David Prashker's Book Of Days: March 19

1944, 1848

St Joseph's Day is the reason for the public holiday across the sea in Eireland. Apparently they sing "mashiv ha ru'ach u morid ha gashem" in a 10th century Gaelic form of Latin.

Here amongst the barbaroi it seems to have gone unnoticed that, today in 1944 – which if you stop to think about it was an extraordinary date for such an event to have taken place: Michael Tippett's glorious (I use the term advisedly, conscious of its musical connotation) "A Child Of Our Time" was given its first performance, at the Adelphi Theatre in London. I am listening to it as I write, André Previn's 1968 recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and reading about Herschel Grynspan, the 17 year old Polish Jew who triggered Kristallnacht on November 9 1938 by shooting dead (on November 7th) the German diplomat in Paris, Ernst von Rath. The incident was also the "stimulus" for Tippett's Oratorio, just as the title was taken from another victim of the Nazis, the Hungarian Ödön von Horváth, whose novel "Ein Kind unserer Zeit" was also published in November 1938. I am slightly shocked to learn that Tippett asked T.S. Eliot to write the libretto; rather glad that Eliot declined - on the grounds that it would be "too obviously poetic" (the arrogant xxxx!). Too overtly anti-Semitic could be nearer the mark. What would be the best key to set "Bleistein with a fat cigar" I wonder? Something decidedly sharp, inexorably.

The cover of Previn's recording shows a young man who could very easily win an Elvis Presley look-alike competition, but is in fact the only known photograph of Herschel Grynspan - though probably the Nazis took a few for their archives, after capturing him when they captured France and taking him home for torture. He may have died at Sachsenhausen, according to one report, unless he was executed in 1940, as per another, or still alive and well into the late 1950s and working as a garage mechanic, if you prefer to credit the third legend (yes, Wikipedia, how did you guess?).

By coincidence, last weekend, my local library was having one of its regular clear-out sales, which gave me the four Tippett piano sonatas for just 20 pence. Recorded, thanks to an anonymous donation, in the Unitarian Chapel on Rosslyn Hill in Hampstead in 1984 and early 1985 by Paul Crossley. 20 pence – and they were pleased to get rid of it. 20 pence more than Vincent van Gogh ever earned for his paintings, and about what Mozart had left in his purse the day he died (see Dec 5).

More background on Grynspan here.

1848: The first edition of "La Voix des Femmes" ("The Women's Voice"), the first feminist daily newspaper in France, and the first newspaper of any kind in that country to be led by women, appeared today, and led to the creation of an entire organisation, "La Société de la Voix des Femmes". The paper lasted just three months, one more victim of the crushing of all forms of liberal thought in the wake of the 1848 revolution. It's short life is recounted here; the number of significant women who wrote for it, or wrote because of it, includes four of particular significance in the fightback against male domination: Jeanne Deroin (click here), Suzanne Voilquin (click here) and Desirée Gay (click here). Which I know makes only three.

The fourth, the founding editor, was Eugénie Mouchon-Niboyet, and she was by no means exclusively a feminist; she was just as likely to diatribe on issues of disability and incarceration, was a leading advocate for the abolition of slavery, earned her fame as a translator of English novels into French, and then enhanced with several novels of her own - click here for more on her.

Nor should this version of the newspaper be confused with another of the same name, launched on October 31 1917 by Colette Reynaud and Louise Bodin - I imagine they knew about the Niboyet version and were hoping to revive it, not simply to honour it by reclaiming its name. You can read its full tale here.

And speaking of powerful female voices, long before Dot Parker, though perhaps rather more in the wake of Mme Verdurin, Natalie Clifford Barney, born today in 1876; her version of the Algonquin Club was in Paris and included among its regulars a list far too long to recite here - simply click here and be astonished.