DOCSLIB.ORG

Two Admirable Blue Stockings

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Two Admirable Blue Stockings VOLUME 3 No. 2 FEBRUARY 2003 Two admirable blue stockings Eliot seems unique among her literary contemporaries - both Continental European and English - in espousing the cause of the Jews. Dostoevsky showed antisemitic tendencies, as did Gustav Freytag, and, to a lesser extent, Balzac. Among English novelists the best-selling Charles Dickens had created the stereotypical Fagin figure (although he subsequently tried to make amends with .«« his sympathetic portrayal of Riah, a Emma Lazarus minor character in Our Mutual Friend). George Eliot t-xactly 100 years ago a plaque was affixed The similarly prolific Anthony Trollope scheme only one degree less chimerical ^° the plinth of the Statue of Liberty on made the foreign financier Melmotte a than a plan for a gipsy nationality '^llis Island. The inscription read: monomaniac - though not unique - villain in Africa. in The Way We Live Now. When Henry James was asked to Give me your tired, your poor, Yo,u r huddled masses yearning to breathe free, Eliot had not always been a review the novel, he found the task so "e wretched refuse of your teeming shore, philosemite. Criticising Disraeli's novels onerous that he wrote his critique in the j'^nd these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, Conigsby and Tancred at the start of her form of a debate between three readers. '•ft ray lamp beside the golden door! literary career, she had written: 'The One of his alter egos said she was wearied ijie promise contained in these stirring fellowship of race to which Disraeli by the Jewish burden of the story and felt ^es by Emma Lazarus was, alas, only exultantly refers is an inferior impulse ... tempted to skip chunks. Another dubbed ^^mporary. In 1924 the US Congress Everything specifically Jewish is of a low Daniel Deroruia 'a dreadful prig' and ^"ided unrestricted immigration, abruptly grade.' During the subsequent decades, subjected him to primitive antisemitic ^rminating the greatest Jewish when she immersed herself in jibes: 'I am siu^e he had a nose and I hold •^Pulation movement in history. It had philosophy and theology, travelled on the that the author has shown great ^^ed in 1881 when the Tsarist regime continent, fell under the spell of Heine, pusillanimity in her treatment of it. She ^sponded to the assassination of and suffered ostracism because of her has quite shirked it.' •^exander with a series of pogroms. imconventional lifestyle, her estimate of The fact that Henry James felt impelled Within a year boatloads of fugitive the Jews underwent a radical to inject this crude example of gutter •Russian Jews arrived in the USA. Her transformation. antisemitism into his review shows the ^Counter with them inspired the And not only that. She hoped that forces George Eliot was battling. She ^Phardic Emma Lazarus, who had Daniel Deronda (published in 1874) was fully aware of this, as shown by the rsonally experienced neither poverty would 'widen the English vision'. For her, title of one of the last essays she wrote: ^'" persecution, to write Songs of a the Jews' preservation of their faith 'The Modem Hep! Hep! Hep!' (the "^'te. In the composition of those poems through centuries of dispersal and acronym for Hierusalema est per dita: ^ endeavoured to live up to her teacher persecution was a model for the way the Jerusalem is lost - the cry uttered during sho' Ph Waldo Emerson's precept 'to show EngHsh might reaffirm their national the Crusader pogroms). ^ Celestial element in the despised consciousness. Two centuries ago Wordsworth wrote: ^Sent' (i.e. in humdrum daily life). On But above all, of course, Daniel 'Milton, thou shouldst be living at this '^Pleting the cycle Lazarus dedicated it Deronda was a Zionist novel, and Eliot hour/England has need of thee.' Today, 3 fellow woman writer, who, she wrote, deserves to be called the greatest, if not when the air is filled with the din of new J "lost among the artists of our day the first, gentile Zionist. And, like most 'Hep! Hep!' cries fi-om Peshawar to ards elevating and ennobling the spirit visionaries, she was - often wilfully - Finsbury Park, one would like to rewrite p •'e*ish nationaUty.' This dedicatee was misunderstood. To Leslie Stephen Wordsworth's lines, substituting George ^rge Eliot. (Virginia Woolf s father) Zionism was a Eliot for Milton, and Zion for England. AJR JOURNAL FEBRUARY 2003 Virtual reality Richard Grunberger Though der Heim - the Yiddish-speaking heartland of Eastern Europe - vanished over halfa century ago, it spawned a rich folklore, some of which fed into world culture. Prime examples are the legend of the Golem - the precursor of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - and the notion of demonic possession exemplified in kn^k)!?, Dybbuk. Nicholas Winton, pictured here with Esther Rantzen (left) and Vera Gissing, At a less elevated level, stories was guest of honour at a gathering of 200 Kindertransport members held at the Imperial War Museum last August. The meeting, organised by the AJR, abounded about archetypal fools, was part of the Continental Britons Exhibition programme of events braggarts, drunks, beggars (shnorrers) and gossips (yentes). The fools all The 93-year-old nnan known as 'Britain's 'the Englishman in Wenceslas Square', inhabited the real, existing Polish town of Schindler' has been awarded a trying to persuade him to include their Chelm (Chelmno). German simpletons, knighthood. For nearly 50 years he children on his lists to get them out of in contrast, lived in the fictitious Schilda - concealed his humanitarian mission: the country. Eventually he put 669 hence the term Schildburger. The English his late wife, Greta, discoverefl that he children on eight trains for London- had organised the evacuation of 669 equivalent, Gotham - as in 'Three wise But on the outbreak of war, on 3 youngsters out of Czechoslovakia only September 1939, the ninth train, the men of Gotham went to sea in a sieve' - when she found lists of the children in one carrying the most children, never was an obscure village in Northants. an old leather briefcase in their attic. left the station. Braggarts are personified in the In 1938 Nicholas Winton, who was One of 'Winton's children'. Vera European imagination by somewhat flaky working for the London Stock Gissing, said he 'rescued the greater aristocratic figures like Baron von Exchange, was invited to Prague by a part of the Jewish children of nvj Miinchhausen and Sir John Falstaff. The friend at the British embassy. On arrival, generation in Czechoslovakia. VeryievJ Yiddish counterpart as teller of tall tales he was asked to assist in the refugee oi us met our parents again - they is the plebeian Hershele Ostropoler. The camps. Noticing that nobody seemed perished in concentration camps. Had last named was ordinary, but not average. to be helping the children, he set up an we not been spirited away, we woulo In the Yiddish communal subconscious, office at a dining room table in a city have been murdered alongside them.' Mr Average - the Victorians' 'man on the hotel. Soon, parents were rushing to HS Clapham omnibus', alias Joe Bloggs - is Chaim Yankel. After faces lost in the crowd, places lost Thea's Diary in the distance. When the English want to On 27 January, marking this year's Holocaust evoke the back of beyond they say Memorial Day, Radio 4's Women's Hour is Timbuktu, and the Americans Hicksville. broadcasting the first of ten episodes of Ttiea's Diary (originally Das Tagebuch der Tt>ea Gersten). The Yiddish counterpart to those places Thea Hurst (nee Gersten) was born in Leipzig in is Yehupets (the Austrian equivalent is 1925 and now lives in Yorkshire. She wrote her Kigrizpotschen - possibly a strange diary between 1939 and 1947. It begins shortly compound of Kirghiz and slippers). after Kristallnacht in Leipzig and chronicles loss, exile and coming to terms with a new culture in Mention of Austria brings to mind their England. The programme can be heard at 10.45 national stereotype of cretinous am with daily repeats at 7.45 pm. aristocrats: Graf (Count) Bobby. His BD nearest English equivalent, other than the generic term 'chinless wonder', is Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster. Yiddish AJR Journal folklore has produced nothing remotely Richard Grunberger Editor-in-Chief JACKMAN • similar; lacking a land of their own, the Ronald Channing Executive Editor Howard Spier Editorial and Production SILVERMAN Jews also lacked a landed aristocracy. The AJR Journal, 1 Hampstead Gate, COMMERCIAL PROPERTY' CONSULTANT closest Jewry got to having a hierarchy la Frognal, London NW3 6AL was the priesthood - and no one would Tel: 020 7431 6161 Fax: 020 7431 8454 e-mail: [email protected] 26 Conduit Street, London WIR 9TA poke fun at that living repository of www.ajrorg.uk traditional wisdom. Telephone: 020 7409 0771 Fax: 020 7493 SCl m AJR JOURNAL FEBRUARY 2003 Lost in transit Richard Grunberger NEWTONS Leading Hampstead Solicitors advise on At a recent '43 Club evening a member Berliners crooned Reich' mir die Hand Property, Wills, Family Trusts criticised the choice of Continental mein Leben Komm' auf mein Schloss mit and Charitable Trusts Britons as the title of last year's mich/Ich will dir Kuchen geben Denn French and German spoken exhibition at the Jewish Museum. His Semmeln frisst de nich. The UK called point was that we should define one the Toreador's Song, and the other Home visits arranged ourselves by the language and culture in La ci darem la mono - and how many 22 Fitzjohn's Avenue, which we had our roots, rather than by Brits were Italian speakers? London NWS 5NB that into which we got pitch-forked. As against this, I concluded, Germany Wanning to his theme, the speaker even Tel: 020 7435 5351 had produced nothing to equal Fax: 020 7435 8881 found fault with his contemporaries for Elizabethan poetry, Jacobean drama or having omitted to pass on the German Restoration comedy.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • U DSG Papers of Howard Sergeant, Including [1930]-1995 the Archives of 'Outposts' Poetry Magazine
    Hull History Centre: Howard Sergeant, inc 'Outposts' poetry magazine U DSG Papers of Howard Sergeant, including [1930]-1995 the Archives of 'Outposts' poetry magazine Biographical Background: Herbert ('Howard') Sergeant was born in Hull in 1914 and qualified as an accountant. He served in the RAF and the Air Ministry during the Second World War and with the assistance of his friend Lionel Monteith, edited and published the first issue of his poetry magazine 'Outposts' in February 1944. Outposts is the longest running independent poetry magazine in Britain. Sergeant had been writing poetry since childhood and his first poem to be published was 'Thistledown magic', in 'Chambers Journal' in 1943. 'Outposts' was conceived in wartime and its early focus was on poets 'who, by reason of the particular outposts they occupy, are able to visualise the dangers which confront the individual and the whole of humanity, now and after the war' (editorial, 'Outposts', no.1). Over the decades, the magazine specialised in publishing unrecognised poets alongside the well established. Sergeant deliberately avoided favouring any particular school of poetry, and edited 'Mavericks: an anthology', with Dannie Abse, in 1957, in support of this stance. Sergeant's own poetry was included in the first issue of 'Outposts' (but rarely thereafter) and his first published collection, 'The Leavening Air', appeared in 1946. He was involved in setting up the Dulwich Group (a branch of the British Poetry Association) in 1949, and again, when it re-formed in 1960. In 1956, Sergeant published the first of the Outposts Modern Poets Series of booklets and hardbacks devoted to individual poets.
    [Show full text]
  • A History of the Kindertransports
    VOLUMEAJR JOURNAL 11 NO.9 SEPTEMBERSEPTEMBER 2011 A history of the Kindertransports he appearance of a history of the But the inclusion of the post-1945 plainly insufficient for a study of the Kindertransports is an event of transports makes possible a broadening settlement of the Kindertransportees T considerable interest to the many of focus and a comparative dimension over a period of some 65 post-war years, AJR members who were themselves that Turner’s study lacks. The post-war and it leaves much of their later lives in Kindertransportees and to the wider transports may only have numbered Britain and their interaction with the wider community of Jewish refugees in general. hundreds, but they should not be wholly community of the refugees from Hitler in Surprisingly, no proper academic history overshadowed by their now famous pre- Britain uncovered. Indeed, Fast hardly of the Kindertransports in English war predecessors. seems aware of the existence of the large, exists. The last comprehensive book However, by adding the later active and vibrant community of refugees on the subject, Barry Turner’s … transports, Fast is forced to reduce from Germany and Austria that developed And the Policeman Smiled: 10,000 the amount of space devoted to the in the post-war decades in areas like north- Children Escape from Nazi Europe, was Kindertransports of 1938/39, which must west London. published by Bloomsbury in 1990. As As if to prove that point, the AJR does its sometimes breathlessly urgent style not appear in the book’s index, rating a and its sentimental title indi cate, it was mention only in the list of abbreviations written by a journalist, not a historian.
    [Show full text]
  • THE CURIOSITY PROJECT at ROYAL HOLLOWAY FUELLING INQUISITIVE MINDS Contents
    TheThe magazine magazine for for the the alumni alumni of of Royal Royal Holloway Holloway and and Bedford Bedford HigherIssueHigherIssue 19 19 Winter Winter 2013 2013 BRILLIANTBRILLIANT WORLD-LEADINGWORLD-LEADING OLYMPICOLYMPIC UNBOUNDEDUNBOUNDED BRAINSBRAINS RESEARCHRESEARCH CREDENTIALSCREDENTIALS CREATIVITYCREATIVITY PIONEERINGPIONEERING GAME-CHANGINGGAME-CHANGING GROUNDBREAKINGGROUNDBREAKING EXTRAORDINARYEXTRAORDINARY CYBERCYBER SECURITY SECURITY NANOTECHNOLOGYNANOTECHNOLOGY BIOSCIENCEBIOSCIENCE SPACESSPACES TheThe CuriosityCuriosity Project:Project: LiftingLifting the the lid lid on on the the next next exciting exciting phase phase in in our our development development TheThe Sheriff Sheriff of of London: London: Adrian Adrian Waddingham’s Waddingham’s year year in in the the saddle saddle ICT4D:ICT4D: Leading Leading the the way way in in using using new new technologies technologies for for development development FindingFinding a avoice: voice: How How the the brain brain controls controls vocal vocal identity identity LEAVE YOUR MARK ON CAMPUS... OR YOUR Add your name to our special brick pathway and leave your permanent mark on the College We’re inviting Royal Holloway and Bedford New College alumni, students, staff and supporters to add their names to a special brick pathway, which will lead from Founder’s Building to our stunning new library when it opens in 2016. For a donation of £100, you can personalise one of the English Heritage-approved bricks with up to 32 characters and have it set into our walk of fame. At the same time, you’ll be helping Royal Holloway to move forward with its ambitious plans – and up the university rankings. E BE A BRICK – BUY A BRICK Visit www.royalholloway.ac.uk/brick to give your name and pay online.
    [Show full text]
  • Journal Association of Jewish Refugees
    VOLUME 8 NO.2 FEBRUARY 2008 ^^IH journal Association of Jewish Refugees All Our Yesterdays - the 1960s h, the Skties! Sex, drugs and rock PFLMCHN. Everything has changed, I have 'n' roll, all enveloped in a heady haze changed, everything will be as you want it. Aof reefer smoke. 'If you can Let us discuss things. Please telephone' remember the Sixties, you weren't there.' (March 1968) would have been inconceivable Seriously speaking, though, the Sixties were in a personal ad ten years earlier. a decade of fast-moving change, during One of the most striking features of the which entire areas of British society decade's rejection of established authority underwent a fundamental transformation. was the satire boom of the early 1960s. How did the refugees from Nazism react to Following on from the revue Beyond the the 'decade of revolution'? After all, they had Fringe (1960), in which Jonathan Miller, mostly arrived in Britain in the late 1930s; Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett the society into which they had integrated made their names, a wave of savage political and with which they had become familiar satire found expression in the magazine was that of the Second World War, late Private Eye (founded 1961), with Gerald 1940s austerity and the cosy consumerism Scarfe's cartoons, the television show That The Beatles: 'Abbey Road' of the 1950s. The explosion of youth culture, Was the Week That Was (1962/63), of radical anti-establishment politics and of took little interest in fashion, commented on presented by David Frost, and the Soho club challenges to authority and convention the shortness of skirts, an indicator of new The Establishment, where the political and across the board, exhilarating though it was, freedoms that did not escape its (male) social establishment was mercilessly would have aroused mixed feelings in them, correspondents' eye.
    [Show full text]
  • A Graphic Memoir About Forced Migration
    The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration Catherine Appleton MA Digital Design (Griffith University) BA Hons. (University of Reading) Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Office of Education Research Faculty of Education Queensland University of Technology 2019 Keywords Graphic novel, graphic memoir, child migration, Kindertransport, memory, representation, trauma, Jewish persecution Abstract Forced migration has resurfaced as one of the major challenges of modern society. A historic event that has relevance today is the Kindertransport – an organised rescue effort that evacuated 10,000 children, predominantly Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Free City of Danzig, prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. This historic rescue effort has only recently been documented in scholarly research studies and in a number of autobiographical memoirs, televised documentaries and films. The aim of this study is to retell the Kindertransport rescue effort and the traumatic repercussions through the life of one kind (child) survivor, Ella Eberštark. This personal historic narrative takes the form of a graphic novel (The Wounds of Separation) and an exegesis of the research and methodology that informed the creative process. The creative component of the thesis is a graphic novel, a format that is increasingly appealing to young adult and adult readers. As the narrative is based on personal remembrances it is more specifically a graphic memoir. The Wounds of Separation represents the historical facts of this forced migration rescue operation in an image and text narrative. Interviews, family letters and extant documented information provide the source material for this refugee story.
    [Show full text]
  • SEPTEMBER 2021 JOURNAL the Association of Jewish Refugees
    VOLUME 21 NO.9 SEPTEMBER 2021 JOURNAL The Association of Jewish Refugees HAPPY NEW YEAR Every aspect of We wish all our readers Shana Tovah and well over the fast. May it be a good new year for you all. British life Because so many of the yom tovim fall on weekdays our regular Zoom The literary critic George Steiner once said, “When you come programme looks a little thinner this to a house as a guest, you must try and leave the house a little month but we are looking forward to seeing many of you during our nicer than you found it.” This mirrors the impact that Jewish very special online tea party on 12 Refugees have had on modern British culture, as this article September. during when we will be celebrating 80 years of the AJR. – the first in a four-part series that helps mark the AJR’s 80th anniversary year – explains. Meanwhile we have lots of interesting articles to keep you entertained and as always would welcome any feedback. News ............................................................ 3 80 Trees for 80 Years .................................... 4 Letter from Israel .......................................... 5 Letters to the Editor & Looking For ...........6-7 Art Notes...................................................... 8 The Gestapo's Who's Who of anti-Nazis ..... 9 Decades of Anglo-Austrian Co-operation .. 10 Major Museums revamp ............................ 11 Picture These .............................................. 12 The majestic Messels .................................. 13 The role of rescue organisations ................. 14 The secret Jewish commandos ................... 15 Reviews .................................................16-17 Obituaries .............................................18-19 Events ........................................................ 20 The 1960 film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, directed by the Czech-born Karel Reisz, is widely acclaimed as one of the best films depicting Britain's 'Angry Young Men' Please note that the views expressed throughout this publication are not necessarily the views of the AJR.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Southampton Research Repository Eprints Soton
    University of Southampton Research Repository ePrints Soton Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", University of Southampton, name of the University School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination http://eprints.soton.ac.uk UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Modern Languages The Translingual Imagination in the Work of four Women Poets of German-Jewish Origin by Meike Reintjes Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2014 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON ABSTRACT FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Modern Languages Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy THE TRANSLINGUAL IMAGINATION IN THE WORK OF FOUR WOMEN POETS OF GERMAN-JEWISH ORIGIN Abstract In this thesis, I am developing a theory of the translingual imagination which can be used as a tool to explore literature written in a second language. The term ‘translingual imagination’ was first coined by Steven Kellman in his essay ‘Translingualism and the Literary Imagination’, describing the work of authors writing in a language other than their first.
    [Show full text]
  • The General Settlement Fund: Waiting for an End to Litigation
    VOLUME 5 NO. 6 JUNE 2005 The General Settlement Fund: Monument to Frank Foley unveiled waiting for an end to litigation More than four years since the General evidence to substantiate claims has been Settlement Fund was created following the sought in Austrian archives. signing of the Washington Agreement - a Since General Settlement Fund awards bilateral accord between the US and Austria - are calculated on a pro rata basis, before not a single payment has been made from the payments can be made it is necessary to indemnification programme established to process all 19,400 applications and to pay compensation for a comprehensive range establish the total amount being claimed. of Jewish-owned asset expropriation and This process is in sharp contrast with other Nazi persecution following the Anschluss of compensation measures, such as the Swiss March 1938. bank account awards, which provide for a Ll negotiating the Washington Agreement, single category or a lump sum payment Austria insisted on including a clause that the based on claimants' actual bank balances. To distribution of payments from the $210m implement this complex system, the staff of fund could proceed only when any outstanding the General Settlement Fund has been lawsuits being pursued in the US were either increased and the premises of their offices dismissed or withdrawn. One long-running extended. A monument to British agent Frank Foley lawsuit in a US court brought by Austrian is unveiled in his hometown of Highbridge, The Fund's decision-taking body, the Somerset survivors claims real estate and other independent Claims Committee, consists of possessions seized while the Nazi Reich one member appointed by the United The AJR, which generously supported the controlled Austria between 1938 and 1945.
    [Show full text]
  • Humanitarian Aid for Central European Refugees from the United Kingdom
    Culture & History Digital Journal 8(2) December 2019, e023 eISSN 2253-797X doi: https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2019.023 Fractured Childhoods, Identities in Transit: Humanitarian Aid for Central European Refugees from the United Kingdom Magdalena Garrido Caballero Universidad de Murcia, Dpto. Historia Moderna, Contemporánea, de América, del Pensamiento y los Movimientos Sociales y Políticos e-mail: [email protected] ORCID iD: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7468-5960 Submitted: 18 May 2018. Accepted: 24 March 2019 ABSTRACT: The aim of this study is to address the situation of one of the most vulnerable social collectives: Cen- tral European refugee children and youths who fled the territories occupied by the Third Reich, thanks to the help provided by large number of private or public organizations, which resulted in the reception of about ten thousand refugees in the United Kingdom at the beginning of World War II. To this end, diverse documents have been ana- lysed from archives such as The National Archive and The British Library, in order to learn more about this human drama and its impact upon international politics, as well as the role played by the British Government. KEYWORDS: Refugees; Humanitarian aid; Europe; International Relations; Testimonies; Cultural identity; 20th century history. Citation / Cómo citar este artículo: Garrido Caballero, Magdalena (2019) “Fractured Childhoods, Identities in Transit: Humanitarian Aid for Central European Refugees from the United Kingdom”. Culture & History Digital Journal, 8 (2): e023. https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2019.023
    [Show full text]
  • Dr Simon Thurley CBE: Keeper of England’S Heritage
    The magazine for the alumni of Royal Holloway and Bedford HigherIssue 16 Spring 2012 Dr Simon Thurley CBE: Keeper of England’s heritage Olympics come to College Breaking the Code: Alumni at Bletchley Park Fire and fossils: Professor Andrew Scott Founder’s Weddings Exclusive benefits for our alumni the perfect setting for your perfect day The College Chapel is now available exclusively to alumni for Christian wedding ceremonies, offering a truly personal location and special memories for you and your guests. The Picture Gallery and Dining Hall provide a spectacular setting for alumni wedding receptions. Our award winning catering and experienced hospitality staff will ensure you experience the wedding you’ve always dreamed about. We are also delighted to offer a generous alumni discount on our individually tailored wedding receptions. Chapel enquiries (term-time only) Wedding reception enquiries [email protected] or 01784 443950 [email protected] or 01784 276224 www.conferences.rhul.ac.uk/weddings Contents In Focus 4 4–5 Mark Carwardine tracks the spirit bear A red slender loris caught on film in Sri Lanka News 6 (see page 31) 6 From the Principal 7 Letters to the Editor 8–9 College news 10–11 Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences 12–13 Faculty of Management and Economics 14–15 Faculty of Science Features 16 16–18 Keeper of England’s heritage: Dr Simon Thurley CBE 19 Open for science: our record-breaking science open days 20–21 Olympics come to College 22–24 Breaking the code: our alumni at Bletchley Park, by Margaret Lenton 25 Making
    [Show full text]
  • The 'Winton Children'
    VOLUMEAJR JOURNAL 11 NO.8 AUGUSTauGUST 2011 The Italian connection his year saw the 150th anniversary State (based in Rome), Austrian influence of the unification of Italy in 1861, also remained decisive. Freedom-loving T which, along with the unification Italians perceived it as ruthlessly, evilly of Germany ten years later, transformed tyrannical; the fate of Puccini’s Tosca and the map of Europe and the international her lover Cavaradossi, one recalls, turns political order of the Continent. The in part on the outcome of the Battle of unification of Italy was closely intertwined Marengo (1800) between the Austrians, with events in pre-unification Germany, natural allies of the wicked Scarpia, and especially the power struggle between the French under Napoleon. the two principal German states, Austria The Italians and the Germans were the and Prussia, and formed an important principal national groups in Western and dimension to the history of German- Central Europe that did not have a unified, speaking Mitteleuropa in the nineteenth independent state of their own. The century. Germans lacked both the romantic appeal The historical connection between of such suppressed victim nationalities Germany and Italy reached back almost as the Poles or the Irish and the rallying 1,000 years, to the founding of the Holy force of charismatic leader figures, which Roman Empire, usually dated to the coro- the Italians undoubtedly possessed, in Count Cavour, 1810-61 nation of Otto I as emperor in 962, which the persons of Giuseppe Mazzini, the itself harked back to the coronation of the perception of Italy as the land of beauty, ideologue of Italian independence, and Frankish King Charlemagne as emperor symmetry and sunlit clarity, where the Giuseppe Garibaldi, the revolutionary in Rome in 800.
    [Show full text]
  • Lotte Kramer's Collected Poems
    VOLUMEAJR JOURNAL 12 NO.5 MAYAY 2012 Lotte Kramer’s collected poems otte Kramer, born Lotte Wertheimer more distant by the barbarism that had nel of her life, have nurtured and enriched in Mainz in 1923, started writing enveloped their native countryside in her, ‘the bloodstream feeding both sides’. L poetry only relatively late, in 1979, 1933, excluding them from the community Above all, Kramer the poet has been when what she calls ‘the ice-break of to which they had belonged. enriched by exposure to two languages. words’ induced her to confront the trau- In her poem ‘Rhine’, Kramer addresses Her poem ‘Bilingual’ conveys the well- matic experiences of her childhood: the the river as a powerful protective force defined intellectual order of German: humiliation and suffering inflicted on her – ‘Always the father of my being/ When you speak German as a Jew, the parting from her parents Unchanging in your majestic song’ – The Rhineland opens its watery gates, when she left for Britain on a Kinder- that is unaffected by the fickleness of Lets in strong currents of thought. transport train in July 1939, and the loss humankind. While the sight of barges Sentences sit on shores teeming of many family members in the Holocaust, With certainties. including her parents, who were deported English, by contrast, remains fluid and to Piaski, near Lublin in Poland. These elusive: experiences are central to the substantial volume of her New and Collected Poems, When you speak English published in 2011 by Rockingham Press of The hesitant earth softens your vowels. Ware, Hertfordshire, priced £9.99.
    [Show full text]