Polish pride
A very dear friend bought your magazine and on reading the article Captured,
Deported, Humiliated, Victorious (July) contacted me and said “It’s your father’s story!” On reading it, it was about my late father Julian Bester, born in Lvov (Polish Ukraine) on 15 March 1925.
The words in the article brought tears to my eyes as I could hear my dad’s voice telling me how he survived being taken away, with his family, by the Russians and working in the Siberian forest chopping down trees. I never knew all the details of his life until we thankfully managed to persuade him to write it down. Through Hell to Freedom was published about his incredible efforts to survive. I could go on for much longer, but my dad wouldn’t like me to ‘ brag’ about him. He was a kind, gentle and unassuming person and I miss him every day. Thank you for the article. Helen James ( née Bester), via email
Herodotus missed
Others besides your excellent panel of commentators will have their favourite lamentable omittee(s) from your latest History Hot 100 (September). Mine is without hesitation Herodotus, the ‘ father of history’, as Cicero dubbed him. But for him, where would BBC History Magazine – where indeed would all we historians – be?
Two other relevant items – relevant to him but not only him – caught my attention in that same issue. The total solar eclipse allegedly predicted by Thales of Miletus ( It was Written in the Stars) is first mentioned in the Histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus. Second was the ‘ lost’ battle of Sandwich of 1217, which strikes your contributor Sean McGlynn as “more important” than Trafalgar and the Armada ( The Devil’s Monk). That reminded me of another, possibly even more controversial comparative judgment: JS Mill’s that the battle of Marathon in 490 BC was “more important, even as an event in English history, than the battle of Hastings”.
What matters is: important in whose history? Or in what history? The past is one thing, but it is we historians who ‘make’ history. How do we know or care about Marathon? Why should Mill have rated Marathon so? It is thanks ultimately to Herodotus, whose 2,500th birthday (give or take) some of us are celebrating mightily in this very year 2017. Professor Paul Cartledge, Cambridge
Attlee admiration
The actions taken by Clement Attlee against the Stalinist dictatorship ( Attlee’s Secret War with Stalin, October) reinforce his right to be regarded as one of our greatest peacetime prime ministers. As a convinced socialist, he took measures to improve the position of the working class while he also defied the totalitarians, ensured that the UK would develop nuclear weapons, implemented the 1944 Education Act establishing the grammar school system, and refused to have anything to do with the nascent European project, on the grounds that it was designed to take power from elected representatives and therefore inimical to British democracy. Can anyone doubt that the modern, neo-Marxist Labour party would deny him membership? Colin Bullen, Kent
Dane defeat
With reference to the article The Lost Battles of Viking Britain (September), one of the most important ‘ lost’ battles was not mentioned. This was the battle of Wodensfeld fought on 5 August AD 910 (sometimes referred to as the battle of Tettenhall). It was featured in Michael Wood’s TV programme on King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons. The Danes were defeated by the AngloSaxons under the leadership of Æthelred and Æthelflæda. Thousands were killed, including two Danish kings, and this battle was a turning point in British history. For the last three years it has been re-enacted on the likely site, on the closest Saturday to the anniversary.
So, after 1,107 years, this forgotten battle is remembered locally in the village that still bears the (modern) name of Wednesfield (now a suburb of Wolverhampton). Keith Pugh, Wolverhampton
Directions to Dunkirk
Reader Sylvia Baguette asks how little ships could get from Chester to the south coast for the Dunkirk evacuation ( Letters, September). Canals! Even today the journey is possible, via the Shropshire Union, Shropshire and Worcestershire, Birmingham Navigations and Grand Union Canals and into the river Thames. It is a trip of around 230 miles and, with large numbers of participants helping to prepare and work the locks, could go relatively smoothly. The website canalplan.eu shows the complete route. Anna de Lange, Sheffield
Remember, not celebrate
I have to take issue with Hallgeir Dale (“Not a ‘great’ war”, Letters, October 2017) who accuses we British of being infatuated with the First World War and wrongly refers to last year’s commemoration of the Somme and this year’s commemoration of Passchendaele as celebrations. We remember the slaughter – we do not celebrate it.
And it will be a sad day for us if the day ever comes that we do not remember the sacrifice of those who died on all sides, in two of the most pointless battles of the bloodiest war of all time.
It is only by remembering the horrors of those battles – and indeed as we do of all conflicts – at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month every year, that we can hope to avoid repeating those horrors.
For Hallgeir Dale to imply that we celebrate the loss of a generation of our young men is an insult to their memory and to us. Robert Readman, Bournemouth