HISTORY IN THE NEWS
A selection of the stories hitting the history headlines
Skeleton of soldier unearthed at Waterloo
Archaeologists at the site of the battle of Waterloo in Belgium have discovered the skeleton of a fallen soldier, not long after the dig resumed following a halt enforced by the pandemic. The remains of horses – used to move cannons and ammunition, or for cavalry charges – and three amputated limbs were earlier excavated at Mont-Saint-Jean Farm, where the Duke of Wellington established a field hospital.
The Napoleonic Wars were brought to an end by the clash on 18 June 1815, when the former emperor of France was defeated by Wellington’s British-led coalition allied with a Prussian army under the command of Field Marshal von Blücher. Napoleon was then exiled to the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he died six years later.
What makes the recent find remarkable is that, though the fighting resulted in tens of thousands of casualties, archaeologists have rarely found skeletons at the site. An enduring theory for this absence of human remains, based on contemporary newspaper reports, is that the bodies of the dead were collected and ground into fertiliser.
African anti-colonial hero to stand in Trafalgar Square
The latest artwork to grace the Fourth Plinth at London’s Trafalgar Square, to be unveiled in September, will commemorate a key figure in early 20th-century resistance to British colonial rule in Africa.
Antelope, by Samson Kambalu, honours preacher and educator John Chilembwe, who was killed in 1915 while leading an uprising in Nyasaland (now Malawi). Based on a photograph from 1914, the statue depicts Chilembwe wearing a hat – a powerful act of defiance at a time when colonial law forbade Africans from wearing hats in front of white people. The short-lived uprising failed to gain widespread support, and Chilembwe was shot dead by African soldiers under colonial control.
The sculpture also features European missionary John Chorley, who appeared in the 1914 photograph. However, the artwork – by Malawi-born Kambalu, associate professor of fine art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford – depicts Chorley at half the size of Chilembwe, subverting the typical distortions seen in historical narratives written from white European perspectives.
Antelope is the 14th work to stand on the Fourth Plinth since 1999. Previous installations included a giant HMS Victory in a bottle, and a lamassu, a human-headed winged bull of ancient Assyria.
Viking village approved on the Isle of Man
A project to create an interactive historical attraction on the Isle of Man has been given a boost with the approval of building plans for a replica Viking village. Once completed, the site at Sandygate will include a longhouse, temple, forge and barn, and will host battle re-enactments and Norse crafts workshops. The aim of landowner Chris Hall, who devised the idea in 2012, is to tell the history of Viking traders and settlers on the Isle of Man from their arrival in the ninth century.
Copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio sells for nearly £2 million
A copy of the First Folio – the first collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623, seven years after his death – has sold at auction in New York for $2.4 million (nearly £2m). Of the 36 plays included, 18 – Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew and The Tempest among them – might have been lost if they hadn’t been collated for the First Folio (pictured below) by John Heminges and Henry Condell, actors in Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men. Of around 750 copies printed, some 230–235 are known to survive.