WSJ Historically Speaking: Burying the Body in One Place and the Heart in Another

Photo: THOMAS FUCHS

Photo: THOMAS FUCHS

Halloween is an eloquent denial of the finality of death. Throughout history, people have resisted the idea that life begins and ends with the human body. Even the most ghoulish Halloween story starts with the premise that life exists in more than one realm.

During the medieval period, the belief that the physical and spiritual worlds were intertwined fed into the idea that the soul was located inside the heart. Many aristocrats and royals even had their hearts removed after death. Their corpses were then interred in the family crypt, while the heart was preserved and buried in a place of spiritual significance.

That usually meant a favorite monastery. But for Richard I, known as “The Lionheart” (he supposedly once ate the heart of a lion), it meant having his body buried in England and his heart in France—a way to demonstrate his divine right to wear the crowns of both kingdoms.

Jerusalem was another popular destination. This was where Robert the Bruce (1274-1329), king of the Scots, begged his fellow knights to bury his heart. A band of Celtic crusaders duly set off, bearing the organ inside a silver casket. They got as far as Spain, where most of them were killed fighting the Moors. The heart was rescued by one of the survivors and carried back to Scotland. It was subsequently lost until the 20th century, when archaeologists accidentally stumbled upon the casket while making an inventory of Melrose Abbey in Roxburghshire, Scotland. The heart was left in situ, denying Robert his wish.

Continue reading…

WSJ Historically Speaking: A Few Great Historical Myths

Photo: UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Photo: UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Posterity is a curious thing. To some, it accords unmerited glory; to others, it bequeaths lasting shame.

Marie-Antoinette, whose execution took place on Oct. 16, 1793, is one of many who have suffered more than their fair share from posterity. As every schoolchild loves to repeat: When told that the French people had no bread to eat, the thoughtless queen uttered the immortal words, “Let them eat cake,” thereby meriting her dreadful fate at the guillotine.

Marie-Antoinette had many faults, including an unerring ability to choose the wrong friends. But crassness was not among them. She probably never said the phrase, according to Antonia Fraser’s sympathetic, revisionist biography. Judging by the number of women (and it’s only women, for some reason) who have been accused of making the “cake” comment, it’s highly likely that the incident never happened.

Continue reading…

The Sunday Times: In the land of sexual confusion a threesome is fine, adultery’s a crime

Photo: Scott Webb

Photo: Scott Webb

Was last week a great one for sex? Well, that depends. If your taste runs to threesomes then life just got even better. There’s now an app for that: 3nder. After only six months in business it has registered more than 200,000 users.

Life also improved last week for gay couples living in the 11 American states where same-sex marriage became legal. Only 20 more states to go and the country will have finally fulfilled its constitutional mandate to grant equal protection under the law to all citizens of the United States.

Otherwise, I would say that on balance it has been a mixed bag of sexual transgression and religious fundamentalism. Stolen nude photographs of the actress Jennifer Lawrence were shared online; a Texas law closing 80% of the state’s abortion clinics came into effect; and Phil Robertson, the gay-bashing patriarch of the popular TV docudrama Duck Dynasty, issued another fire and brimstone statement about biblical sex versus the rest. And that’s only seven days in the life of a nation.

British attitudes to sex could fill an entire library. But I’m telling you, Americans are all over the place. This is the country, after all, that invented the scarlet letter as well as the celebrity sex tape.

Continue reading…

The Sunday Times: America, the land of unleaders, lets in a brutal new world order

Photo: davide ragusa

Photo: davide ragusa

RIGHT now, is there any American child who says: “Mom, Dad: when I grow up I’m going to be a leader”? Movie star, lawyer, software designer, maybe. But leader — as in the person who makes things happen — nooo. That’s not the American way any more.

Instead the United States has unleaders. They carry the seals of office but they don’t wield them because that would be problematic. To the unleader, anything that implies the existence of a vertical relationship bears the stigma of imperialism and God knows what else. Forget about driving, shaping, changing or simply taking responsibility for events. That’s 20th-century talk. Unleadership is a state of being rather than the act of doing.

It is not a new phenomenon. The average 19th-century American politician barely rated on the leadership scale. Aside from Abraham Lincoln and a handful of others, most US presidents before the 20th century were a sorry lot of party hacks and political hucksters.

Continue reading…

WSJ Historically Speaking: Fire as a Source of Destruction—and Innovation

Photo: EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

Photo: EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

Wildfire season officially began in September, but the long drought in parts of the U.S. has made the idea of a specific season seem almost redundant. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, the U.S. has already suffered 41,000 wildfires this year, resulting in the loss of 3.1 million acres.

Although fire remains one of the greatest dangers to human life, throughout history, its devastating power has been a source of both inspiration and innovation.

In 24 B.C., the constant threat of city fires led the Roman Emperor Augustus to institute the Cohortes Vigilum, the first municipal fire department. Its 7,000 freedmen acted as watchmen, day and night. Although Rome’s six-story wooden buildings and narrow streets made actual firefighting all but impossible, the Cohortes Vigilum helped make the city a safer place. If necessary, it had the authority to knock down whole streets—a crude but effective form of fighting fires.

Continue reading…

The Sunday Times: America may fret over its shrinking middle class but the dream is intact

Photo: Luis Llerena

Photo: Luis Llerena

First, some history. In 1883, during the middle of the Gilded Age, Alva Vanderbilt decided to force her way into the elite sector of New York society known as “Mrs Astor’s Four Hundred”.

For years, Mrs Astor had maintained her own list of acceptable blue bloods. “Old money”, a relative term compared with Europe, counted; “new money” did not. Unfortunately for Alva, the Vanderbilt family wealth — which topped $1bn (£616m) in today’s money — was considered new money.

It was perhaps not surprising that Mrs Astor fought so hard to maintain the tribal identity of New York high society. The Gilded Age was an era of sudden prosperity (the economy grew by 400% between 1860 and 1900) and gross income disparities. According to best estimates, by 1905 the top 1% held more than 50% of the country’s wealth. Yet it was also an era of unprecedented social mobility.

Alva Vanderbilt understood that the issue at stake was class versus caste. Armed with that insight, she built the showiest mansion on Park Avenue, planned history’s most expensive costume ball (costing $250,000 when the average income was $380 a year), and invited every smart person in New York — except for Mrs Astor and her daughter Carrie, then in the middle of her debutante season.

Continue reading…

WSJ Historically Speaking: Women Who Led the Fight for Independence

Photo: THOMAS FUCHS

Photo: THOMAS FUCHS

In years to come, the 2014 Scottish independence campaign is likely to be remembered for its overflowing testosterone. In this case, it was men brandishing their microphones. The campaign leaders, the debaters, the pollsters, even the egg-throwers were predominantly male. Women’s voices seemed to form a polite backdrop, as though the entire country had suffered a fit of 19th-century female gentility—except for the fact that actual 19th-century women were hardly shy about firing a rifle for independence.

The 1820s and ’30s in particular were a vintage time for the female independentista. Across the globe, from the Spanish-American Wars of Independence to the Greek Revolution to the November Uprising in the Polish-Russian War, women became spies, nurses, soldiers, couriers, sutlers, propagandists and even unofficial bankers. Some lived to tell the tale; some didn’t.

Continue reading…

The Sunday Times: Here’s the first crack in the shield around America’s bad teachers

Photo: Redd Angelo

Photo: Redd Angelo

A nightmare scenario is unfolding for the Californian parents of 12-year-old Jane Smith. Their child has been in a car accident and lies unconscious in A&E. The doctors say that Jane is bleeding internally — only an immediate operation will save her life.

Unfortunately it’s a Wednesday. That’s the day the surgeon on call is Dr Jones, aka Dr Death. He has killed every patient under his care for the past 10 years. The hospital would give anything to be rid of him. But Jones has tenure and that means he’s untouchable. In the past 10 years only 0.0007% of Californian surgeons have been sacked for incompetence. Bad luck to the Smiths; little Jane picked the wrong day to need surgery.

As far as I know, this scenario has never happened. American doctors simply aren’t that powerful. But until three months ago its teachers were. The dismissal rate of 0.0007% is a genuine statistic. That is to say, over the past decade just 19 incompetent teachers in California have been sacked out of a workforce of almost 300,000.

It’s no secret as to why: teachers in the state receive tenure after a mere 18 months. From then on, union regulations ensure that it takes years of hearings and can cost more than $1m (£610,000) to remove a single teacher.

Continue reading…

WSJ Historically Speaking: Pandemics Over the Centuries

Photo: THOMAS FUCHS

Photo: THOMAS FUCHS

As the Ebola virus ravages the west coast of Africa, scientists in Canada have reported promising new signs in the search for a cure. This could be a major step toward beating the dreaded disease. But the first such breakthrough was discovering that Ebola is spread through bats native to West Africa.

Throughout the history of pandemics, figuring out how a disease spreads has been key to controlling it. Without such knowledge, a population has scant means of defending itself.

In 1615, a French trading ship was wrecked off the coast of Massachusetts. One of the four survivors was carrying smallpox and passed it on to the Wampanoag Tribe. Time-honored Native American cures, such as sweating or bundling the sufferer, only helped spread the virus. Within 20 years, some nine-tenths of the New England tribes had disappeared.

In the 19th century, another deadly threat arrived from Europe: cholera. The U.S. had escaped the first eruption of the disease in 1817. But thanks to modern travel, the second eruption in 1829 became a trans-Atlantic pandemic. It started in India, then moved along the trade routes into Europe and China.

Continue reading…

The Sunday Times: Legal thuggery and rule by fine print batter America’s body politic

Photo: Cole Patrick

Photo: Cole Patrick

This year I have been away from home a great deal working on a documentary series that will complement my forthcoming book on the history of women. The experience has been an eye-opener in many ways.

The past month, for example, has been spent in countries that don’t entirely share the BBC’s position on the bribing of public officials, or the European Union’s love of health and safety, or America’s belief in equality for all. What I witnessed made me feel lucky to be living in New York.

The airport may be a sorry dump but the rest of the city still sizzles with energy and optimism. Yet for the first time I have arrived back with a sense of foreboding.

Contrary to popular belief, democracies are not more robust than their totalitarian counterparts. It is in fact relatively easy to subvert a democratic institution from the inside, rotting the core while leaving the facade intact. Turkey, for instance, that beacon of Middle Eastern democracy, has the highest number of detained journalists in the world.

Continue reading…