All names in this
Index are by birth-certificate, which may not be the name by which you know
them.
At the top left-hand
corner of every screen there is a flat rectangular box with an icon of a
magnifying-glass: your search bar. You may well find it easier to find the
person you are seeking there.
i) The historians
(including
the archeologists and anthropologists, because what else are they but ways of
studying human history; but also including the regular librarians, because they
are the ones who collect the written histories of human thought and imagination)
Elkan Nathan Adler: his "History of the Jews of London” is on Sept 30; his bio and books here
John Blackner: recorded
the tale of one Edward Ludnam (Ned Ludd) on Dec 20 - several
places worth exploring: here, here and here; for his "History of
Nottingham" try here
Joseph John Campbell (born March
26 1904; died October 30 1987): main essay on Feb 16;
influencing Ted Hughes on Aug 17; (influencing Spielberg and Lucas too); his website
here
Thomas Carlyle (born Dec 4 1795; died February 5 1881): his history
of the French Revolution is the work that posterity remembers, but he was also
a poet....bio here;
all the books here;
the London Library here;
Blue Plaque in King’s Cross here (for
the home which is now a museum, off Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, see P’s London)
Howard Carter (born May 9 1874; died March 2 1939): King
Tut on June 24 and Nov 4 (click here for the full tale; his 1922 diary account here); Egypt Exploration Society here; his Blue Plaque in South Kensington here; (how some wannabe archaeologist dug up the lost
remains of his suitcase, here)
Dio Cassius, which is actually a name reversal for his nom de
plume of Lucius
Cassius Dio: born 165
CE; deathdate unknown but circa 235 CE; heard the
continuing eruption of Mount Vesuvius on Aug 24 - bio here, and mostly here
Carlos
César Salvador Arana Castañeda (born Dec 25 1925; died April 27
1998): all the books here; his authenticity and validity questioned here
Eileen Mary Challans (Mary
Renault) (born Sept 4 1905; died December 13 1983): bio here; books here
Jean-François Champollion: born Dec
23 1790; died March 4 1832): carved in hieroglyphs
on Aug 23; bio and hieroglyphs
here and here
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill: (born November 30 1874; died January 24
1874): "Iron Curtain" speech on March
5; bombing Cologne on Aug 14 and May 28; mentioned on Sept 1 –
included on this list because of his history-writings, and regardless of his
politics: those histories (and other writings) here
Alexis Charles Henri Clérel (de Tocqueville was his title): epitomised
idealism on his birthdate, July 29
1805 (died April 16 1859): bio and books here
Charles Robert Darwin (born Feb 12 1809; died April 19
1882): mentioned on Feb 21
and March 30
; Natural History Museum here
Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine
Cleenewerck de Crayencour (Yourcenar, her pen-name, is an anagram, albeit with a
C missing): (born June 8 1903; died
December 17 1987): see especially Jan 24; her museum, here; Erasmus Prize here; Académie Française here; the prize in her name here; “Memoirs of Hadrian” here
Michael Elkins (born January 22 1917; died March 10
2001): authored "Forged In Fury" on August 3; Yad Vashem’s view of the book here; bio at
Foreign Press Association here; obituary from The Guardian here
Giovanni Florio (John Florio
when he moved to England) (born probably in 1553; died 1625): translator of Montaigne and hugely signficant to Shakespeare on Jan 30; bio here
Henry Wriothesley (born
October 6 1573; died November 10 1624): dumping Shakespeare for Florio on Jan 30
David
Gans:
chronicling the Jews of Prague on March 11
James George (J.G) Frazer (born Jan 1 1854; died
May 7 1941): bio at the Trinity College website, here, the Gifford Institute here; all the books here; the Golden Bough appraised here, complete with J.M.W. Turner’s painting
Edward Gibbon: (born May 8 1737; died January 16 1794): declined and fell, but only
in print, on June 27; bio here, the book here
Karl Heinrich Graf (born
February 28 1815; died July 16 1869): bio here: goes with Wellhausen, Bultmann and Dibelius on Oct 10 as the
founders of modern Bible Criticism (click here); he published his contribution,
“The Historical Books of the Old Testament”, in 1866; but all of it is really
just another Christian attempt to deal with the inconvenience of proper textual
study and uphold its own ideology against the evidence – whereas Gesenius is among
the librarians of Babel, because he produced that lexcicon
Robert von Ranke Graves (born July 24
1895; died December 7 1985): bio here (but read “Goodbye To All That” here for the full account); alongside J.G Frazer on Jan
1, and Joseph Campbell on March 26;
“Claudius” novels on Sept 4
and Oct 22; “Greek Myths” here for Vol 1, here for Vol II; “Hebrew Myths”, with Raphael Patai, here
His half-brother Philip
Perceval Graves (born February 25
1876; died June 3 1953; bio here) can be found
disclosing the fraudulence of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” on Aug 26
Naomi Haldane, though
her books used her married name, Naomi - Baroness - Mitchison (born
November 1 1897; died January 11 1999):
demonstrating why she wasn’t a terribly good historical novelist on May 2 (actually she was, but we all say
stupid things sometimes, [eg my comment about her not being...]). For the bio, books, poetry and politics, click here
James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (born June
21 1820; died January 3 1889): collecting nursery rhymes on March 15;
interesting rogue, for which click here
Edward Harley of Wimpole Hall, and his wife Margaret Cavendish Harley, and
their son John Harley; all key
to the making of the Montagu Circle on Oct 2. Harley and Wimpole as in “street”? So that’s why
that area of London became the intellectual hub at that epoch! You can read its
entire history, from the time of the ancient cavemen to the time of the
contemporary ones, here, and when you do so you will
understand very quickly why I have included them, Edward
especially, among the historians
Herodotus of
Halicarnassus: eclipsed on April 6 - bio here
Eric John
Ernest Hobsbawm (9 June
1917-1 October 2012): “collective bargaining by riot” on Dec 20 - his
website here
Albert Montefiore
Hyamson (born August 27 1875; died October 5
1954): writing about the return of the Jews to England on
Sept 30
C.L.R (Cyril Lionel
Robert) James (but sometimes J. R. Johnson): born in Trinidad & Tobago on
Jan 4 1901, died in London May 31 1989: befriended George Padmore on June 28
Flavius Josephus (born 37
CE in Yerushalayim, died circa 100 CE in Rome): recording history as propaganda
for Rome on March 10; when he
was still known as Yosef
ben Mattityahu he led the Jewish Zealots as a resistance army
against the Romans, then showed the Romans the back way into Yodfat (Jotapata),
and was rewarded by being appointed Titus’ personal
interpreter, which gave him a rather unique perspective on the destruction of
the Temple in 70CE
Thomas Michael Keneally: gets Oskar Schindler
completely wrong on June 24, July 27, Aug 23
and Sept 1; born Oct 7
Aleksandr Fyodorovich Kerensky (born May 4 1881; died June 11 1970):
led the Revolution on May 24 (? 🤷🏽♀️- wasn’t it February? oh, that calendar change
again!); his deposition plotted on June 16; proclaimed Russia a Republic on Sept 15; overthrown on Nov 6 (also April
22); mentioned on Aug 26 –
and why is he here, and not among the political
ideologues, given that he is on the responses to
bullying page? See my piece about him in “The Captive Bride”
Robert Johann Koldewey: born Sept 10
1855; died February 4 1925): German bio in brief here; slightly more here; but the life that
mattered was the work: reporting the excavation of Babylon here
Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey: (born Aug
7 1903; died October 1 1972): His wife, Mary
Douglas Nicol (born February 6 1913; died December 9 1996), can be found on the
same date; The Leakey Foundation website, here, has both their bios
and more
Thomas Babington Macaulay: born Oct 25 1800; died December 28 1859): buried in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey here (read the poems here); the politican here; the history book here; the forgotten ancestress who wrote an even better history of England, Catharine Macaulay, can be found on on
Andrew William Stevenson Marr: commenting on the BBC’s Orwell statue on June 25; but he is also the author of multiple history books, for which click here
Margaret Mead: born Dec 16 1901; died November 15 1978): Royal Anthropological Institute obituary here; dangerously contraversial but almost certainly correct here
James Albert Michener (born February 3 1907; died October 17 1997): the impact of “The Source” as methodology: would I have written "The Persian Fire" the way I did without it, let alone these blogs? But also a key factor in understanding the point at which McLuhan meets Stanislavski: “the medium is the message” versus "Method"; “The Source” is on Aug 3
Conyers Middleton (born December 27 1683; died July 28 1750): the step-grandfather without whom Elizabeth Montagu might never have become the salonneuse spectaculaire of Georgian England; Oct 2; his bio here, his library here
Leonard L Milberg: collecting Carvajal on Dec 8 (this link is also on the blog-page; this one is not, but it makes clear that wife Ellen may be just as significant to the collecting as husband Lenny)
Vidiadhar Surajprasad (V.S) Naipaul (born Aug 17 1932; died August 11 2018): Nobel Prize here; Guardian obituary here
Barthold Georg Niebuhr (born August 27 1776; died January 2 1831): added to the Oxford history curriculum by Matthew Arnold on Dec 24: click here for the Arnold connection, here for the Niebuhr bio
Guibert de Nogent (born April 15 1055; died at the splendidly named Coucy-le-Château-Auffrique at some time in 1124 or 1125): his last-name taken from the abbey at which he was the Benedictine father from 1104 until his death. Chronicler of the massacres of Jews that took place during the First Crusade, on July 14; bizarre piece here; the entire autobiography here
Antonio Genesio Maria Panizzi (Anthony Panizzi) (born Sept 16 1797; died April 8 1879): senior librarian at the British Museum, so where else should we go for his bio but here ; though here is also worth a visit, plus a fascinating piece about the transformation of Bloomsbury “from swampy rubbish-dump to centre of intellectual life”, which you can find on the Bloomsbury page of P’s London; and given his role, how about a comparative piece with Borges and Larkin and Middleton and Alberto Manguel and...
William of Poitiers (1020-1090): husband of Béatritz de Diá on Jan 13 (and therefore among the Trobairitz); bio here; the Gesta Guillelmi here, and a detailed appraisal here
Joseph Ritson (born October 2 1752; died September 23 1803): his "Gammer Gurton’s Garland", aka “The Nursery Parnassus” collects at least four of the rhymes on March 15; Gutenberg Press edition readable here; more on the man here
Lord Rothschild, or 2nd Baron Rothschild actually, Lionel Walter (born February 8 1868; died August 27 1937); recieved a letter of some importance from not-yet-Lord Balfour on Nov 2 (click here), though I suspect he might have wanted to be remembered even more for the materials he left to the Natural History Museum, for which click here; the full bio here
Harriet Rubin's "Dante In Love" quoted on June 24
Edward Wadie Said (born November 1 1935; died September 24 2003): protesting colonialism on Aug 20; start here
Johann Ludwig Heinrich Julius Schliemann (born January 6 1822; died December 26 1890 in Naples): buried at the First Cemetery in Athens, in honour of his having discovered Troy, on June 11; more on that here and here
Leo Walder Schwarz (1906-1967): quoted, from his "Memoirs Of My People" on Oct 12; a full guide to his utterly extraordinary life and work here and here
Walter Scott: born Aug 15; referenced on June 24; breeding bulls for beef-eaters on Sept 8; bio and archives here; poems here; the “Waverley” novels here
Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator (not to be confused with Marcus Aurelius, and generally remembered as Cassiodorus because people think Senator was his title) (circa 485 - circa 585): described the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on Aug 24
Michael Smith: parkwaying Frank Foley on May 7; his website and much more about the book her
Sir William Mark Tully: neither feline nor Cicero on Jan 3, and I don’t usually acknowledge aristocratic titles, but in his case I am very happy to make an exception; I don’t usually include journalists either, but had there been a Nobel Prize for what proper journalism should be rather than all that tabloid garbage, he would surely have been one of the awardees: click here
Leon Marcus Uris (born Aug 3 1924; died June 21 2003): “Mila 18” on April 19; other books here
Anne Wroe's biography of Pontius Pilate can be found on May 11 (her full-time job here, and I wonder, if all her weekly and other pieces were to be published in a single book – book? encyclopedia practically! - would it require even more volumes than this Book of Days)
You can find David Prashker at:
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