seminal role in the next three years: Patricia McNulty and Anne Pallister[2]. Paddy was a medievalist and Anne specialised in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and modern political theory. My personal tutor, Brian Kemp[3] another medievalist, had virtually no impact on me at all and his termly meetings were marked by their shortness. As I had few problems I suppose he rightly felt I didn’t need much of his time!

The first two terms of History were based round two themes: two units on historiography and a broad overview covering European history from 500-1789. Jim Holt’s opening lectures on the nature of history was terrifying for many students especially as he had the habit of pausing and asking questions. More interesting were the seminars on historiography. I opted to do modules on King Arthur and on George III. Dr Cyril Slade[4], who had interviewed me for a place at Reading two years earlier, taught the unit on King Arthur. It was my first real experience of medieval history since my first year at grammar school and, although his approach could hardly be called riveting, he did introduce me to the problems posed by medieval historiography and instilled an interest in the enigmatic figure of Arthur. Tony Smith[5] taught the unit on the historiography of George III. Butterfield’s seminal study of this subject had been published in the 1950s and I was fortunate to already have a copy of his book George III and the Historians. This proved invaluable as Tony used large sections from it, with which he often disagreed, as the basis for the work. His approach was more clinical that Slade’s, dissecting the sources with precision and a considerable degree of wit. It was how he read the sources, how he drew information and ideas from them and how to write that proved the greatest influence on my thinking. You couldn’t call his seminars ‘fun’. I remember him describing one of the papers I gave as ‘rather like a bridge over a deep gorge, safe but unsteady’. But I probably learned more about being a historian from him than from Dr Slade.

The overview course was taught by four historians: Paddy McNulty, Angus MacKay, Anne Pallister and Olwen Hufton. It covered the major developments in European history from the end of the Roman Empire until the French Revolution. As an introductory course for a degree, I think it was of immense value raising (and in some cases beginning to answer) questions that would play a major part in the remainder of the degree course. It was largely source-based, unusual at that time, and was based round a weekly lecture and parallel seminar. I was fortunate to be in Paddy’s group for the seminars. Her approach was broad bringing in areas not covered in the lectures or the sources. She was one of the best teachers I had at university and, it was not surprising that in the second and third years of the degree I took all the courses she taught. At Reading, there are still examinations at the end of two terms on the three subjects taken. These first university examinations, taken in May, allow students finally to choose their degree course. This always struck me as a good idea and subsequently I had several students who went to Reading to read a particular subject only to change to an alternative course as a result of the first two term’s experience. Although I did well in all three subjects and could have pursued any, there was no real choice for me.

[1] I studied Forster’s best novel A Passage to India at school with Bob Hanworth, a superb teacher and writer. He always encouraged his students to explore culture in its broadest sense and frequently took parties of students to the Arts Cinema or the theatre in Cambridge. It was after a visit to see Nureyev and Fontaine in Prokofiev’s He always encouraged his students to explore culture in its broadest sense and frequently took parties of students to the Arts Cinema or the theatre in Cambridge. It was after a visit to see Nureyev and Fontaine in Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet when we were returning to his car that he dashed across the road to talk to a tramp-like figure who was wending his way down Sidney Sussex Street. It turned out to be Forster, who had taught Bob when he was at Cambridge. We were all invited back to his room for supper. In retrospect, I can think of so many questions that I would have liked to ask Foster about writing; at the time I could think of precious few but spent two hours or so listening to him talking about writing novels and his unpublished works.

[2] Anne was putting the final touches to her Magna Carta: The Heritage of Liberty published by Clarendon Press in 1971. Always to my mind rather delicate, twenty years later, she tragically committed suicide.

[3] Brian Kemp, who was later Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at Reading is primarily a medieval church historian and has produced importance editions of Reading Abbey Cartularies, Camden 4^th Series, volume 31, two volumes, 1986 English Episcopal Acta : Salisbury 1217-1228, English Episcopal Acta Series, volume 19, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2000 and Twelfth-Century English Archidiaconal and Vice-Archidiaconal Acta,

[4] C.F. Slade was a medievalist who produced two important works as editor: C.F. Slade and G. Lambrick (eds.) Two Cartularies of Abingdon Abbey, Oxford Historical Society, New Series, volume xxxii, two volumes, 1965 and Patricia M. Barnes and C.F. Slade (eds.) A Medieval Miscellany for Doris Mary Stenton, The Pipe Roll Society, volume lxxiv, London, 1962.

[5] E. Anthony Smith was already a well-establish modern British historian by the mid-1960s. With A. Aspinall, he had edited English Historical Documents, volume 11: 1783 – 1832, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1959. He later married Anne Pallister and became Professor of Modern History at Reading. In retirement, he has written important studies of the Reform Act crisis and on the Queen Caroline affair.

Autobiographical Fragments: A Level

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 07:57:46 GMT

Advanced Level was grounded in studying the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Britain and Europe with a special subject on the reign of Charles II. All the reading I’d done in the years before this paid off and I found an increasing pleasure in examining the complexities of the period. The focus may have been on the political and diplomatic, a characteristic of much school history at this time but, for the first time there was a detailed examination of the social, economic, cultural and ideological dimensions of the past. This, combined with a heightened awareness of history as a discipline and as a set of ideas and methods made these three years a period of self-exploration and personal historical development. I especially enjoyed the depth study of Charles II and remember giving class papers on the personality of Charles II and the political development of the Cabal, the governing group from 1667 until 1672, both lasting over two hours each. The school library had copies of the relevant State Papers that proved an invaluable source of information and ideas.

The years in the sixth form saw an increasingly organisational role for me in the school. A prefect in 1965-66, I was Head Boy in 1966-67 and, in my third year in the sixth the leading student in the school (you could not be Head Boy for more than a year). All these roles meant that the Head expected you to take on a more active part in the organisation of the school especially in pupil discipline, an area left almost entirely to senior students. If a teacher was having problems with pupils lower down the school, the Head expected the senior prefects to sort out the problem. One example of this will suffice. A new and rather young Geography teacher was having difficulties with a second year class and the Head asked the prefects to deal with this. The teacher was asked not to go to the lesson for the first ten minutes of the next lesson and the senior prefects, accompanied by the school’s senior rugby team then went into the class and ‘instructed’ the pupils about correct behaviour. There were no further problems. The methods used would have been completely unacceptable today but, in the context of the mid-1960s were not only acceptable but encouraged.

What I would do beyond school was taken as read by the Head. My only careers interview, with Mr Tabraham lasted about twenty seconds: “You’re going to university.” “Yes.” “Which Cambridge college?” “Emmanuel.” “That’s fine”. It was assumed I would be going to Oxbridge: I had spent a few days at Emmanuel at a History conference in the lower sixth and had enjoyed the college atmosphere. In those days, Cambridge entrance tended to occur after a third year in the sixth form after an entrance examination. I had the interview with Peter Hunter-Blair, an Anglo-Saxon historian in the December of 1967. I already had an unconditional offer from Reading so there really was no pressure at all. The interview went well, at least to begin with and then he began to ask questions about Cromwell. Though Cromwell was part of the syllabus, I had done little real work on him and tried to turn the questions on to Charles II. After about five minutes, the interviewer suggested, quite rightly that I wasn’t really addressing the questions. I agreed but added that I did not know much about Cromwell and was happier talking about Charles. He then asked what I saw the function of an interview as. My reply was that it was to show what I knew, not what I did not know, adding that this was significant. The interview continued. I wasn’t confident that I’d performed at my best and was prepared for rejection.

The following morning as I came up the school drive, the head beckoned me to his study. This wasn’t unusual and I thought he might want to ask me how the interview went, which he did. Apparently, Emmanuel’s admission tutor had called the school to inform the head that I had been offered an unconditional place but that commented that I had been rather rude in the interview. My conception of a free and frank discussion had gone too far, he told the head. I was appalled and my liking for Emmanuel evaporated almost immediately and I told the head that I intended to turn the offer down if that was their attitude to academic freedom! I should sleep on it, the head responded. Time did not alter my view and the following day I confirmed my earlier judgement to the head. He thought, probably rightly that I was being too sensitive (or pig-headed) but it is a decision that I have never regretted. Reading was, for me, at that time the right university to go to. Only later, did I return to Cambridge to do my M.Phil. There followed two terms at school with no pressures and it was then that I really got the writing bug. Reading awaited and I was able to read and write with a freedom that I have rarely had since. I suppose I should have left school and got a job for six months or so but having time to write and do a bit of teaching to the sixth form was a far better preparation for what was to follow. In those months, I was able to prepare for university.

Autobiographical Fragments: Towards A Level

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 23:32:46 GMT

At the beginning of the third year, history was taught by Bill Rennison[1]: the Tudors and Stuarts and then British and European history 1815-1945 for O Level. He was a hard task-master and a stickler for detail and we argued continuously about history and politics from then until he moved to Tewkesbury Grammar at the end of my second year in the sixth form in 1967. Bill was an excellent teacher, interested and interesting with a detailed knowledge and understanding especially of the seventeenth century. His lessons were discursive in nature and students were encouraged to express their own views on the issues being discussed though you had to be prepared to argue your case and Bill would not tolerate sloppy thinking. When examining the Armada, I suggested that the English had been very lucky not to lose. Bill asked me to explain my thinking and then systematically debunked each point I’d made: an exhilarating experience since I probably learned more about the Armada as a result. He was extremely encouraging bringing books and articles from his library and suggesting that I read and note them. I still refer to these on occasions as he had annotated my spidery notes with pithy comments again correcting poor reasoning and thought. Both orally and in writing, he contributed significantly to my development as a historian and I will always be grateful for the time he was prepared to expend on my ideas and writing.

I had been involved in drama at the school since the first year and in the six years Bill was at the school he generally acted as stage-manager. From small non-speaking parts, I graduated to speaking and then major roles. I played a Sicilian lord in The Winter’s Tale in December 1962, Bardolph, servant to Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor in May 1964, in the pirate chorus of The Pirates of Penzance at Easter 1965 (the only occasion I had to wear tights), an apprentice in Thomas Dekker’s Shoemaker’s Holiday in 1966 for which I also did most of the background historical research used for stage construction and costume design, Antonio in The Merchant of Venice in 1967[2] and the Chorus in Antigone in 1968[3]. In addition, there was involvement in various in-school house productions. I remember playing a ballet dancer, complete with tutu in one memorable (or infamous) production of Swan Lake. The skills I developed through drama and through poetry readings have played an important part in my subsequent career. The ability to speak in public, to know the importance of the dramatic and the issue of audience and presence have all been invaluable in teaching. Learning how to hold an audience is importance when you want to hold a class. My dramatic life continued into university and beyond. I played the Chorus again in a production of Antigone at Reading in 1969, read poetry with Roger McGough and Adrian Henry but then moved across into production acting as director of two Shakespeare plays in 1970 and 1971 as well as a musical burlesque also in 1971. In my first school, I acted a stage-manager and co-director of One-Way Pendulum. But writing intervened and, like the aged actor, I faded into the background called upon to do the makeup on various occasions.

O Levels came and went following a course on modern British and European History, my first encounter with the Chartists and into Advanced Level. Sixth form life at Soham was very relaxed and there was a lot of free time to discuss and debate the current political issues like the Vietnam War and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War as well as more parochial issues like the threat to the school from the comprehensive movement (something that led to the school disappearing in 1972). After 1965, I increasingly became involved actively in politics and especially the anti-war movement. Partly encouraged by the Head, I went on marches and demonstrations, first in Cambridge and later in London. The Grovenor Square demonstration particularly sticks in the mind.

[1] Tewkesbury Wills & Inventories 1601-1700, transcribed and produced for the Tewkesbury Historical Society by Bill Rennison and Cameron Talbot, 1996.

[2] From the Soham Grammarian, Summer, 1967: Particular credit must be given to Mary Richards as a robust Portia, Helen Hillman as a mischievous Jessica and Monica Vince as a serene Nerissa; to J. A. Brown as a sinister yet pathetic Shylock; to K. Bent as a charming, naive Bassanio; and to R. J. Brown as a world weary Antonio. Congratulations too to the rest of the cast.

[3] From the Soham Grammarian, Summer, 1968: The Play is set in motion by the Chorus (played by Richard Brown). His task is to be our on stage commentator on the play. We were fortunate to see an interpretation which struck just the right balance between restraint and dramatic urgency so as to give the Play its correct framework. He was the ideal commentator who never intruded too far into the action, always speaking his lines most clearly.

Autobiographical Fragments: Unpublished papers

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 09:43:09 GMT

Knowing that I was going to retire, though not as early as I believed in November 2002 when I began the process, concentrated my mind on putting some of my work into a printed format so that others might benefit from the work that I have done and the development of my thinking about History over my teaching career. Some might call this vanity (and perhaps they are right) but I’ve always believed it important to air my views on issues in the public domain and subject those views to the critical scrutiny of others. The already completed papers on History fall into four broad categories.

First, there is material on medieval history. Medieval towns: some papers, (February 2003), Louis VI, Suger and History: preliminary papers (May 2003), three volumes of material on Normandy Jottings on the Normans: Beginnings and Books (November 2002), Rollo and William Longsword: The early Norman counts (July 2003) and The Normans: remembering things past (December 2003). There are also two of the four planned volumes[1] of edited sources on the Normans in southern Italy and Sicily: Critiquing sources volume I: From Robert Guiscard to Roger II (March 2006) and Critiquing sources volume II: Malaterra and Roger of Sicily (May 2006).

Secondly, there is material on the nineteenth century and especially on Chartism. My ‘affair’ with Chartism goes back many years and my attitudes to the subject have changed radically over time: itself a case-study in how historians work. Chartists, Women and Work (June 2003) collects together a series of papers on Chartism and related issues that I have revised on several occasions. Broadening horizons volume I: Chartism and the colonies (June 2005) and Broadening horizons volume II: Chartism and the colonies (December 2005) are indicative of my changing attitude to the subject and of the need to broaden our horizons and consider the extent to which British reformist and radical ideas and practice, and especially Chartism, had an impact on the thinking of colonial reformers who sought a degree of autonomy from, or within, the imperial Crown. The first volume focuses on Canada and especially the Canadian rebellions of 1837-38 while the second is more concerned with Australia and the Eureka Stockade.

Thirdly, there is a collection of papers on the philosophy of the subject: Breaking the habit: thinking about history (April 2004), one on history and teaching Do dinosaurs speak English? Teaching, teachers and sources (May 2004) and finally a consideration of the nature of education in Looking backwards and forewards: In remembrance of things past (August 2005)

Finally, there are three volumes of material that consider the history of Dunstable and formed part of the initial work for a doctorate at Luton University: Positioning Dunstable: a basis for research (February 2000)[2], Dunstable in a nutshell (March 2000)[3] and Dunstable: the 1841 census (August 2002)[4].

[1] The two other volumes look at two sources in Greek: those by Michael Psellus and Anna Comnena. Though these are in a reasonable advanced stage of preparation, they still need further work before they are ready for public scrutiny.

[2] This formed the basis for a research proposal.

[3] This volume is a shortened version of the earlier paper that was produced for teachers in the area.

[4] This volume also included two papers: ‘The thrust of Antiquity: placing Dunstable in its historiographical context’ and ‘Population in Dunstable 1801-1901: a tentative chronology’.

Autobiographical Fragments: My publications

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 09:33:38 GMT

Publications with an asterisk (*) were co-written with C.W. Daniels. This list does not include editorials for Teaching History, book reviews or unpublished papers. Neither does it include the two series of books for which I have been joint-editor: Cambridge Topics in History and Cambridge Perspectives in History. Including these books would increase the length of this appendix by 52 books.

Computer-based data and social and economic history (for the Local History Classroom Project), (1974)

Social and Economic History and the Computer (for LHCP), (1975)

‘Local and National History -- an interrelated response’, in Suffolk History Forum, 1977

‘Our Future Local Historians’, in The Local Historian, volume xiii, 1978 *

‘Sixth Form History’, in Teaching History, May 1976 *

‘Sixth Form History’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 3^rd June 1977 *

‘The new history -- an essential reappraisal’, in Ibid. 2^nd December 1977 *

‘Interrelated Issues’, in Ibid, 1^st December 1978 *

‘The Myth Exposed’, in Ibid., 30^th November 1979 * also reprinted in John Fines (ed.) see below

Nineteenth Century Britain, (Macmillan, 1980) *

‘The Local History Classroom Project’, in Developments in History Teaching, (University of Exeter, 1980) *

‘A Chronic Hysteresis’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 5^th December 1980 *

Twentieth Century Europe, (Macmillan, 1981) *

‘Is there still room for History in the secondary curriculum?’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 5^th December 1981 *

‘Content considered’, in Ibid., 9^th April 1982 *

Twentieth Century Britain, (Macmillan, 1982) *

‘A Level History’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 8^th April 1983 *

‘History in danger revisited’, in Ibid., 9^th December 1983 *

‘History and study skills’, in John Fines (ed.) Teaching History, (Holmes McDougall, 1983)

‘History and study skills’, reprinted in School and College, iv (4), 1983

Four scripts for Sussex Tapes, 1983: People, Land and Trade 1830-1914; Pre-eminence and Competition 1830-1914; The Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution; and, Lloyd George to Beveridge 1906-1950

Four computer programs for Sussex Tapes, 1984: The Industrial Revolution; Population, Medicine and Agriculture; Transport: road, canal and railway; and, Social Impact of Change

‘It’s time History Teachers were offensive’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 28^th November 1984 *

The Chartists, (Macmillan, 1984) *

‘Using documents with sixth formers’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 29^th November 1985 *

Learning History: A Guide to Advanced Study, (Macmillan, 1986) *

GCSE History, (The Historical Association, 1986, revised edition, 1987) as editor and contributor

‘Training or Survival?’ with M. Booth and G. Shawyer in The Times Educational Supplement, 10^th April 1987

Change and Continuity in British Society 1800-1850, (Cambridge Topics in History, Cambridge University Press, 1987, republished 2008)

‘There are always alternatives: Britain during the Depression’ for BBC Radio, 14^th September 1987

‘Cultural imperialism’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 4^th December, 1987

‘The Training of History Teachers Project’, in Teaching History, 50, January 1988

‘History’ in Your Choice of A-Levels, (CRAC, 1988)

‘The Development of Children’s Historical Thinking’ with G. Shawyer and M. Booth, Cambridge Journal of Education, volume 18(2), 1988.

‘The New Demonology’, Teaching History, 53, October 1988

The Future of the Past: History in the Curriculum 5-16: A Personal Overview, (The Historical Association, 1988)

‘History Study Skills: Working with Sources’, History Sixth, 3, October 1988 *

‘A Critique of GCSE History: the results of The Historical Association Survey’, Teaching History, March 1989.

‘History Textbook Round-up’, Teachers’ Weekly, September 1990.

‘Partnership and the Training of Student History Teachers’, with M. Booth and G. Shawyer, in M. Booth, J. Furlong and M. Wilkin (eds.) Partnership in Initial Teacher Training, Cassell, 1990

Economy and Society in Modern Britain 1700-1850 (Routledge, 1991)

Church and State in Modern Britain 1700-1850 (Routledge, 1991)

‘History’ in Your Choice of A-Levels, (CRAC, 1991)

‘Lies, damn lies and statistics’, Teaching History, 63, April 1991

‘BTEC and History’, in John Fines (ed.) History 16-19, (The Historical Association, 1991)

‘What about the author?’, Hindsight: GCSE Modern History Review, volume 2(1), September 1991

‘Appeasement: A matter of opinion?’, Hindsight: GCSE Modern History Review, volume 2(2), January 1992

Economic Revolutions 1750-1850 (Cambridge Topics in History, CUP, 1992, republished 2008)

‘Suez: a question of causation’, Hindsight: GCSE Modern History Review, volume 4(1), September 1993

‘History’ in Your Choice of A-Levels, (CRAC, 1993)

History and post-16 vocational courses’, in H. Bourdillon (ed.) Teaching History, Routledge, 1993

‘Learning effectively at Advanced Level’, pamphlet for PGCE ITT course, Open University, 1994

Preparing for Inspection, The Historical Association, 1994

Managing the Learning of History, (David Fulton, 1995)

Chartism: People, Events and Ideas (Perspectives in History, Cambridge University Press, 1998)

BBC History File: consultant on five Key Stage 3 programmes on Britain 1750-1900

Revolution, Radicalism and Reform: England 1780-1846, (Perspectives in History, Cambridge University Press, 2001)

‘The state in the 1840s’, Modern History Review, September 2003

‘Chartism and the state’, Modern History Review, November 2003

‘Chadwick and Simon: the problem of public health reform’, Modern History Review, April 2005

Three Rebellions: Nineteenth Century Colonial States and Popular Protest; Australia, Canada and Wales, 2009

Autobiographical Fragments: Moving on

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 09:18:25 GMT

Transferring to grammar school in September 1960 was a momentous event. Soham was twelve miles from Littleport and it meant travelling by bus every day passed the cathedral at Ely and along the very long and very straight road to the school. It was a bigger school with around 400 pupils and led by Edward Armitage[1], a physicist but with eclectic interests and considerable presence. There were around twenty of my fellow students from Littleport with me on my first day, the primary school always had an excellent record for getting students through the 11+.

What struck me about the school, apart from its size was its formality. The primary school had no uniform and relations between teachers and pupils were, though clearly defined rather relaxed especially for the 11+ class. By contrast, uniform was rigidly imposed at Soham. I remember the head canning two boys whom he saw in Ely at nine on evening partly in uniform: an affront to the dignity of the school he called it. Masters, they weren’t called teachers, were suitably gowned at all times and were overwhelmingly male (as befitted a single sex grammar school). Discipline was ruthlessly enforced with the cane being used by all masters were equal relish. Pupils were taught to speak properly and the Fenland dialect was rooted out and replaced by more rounded vowels. Despite this or perhaps because of this, the school was a haven for learning and culture in what the head saw as a sea of Fenland ignorance.

The masters varied in age. Some had been at the school since the 1930s; others arrived just after the war. Until I was in the sixth form there were very few young staff and definitely no women, apart from the head’s wife who dabbled in French. A few were poor, even appalling teachers who punctuated teaching with the liberal use of the slipper, but most were good or excellent. For me, those twelve miles were an incredibly liberating experience. It brought me into contact with other bright boys and teachers who challenged the intellect. Above all, the school had an excellent library that extended across one side of the main building with excellent sections on history and the humanities generally. I soon became involved in running the library as a student librarian and later, from the fifth year upwards was in effective control of everything but the ordering of books. So I had a ready supply of books and journals and, as a bonus, a bolthole out of the cold.

History in the first and second years was taught by Mr Taylor[2] (nicknamed RAT because of his initials). It was his second subject, but he was a sports teacher by inclination. These two years were not the most edifying period in my historical development. Although he was a good teacher, he did not have a passion for the subject and, in retrospect, I feel he went through the motions with little enthusiasm. Still, what he did was interesting. The first year was spent looking at world history up to the fall of the Roman Empire: from the Babylonians through the Assyrians, Hittites, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans with a little bit on China and India. The second year was exclusively on medieval Britain from the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons through to the battle of Bosworth in August 1485. Fairly traditional fare for a grammar school. It was the access to the library that maintained my interest in the subject. It contained copies of all the major works on history published in the previous hundred years and I devoured their contents with enthusiasm. Whether I understood the books or not (and in most cases it was not) it read every book on history in my first three years at the school: Freeman, Stubbs, Maitland, Fisher, Pollard and so on. Period didn’t matter; it was simply a matter of extending my knowledge and understanding of the subject.

It was, however, Tom Riley[3] who had the greatest effect on me during these early years. He taught French and had known my father in the war. Tom was an old-style teacher at face value but once you got behind his rather gruff exterior you found an individual of broad knowledge and interesting views. His daughter Libby was the same age as me. It was only later that I was told that Tom had been involved in liberating one of the death camps at the end of the war. The head also took an interest in what I was doing perhaps because I was always in the library and always came last in the annual cross-country run. Though he taught Science and never taught me, from the second year I was sent to his study about once a week to discuss this or that current affair or political issue. Later, when I was in my third year in the sixth form, along with the two members of that year, we would spend forty-five minutes after lunch four days a week in his study playing bridge, smoking the occasional pipe, drinking a glass of sherry and putting the world to rights. On Friday after lunch, he took the whole sixth form for a discussion session where he would set a problem and we would be expected to debate it, a masterful way of developing skills of argumentation and oratory: it was a cross between bear-baiting and fox-hunting as generally at least one sixth former was badly mauled by the experience each week.

[1] Edward Armitage died in Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, on Friday 6^th July 2001, aged 91. The funeral service was held at St Mary’s Church, Ely, on Tuesday 17^th July, at 2pm. The last headmaster of Soham Grammar School has died. Edward Armitage, who died in Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, on Friday, was head of the school prior to its amalgamation into Soham Village College with the introduction of comprehensive education in 1972. He was appointed headmaster of Soham Grammar in 1945, in succession to Stanley Stubbs, who became head of The Perse School, Cambridge. With his wife, May, Mr Armitage established and ran for more than 20 years, a weekly boarding house at the school for the benefit of pupils, such as those whose circumstances or travel arrangements made daily travel to and from Soham difficult. In 1972, Mr Armitage became principal of the Sixth-Form Centre at City of Ely College. He retired from this post in 1975. Throughout his teaching career, he taught physics and his book Practical Physics was used extensively in secondary schools, both in the UK and overseas, from its first publication in 1939 until the late 1970s

[2] From the Cambridge Evening News 16^th September 1996: Tribute was paid today to former schoolmaster Peter Taylor, who died in a road accident on the A604 at the weekend. Mr Taylor, grandson of the founder of the Cambridge Evening News, was pronounced dead at the scene after the Ford Sierra car which he was driving was involved in a collision with a 7.5 tonne lorry at the Hildersham crossroads. Linton vicar, the Rev Julian Thompson, said Mr Taylor was still very involved in local community life in his 80s and would be sadly missed by everyone who knew him. “I knew the family well and he was an amazing man without question. His death is a tragedy and a great loss to the community of the village and the church. We are all shocked and deeply saddened by his death,” said Mr Thompson. Two years ago, at the age of 82, Mr Taylor relived a moment from his childhood when he started the press at the new Milton headquarters of the News. When he was eight he was taken by his grandfather, William Farrow Taylor, to the print hall of the News in St Andrew’s Street and was overawed when he was allowed to turn on the presses to start printing that day’s edition. He once again set the presses in action during his visit to Milton and said he felt “family pride” in seeing how the newspaper had grown into the region’s leading local daily read for many thousands of people. Mr Taylor read Geography and History as a student at Downing College, and spent a long career as a teacher and sports master. His own sporting prowess was notable. He was chosen for the college soccer team, was a noted local footballer and cricketer and took on the role of secretary of Cambridgeshire County Cricket Club, serving the county as player and administrator for 47 years. He also played football for Cambridge City during the 1930s.

[3] From The Ely Standard on the death of Mr TL Riley, 18^th November 1973: Many generations of boys who spent five or more years at Soham Grammar School, and thus came under the considerable influence of Tom (‘Slug’ to many of them) Riley, will mourn his passing and deeply regret that he was not spared to enjoy many years of happy retirement. It is only six years since he was Second Master and not two since he fully retired from the school he had served for practically the whole of his teaching life. A native of Barnsley and a graduate of Sheffield University, he brought to his teaching of French the bluntness, depth and sincerity which were his distinguishing characteristics. Never one to suffer juvenile fools gladly, his bark was always more to be feared than his bite which was almost non-existent. He had a natural command in the classroom which boys instinctively recognised as coming from one who “knew his stuff”, would tolerate no slipshod work and required only from his pupils that they should work as hard as he himself was prepared to work. Never one to preach, either to his pupils or his colleagues, he preferred actions to words. Besides being a first class teacher, he was Scoutmaster at Soham Grammar School for a great many years and even after he had handed over to a younger colleague, he retained an active interest in the Scouting movement. He was one of the first of the Soham Grammar School staff to leave for active service, from 1940 to 1945. Returning to the school in November 1945, he resumed where he had left off and could not be persuaded ever to speak of his Service years, regarding them, it seemed as a necessary and painful experience better forgotten. Tom Riley had a deep and abiding love for Soham Grammar School and the boys who passed through. He was never absent from any gathering of Old Boys all of whom regarded him, as did his colleagues, as one of the pillars on which the academic excellence of the school had been built. He was a big man in every way - in physical size, in academic stature, in wisdom and tolerance, and perhaps most of all, in example. Soham Grammar School may be no more but the memory lingers on. Tom Riley formed a large part of that memory and will continue to do so for many years yet.

Autobiographical Fragments: An early education

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 23:00:28 GMT

My first vague memories are of the death of George VI at Sandringham in February 1952 and the death of Queen Mary there the following year. I remember on both occasions standing by the railway station at Hilgay and watching the funeral trains move slowly along the line to London. More vivid is the coronation in 1953 largely because, dressed as a television I won a fancy dress competition and was given a signed book: I still have it in my library. I also began primary school in Downham Market just round the corner from where I was born.

Primary schools in the 1950s were not renowned for their innovative teaching and sympathetic approach to learning. Much teaching was still based on rote learning the ‘three Rs’ with a strong dose of fairly coercive punishment. Perhaps I was lucky. I could already read and write before I went to school, the result of my grandfather’s interest in schooling. Both at Downham Market and, after 1955 at Littleport I was taught by a succession of interested, thoughtful and responsive women teachers like Miss Davy and especially Miss Gill. Both these formidable ladies lived well into the 1990s and were always interested in what I was doing. I remember having a fairly animated discussion with Miss Gill, when she was in her nineties about one of my early books with which she disagreed. She was probably right that it needed more thought and research but, critical as she always was she was one of the most supportive and encouraging teachers I ever had.

It was not school that initially fired my interest in history. Brought up on the stories of both families and encouraged to read simple books on history from an early age, by the time I reached school I was already hooked. In the austere world of the early 1950 when rationing still operated, King Alfred and the cakes, Boudicca and her chariots with scythes on the wheels eviscerating the Roman legions and Harold at Hastings took me to a world that was totally different and decidedly alien to the world in which I lived. It was these stories, many of which I later found were grounded more in legend that reality that brought the past to life. Today, with source analysis and historiographical interpretations at the heart of much teaching, I have never forgotten that what makes history ‘history’ are the accounts of what happened in the past and descriptions of what it must have been like to live then. The well-told tale is still perhaps the best way of getting students interested in the subject not the rather mundane and systematic analysis of bias and prejudice and differences of viewpoint. Not that these are unimportant since they are at the core of the historian’s work but they are of little value unless they are part of a clear narrative.

In many ways, primary school in the 1950s was an idyllic time compared to the experience of most primary school children today. There was no testing, no targets and few examinations just education in its broadest sense. Above all there was time: time to look at things in detail; time for the diversions that made schooling fun and especially, time to develop interests and read and write about them. And there were teachers who could move seamlessly from mathematics to English and history; teachers who saw their job as rather more than just getting children through tests, though the 11+ was the exception; teachers for whom general knowledge was important in developing the general education of their charges. Perhaps I am being rather blinkered in my vision of those times but with few television channels and no computers to distract, these were years of exploration finding out about the world and its history and about the local community. And it was a safer world though I do remember having to do a nuclear attack drill every term: pupils were to get under their desks and wait for the danger to pass! I felt in was a fruitless exercise at the time and I think I said so.

And there were the holidays! A time of exploration. Initially these were taken at the seaside, often with relatives and frequently in caravans. I’ve detested caravans ever since. Later, the family graduated to holidays away from Norfolk and we began to explore England. I was shown, for the first time its architectural and archaeological heritage. My father dragged the family from one ruin to the next. Distance was no object. Witness the visit to the long barrow at West Kennet. At least a mile from the main road, my mother and sister stayed in the car as my father and I battled through uncut corn to reach our goal. Two hours later we returned. It doesn’t surprise me that my mother described Stonehenge as “a load of stones with a van serving tea”! I’m afraid I’ve never had my father’s enthusiasm for old buildings as such. It was their contents, especially the books in their often extensive libraries and the surviving sources that appealed to me. Even now, this is still the case. Visiting the monastery at Melk in Austria in the summer of 2003, my abiding memory is not the superb baroque architecture but its library with shelf after shelf of resplendently bound tomes and its essential tranquillity even amongst the hordes of parasitic tourists.

But back to the history. The approach was a chronological one that ended with the outbreak of war in 1914. We wrote about what happened and began to explore the causes of events. There was little by way of discussion and you certainly did not challenge the teacher. Well, almost never. Miss Pollard was a formidable lady, tall and in her late forties when she taught me. We were doing some work on Marco Polo, the Venetian explorer and she said he went to ‘Carthay’. Immediately, I said in a rather loud voice: “I think you mean Cathay”. It was the only time I was ever sent out of a class and received a loud and quite justifiable telling-off as a result. Later that evening my father came in and said he’d been talking to Miss Pollard and I thought I was in for another verbal assault. She had, because I was so insistent that I was right checked in her book at home and discovered that it was Cathay after all. I sat with a certain self-satisfied smugness until my father informed very bluntly that my behaviour was totally unacceptable and that I would apologise to Miss Pollard the following morning for interrupting her. The point, he said was not that I was right but that there are proper ways of doing things and interrupting was not one of them. Suitably chastened I returned to school the following day and apologised after which Miss Pollard gave me one of her books and told me to read it for the next history lesson which I was taking. My first experience of teaching.

As I moved through primary school, my knowledge of the subject grew to such an extent that, I later discovered that one teacher didn’t really like teaching history if I was in the class…just in case! But then I moved on to Miss Gill, the deputy head who taught the class in the last two years that would take the 11+. Now, Miss Gill was certainly not an individual that you would interrupt; even later when I was teaching myself I always held her in a certain awe. A towering woman of over six foot and an England netball player in her youth, she was a force to be reckoned with in the school. Her particular passion was history, especially of the local community on which, after she retired, she wrote several books. Consequently, we did lots of local history using sources on the draining of the Fens, the Littleport and Ely riots of 1816 and the medieval development of the parish. Her knowledge was encyclopaedic and she could hold a class when telling the story of, for example Cornelius Vermuyden, as no one else I’ve ever seen. She could bring the past to life with her anecdotes based on her voluminous library of local materials. We spent a lot of time talking about history and the local area but her knowledge went much further than this and she continually related what was happening in Littleport to what was happening outside and the connections between them. She also gave me my first experience of publishing. In my final year at primary school and after the 11+, my class embarked on a booklet on the history of Littleport. I ended up writing a large part of it or at least redrafting what others had written, I can’t remember which.

Autobiographical Fragments: My father's family

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 06:59:34 GMT

The contrast with my father’s family was stark Originally from Somerset, my great-grandmother came to London in the late 1870s; she was about ten and worked on one or other of the growing number of wealthy middle-class houses first as a kitchen assistant and then as a cook. She lived in the East End of London and brought up her several children in that area. One was involved in the campaign for women’s suffrage in the early 1900s and spent several occasions in Holloway Prison for breaking plate-glass windows in the West End. Her son was one of the first Boy Scouts and spent the rest of his life working for the scouting movement ending up as District Commissioner for London. His sisters, one died earlier this year at the age of 102 remained spinsters throughout their lives looking after their brother and working their way up the management of Derry and Toms[1] in Kensington High Street. My paternal grandmother married twice: first to my father’s father who died in 1931 and then to Samuel Smith who owned and ran tugs on the River Thames and who was, like my grandmother a fount of interesting stories and anecdotes. They both lived through the two world wars but, unlike my maternal grandparents who both lost brothers in the trenches, they seem to have had an uncanny knack of surviving. Two stories make the point. In 1915, my grandfather was contracted to ‘arm’ ships tied up in the Thames estuary at Gravesend. This could be a dangerous undertaking as several ships had already blown up during this process; sabotage was suspected by nothing was proved. He was two hundred yards away from the monitor ‘Bulwark’ when it was torn apart by a massive explosion and his tug picked up one of the two survivors, a midshipman with a German name who had already survived two previous explosions when ships were sunk. He was transferred to desk job in Whitehall and the explosions stopped: was there a connection or was the midshipman just unlucky? Clearly the Admiralty thought the latter; not my grandfather’s view. Three decades later, in late 1944 my grandmother, who had lived in London throughout the Blitz was getting ready for her weekly visit to the grocer’s just down the street where she chatted with friends normally for several hours. A telephone call delayed her departure and the first she knew about the V2 rocket was a massive explosion that blew in all her windows. The rocket had obliterated the grocer’s shop and the surrounding houses leaving a crater ten yards across killing all those in the shop. I always thought this raised questions about the role played by chance in the lives of individuals in the present and in the past.

My father grew up in the 1920s and especially after 1931 when his father died. This was unexpected and for my father, as the eldest son a life-defining moment. It meant that instead of going to art school, he had to go out to work to support the family. I think he always resented this. Instead of doing what he wanted to do, he had little choice but to work. If he had had any choice he would have gone as an apprentice wheelwright with his uncle George who lived in Barley and learned his trade. For the remainder of his life, with the exception of the war years he endured a succession of unsatisfying jobs first in the Ministry of Food, then in insurance and finally as a manager in the electronics industry. His love was working with wood, something that I have not inherited. I remember when I was at grammar school I suffered woodwork classes for about five week and made a pipe-stand. I was quite proud of it and took it home for my father. He took one look at it, smiled and then tested the joint, which promptly broke. This ended my aspiration to be another Chippendale and when I told my woodwork teacher he suggested that I would probably be better employed working in the school library on anything I liked. Disenchanted, I never put plane to wood again!

The Brown family had always been political, living in the East End that came as little surprise. In 1936, my father went to Spain to fight in the International Brigade and remained there until almost the end of the war, returning to England in February 1939. Whether this was his way out of working or whether he had a real conviction about the threat from Fascism is unclear, though given his later attitudes I suspect the latter. Though brought up in a strong Labour household, he was by inclination Liberal in politics preferring the gradualism of change to revolution per se. He joined up in September 1939 soon after Hitler invaded Poland and was in the thick of the fighting for the remainder of the war. He never talked about it and it wasn’t until after his death in 1981 that I discovered that he had been at Dunkirk. What I do remember is an individual who held his political views lightly though he was very supportive when I became involved in anti-Vietnam war politics in the mid-1960s. This is wrong, he would often say. But he learned to keep his own counsel, something essential after December 1945 when he married my mother and came to live in the Fens.

The Fens is a strangely hypnotic place, full of horizons and bleakness. This was even more the case in the 1940s and 1950s when electricity was almost unknown and many houses in the deep Fens still used candles, oil-lamps or gas for lighting. It was a dark place, full of ghosts and memories carried on the perpetual wind that seems to blow coldly from the east. If you were born in the Fens, there was no problem but if you were an outsider then …. My father was an outsider and remained so for the rest of his life. Acceptance came slowly and though he was well regarded by those people who he lived with, whether there was every that acceptance he wanted I have my doubts. This undoubtedly offended his strong sense of fairness and justice but characteristically it was something that he accepted. I remember when I was very small being taken to the squire’s house by my grandparents and my father coming to collect me. He had to go through the tradesman’s entrance into the ‘big’ house; only Fenmen went in through the front door. No problem for me but not for my father. It struck me as unjust at the time and still makes me angry.

So, my background is a hybrid one combining the rural experience of the Fens and the traditions of my mother’s family and, less so the urban experience of my father and his family. Yet, in both traditions there was a strong sense of the need to counter injustice, to stand against those individuals who believed they had a right to authority or those who used force to achieve this. It is not surprising that my political apprenticeship owed much to these traditions and that understanding this pushed me towards the study of history.

[1] In 1862, Charles Derry opened up a shop in Wrights Lane and was joined by his brother-in-law, Charles Toms, a few years later. The business they developed was eventually bought in 1921 by Barkers and they moved the premises to 99-121 Kensington High Street and constructed the existing building in 1932. It is currently occupied by BHS. It has a boldly expressive Art Deco facade. Its roof gardens are the largest in London and were the dream child of Trevor Bowen, the then Vice-President of Barkers and Ralph Hancock, a landscape architect, laid out the gardens during 1936-8. The gardens cover some one and a half acres and are situated 100ft above street level. The average depth of the soil is 18-inch drainage made of bricks and clinker over a waterproof membrane. Ralph Hancock brought in some 500 species of plants and shrubs and even imported rock from Pennsylvania for his alpine planting on the assumption that it would withstand London’s polluted atmosphere. Each year 15,000 bulbs were purchased and 38,000 bedding plants were laid out, having been produced in the nursery on the roof. The gardens were constructed around three themes: the Spanish Garden with its Court of Fountains and formal design; the Tudor Garden and Walkway constructed in traditional stone and the English Woodland Garden complete with stream and ducks. Other exotic birds such as flamingos and pintail ducks are also to be found in the garden.

Autobiographical Fragments: My mother's family

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 08:59:23 GMT

Some context is necessary. My parents came from backgrounds of marked contrast. My mother was born, lived and died in the Fens and came from a relatively prosperous farming family. The Mackenders are a family of some antiquity in the Fens, small-scale but very successful farmers whose ancestry can be dated, well at least according to my grandfather, back to the mid-seventeenth century. The family tradition is that members of the family were captured by Cromwell either at the battle of Dunbar or the battle of Worcester in 1650 or 1651 respectively and brought back and settled in the Fens. This period saw the first draining of the Fens by Cornelius Vermuyden and prisoners of war were a cheap form of labour. However, there is little hard evidence for this tradition and the family can only be traced back as far as the mid-eighteenth century in the sources. Perhaps the tradition conflated the events of the 1650s with those following Culloden in 1746 when representatives of the Mackenders certainly fought on the side of Charles Edward Stuart ‘the Young Pretender’ and again may have been brought back to the Fens as prisoners of war to assist in the second phase of drainage in the 1740s and 1750s.

Either way, the presence of the Mackenders is attested in local parish registers from 1753 when George Mackender married Mary, a local girl from Hilgay in Norfolk. The family grew rapidly in the latter part of the eighteenth century with branches in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and in north Norfolk. My great-great-great-great uncle was hanged for sedition after the Littleport and Ely riots in 1816; in fact it appears he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was mistaken for one of the ring-leaders. His brother was hanged three years later for sheep-stealing and a third brother transported to Australia for the same offence though he died on the subsequent voyage. It’s surprising given this level of mortality that the family survived at all!

I spent a large amount of time with my grandparents as I was growing up: each Sunday for tea, Christmas and at least a week during the summer holiday. My grandfather, though he left school at the age of ten to work on the land, knew more about farming and the history of the area than I’ve forgotten. His stories about what farming was like, the impact of the world wars and his love for the soil remain fresh in my mind. He enjoyed telling and retelling and embroidering one tale in particular. During the Second World War, though farming was a protected occupation it was frequently difficult to get farm labourers and you had to take what you could get. One man who worked for my grandfather was called William who was regarded, not without justification as the village idiot. Harvesting was always a stressful time for farmers rushing to get the ripe grain in before the almost inevitable downpour. At the end of one very long day (havesting often began as early as six in the morning and went on until the evening light faded), William asked my grandfather what he should do with the scythe he’d been using all day. My grandfather snapped at him: “stick it up your arse”. Which is precisely what William did! My grandmother always said that it was one of the most comical yet tragic sights she’s ever seen seeing William being carried from the field face down on a gate with the blade of the scythe protruding from his nether-regions. He survived but afterwards always walked with a limp! My grandmother was also a fount of stories about the area especially the one about being given six months to live in 1945: she eventually died at the age of ninety-seven in 2000.

Theirs was a parochial world, a somewhat pejorative term today. My grandparents never went far. Their world was bounded by the parameters of the Fens and they rarely stepped outside them. They went to London once in 1931 and didn’t like it: it was too big and you couldn’t see the horizon. They went to Clacton each year for a week’s holiday from 1946 always staying at the same guest house with the Fords. Their northern boundary was the north Norfolk coast. Ironically, their western boundary was Dunstable where they came for their honeymoon in 1921. My great aunt was housekeeper for one of the last hat-makers in Dunstable and his house was where Wilkinsons is today. My grandmother remembered the square in great detail with the Priory church and the shops in Middle Row.

I must have stopped listening to the stories when I was in my teens: I was educated and thought I knew better. It was not until the mid-1970s that I began to enjoy them again and understand the importance of anecdote as a valid tool for the historian. But that somehow misses the point: they were stories for their own sake whether they had real meaning or significance, a reflection of a life spent working on and with the soil. This was not a rural idyll but a real, often bleak, sometimes funny world of people and family in a world that changed little when all round there was chaos, revolution and change. In many respects, their lives were summed up in part of the eulogy I gave at my grandmother’s funeral in April 2000:

'My grandmother almost made it to a hundred. She was less than three years from her telegram from the Queen and her life spanned almost the whole of the last century. When she was born, man had still not taken to the air in a powered aircraft – that had to wait until she was ten months old. Space flight was the stuff of fiction. She was nine when the Titanic rendezvoused with fate and an iceberg in the north Atlantic in April 1912 and later that year in the August when according to the family bible ‘in the last week of the month, the fen was drowned’. There was no radio until she was in her twenties and no television until she was well into her thirties. In fact, many of the great events of the twentieth century passed my grandmother by. Her bible makes clear what was important to her. It records the births and deaths of the family; the passing of kings and the coronations of their successors; the outbreak of the Great War that cut a swathe through the young men of the Fens and what she called the second war with Germany. There is nothing about politics or social change or economic crisis; nothing of transient fashions or technology or computers. There is however a great deal of underlining of passages from the Scriptures that meant much to her. She spent the whole of her life within very narrow geographical limits. The furthest west she ever went was Dunstable for her honeymoon staying with her sister who was housekeeper to one of the hat makers of that town and where, ironically I have ended up living. The furthest south was one trip to London – she didn’t like it, too many people and too much noise. North was bounded by the Wash and east by the Essex coast where she and my grandfather went on holiday one week a year from the late 1940s. There was no desire to travel further a field. Everything she needed, wanted and loved were in that narrow area. Above all, it was the starkness, the flatness and the epic skies of the Fens that set her pulse racing. My grandmother was born, lived and died in the Fens. She was Fen woman to her very core. She was intensely proud of her heritage and the land that gave that heritage life.'