The playwright who dramatised his own war record: a reassessment of William Douglas-Home’s accounts of his refusal to fight for the liberation of Le Havre

At a court martial in October 1944, William Douglas-Home was convicted of wilfully disobeying a lawful command because he claimed a moral justification to do so. Cashiered and jailed for his offence, he would return to the events that occasioned his refusal throughout a long career as a playwright. In his post-war accounts, Mr Douglas-Home developed a defence of his decision that depicted it as principled. He submitted petitions in which he sought to overturn retrospectively the court martial ruling. This essay argues that he concocted the accounts of his actions on which his efforts to revise the record were based.     

Beveridge’s rival: Juliet Rhys-Williams and the campaign for basic income, 1942–55

Historians of Britain’s post-war welfare state have long been aware of the shortcomings of the social insurance model, but the political impact of the Beveridge report has tended to obscure the alternative visions of welfare canvassed in the 1940s and 1950s. This article examines the social activist Juliet Rhys-Williams’ campaign for the integration of the tax and benefit systems and the provision of a universal basic income, which attracted wide interest from economists, journalists, and Liberal and Conservative politicians during and after the Second World War. Though Rhys-Williams’ proposals were not adopted, they helped establish a distinctive ‘social market’ perspective on welfare provision which has become central to British social policy debates since the 1960s and 1970s.     

The Rebel Chief Whip: The Role of Leslie Wilson in the Fall of the Lloyd George Coalition, 1922

This article explores the crisis within the Conservative Party in 1922 over the continuation of the coalition with Lloyd George's section of the Liberal Party, focusing on the actions of the Conservative chief whip, Leslie Wilson. Previously unused papers relating to Wilson's career shed new light on his role in the fall of the coalition. Wilson co‐ordinated opposition to the continuation of the coalition in its existing form, helping to solidify the group of junior ministers opposed to Lloyd George into a cohesive and powerful faction, which then forced the Conservative Party leader, Austen Chamberlain, into making concessions. Above all, Wilson was influential in forcing Chamberlain to agree to a meeting of MPs at the Carlton Club on 19 October 1922, at which the rebels won a decisive victory, causing the resignation of Chamberlain as party leader and Lloyd George as prime minister, in one of the most important events in modern British political history.     

Oszillierende Weltmodelle versus Urknallmodelle. Das oszillierende Weltmodell Friedmanns,die Ablehnung der Anfangssingularität durch russische Kosmologen und die Zustimmung der katholischen Kirche zur Urknalltheorie Lemaîtres und Hawkings

The Russian mathematician and physicist Friedmann and the Belgian priest and physicist Lemaître were the first to consider non‐static world models in the framework of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Friedmann seemed to favour a periodic, oscillating cosmological model. His investigations were taken up by Russian cosmologists in the 1960s. They stated that the singularities present in many of the Friedmann‐Lemaître cosmological models seemed to be artificial and were ascribed to the assumption of a highly symmetric distribution of cosmic matter. Their disapproval of singularities seems to be in accord with Soviet ideological requirements during that time like atheism and dialectic materialism. They had to retract their statements after Hawking had proved his singularity theorems and after the microwave background had been discovered. Hawking followed the line of thought which was initiated by Lemaître in the early 1930s. Lemaître had combined for the first time quantum physics and relativistic cosmology and had developed his idea of the primeval atom, a beginning of the universe in a dense state with just one quantum containing the whole mass of the universe. Pope Pius XII brought together this primeval atom and God as the Creator of the universe and declared in 1951 that big bang cosmology is compatible with the Bible. Not surprisingly Hawking was awarded the Pius XI medal by the Vatican in 1975 for his contributions to big bang cosmology.     

The Fall of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk and the Revival of Impeachment in the Parliament of 1621

The revival of impeachment in 1621 has tended to be viewed exclusively through the prism of parliament. However, this article, which builds on the work of Professor Allen Horstman, suggests that a key factor in impeachment's revival was the dismissal of Lord Treasurer Suffolk for corruption in 1618. Suffolk's removal caused widespread disquiet, since it was assumed that senior officials held office for life. In order to silence these criticisms it proved necessary for the king not only to put Suffolk on trial but also to justify by precedent the lord treasurer's removal. This latter task was performed by the former lord chief justice, Sir Edward Coke, himself not long disgraced, whose researches in the medieval parliamentary record revealed the following year that errant crown ministers had hitherto been held to account by means of impeachment. Coke subsequently put this discovery to good effect when parliament met in 1621. Against the backdrop of mounting criticism against his hated rival, the lord chancellor, Francis Bacon, Coke revealed the existence of impeachment to the house of commons, whose attention was then focused on finding a way to punish the monopolists, Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Michell. In so doing, Coke not only aided the lower House, which had been struggling since 1610 to find a way of punishing non‐members, but also sought to settle an old score.     

进化之调律:斯宾塞与清末的种群竞争论述

斯宾塞学说构成清末种群进化和竞争论述的主要外在资源。斯宾塞以进化的哲学思维来缀合威廉·卡彭特、查尔斯·赖尔所代表的动物生理学和生物历史知识,回应马尔萨斯的人口论。19世纪50年代以来在中国译介和流行的正是卡彭特所代表的生理学著述片段或与其相似的种群差别认知。知识界对斯宾塞的翻译,意味着中国在戊戌时期发生了类似的理论缀合过程。清末知识人以种分贵贱、黄白同为贵种调整了斯宾塞的种群进化位阶表述,抵制欧洲人歧视东亚黄种之心。同时,他们却强化了贵贱种之间的等级关系,营造退化灭种的焦虑意识和压迫感,警告需积极参与生存竞争来提升种群的心智和自律性,从而为政治变革酝酿社会气氛。     

社会学的解读:英使团画家笔下的中国

18世纪末英国马戛尔尼使团访华,是中英关系史上重大的历史事件。英国国家图书馆保存有随团制图员亚历山大绘制的一份完整的访华见闻图。由于绘图者视角的特殊性,这批绘画成为研究当时中国社会不可多得的形象史料。画家描绘了各个阶层、各种职业的人物肖像,也描绘了交通工具、建筑、军事、运河等场景。从社会学角度反映了当时中国的生活状况,以及中英在军力、船舰、生产方式、宗教风俗等多方面的差异。     

Christianity in the Gulf during the first centuries of Islam

This article re-examines the ceramics of SBY-9, a church and monastery site on the island of Sir Bani Yas, Abu Dhabi emirate, U.A.E. It then explores other archaeological evidence for Christianity in the Arabian Gulf and compares it to the textual data, resulting in a reconsideration of the history and activities of the Church of the East. The pottery of SBY-9 indicates that the monastery complex was occupied some time between the second half of the seventh century and the mid-eighth century AD and not, as previously believed, the sixth–seventh centuries AD. Other excavated churches and monasteries in the Gulf region should also be redated to the eighth and ninth centuries AD (al-Qusur, Kharg). These findings cast a new light on the history of Christianity in the Arabian Gulf after the Muslim conquest.     

The limits of cultural nationalism: Italian Switzerland from a risorgimento perspective*

ABSTRACT. This article critiques the ‘cultural turn’ in Italian Risorgimento historiography by examining Italian Switzerland, and specifically Ticino. This area paradoxically aided and abetted Italian patriots, especially Giuseppe Mazzini, yet rejected becoming part of the Italian national project. This paradox is heightened by the fact that the vast majority of the Italian nationalist literary canon, as identified by Alberto Maria Banti, was republished in Ticino. The paradox is explained in terms of the conflict between long‐standing traditions of local autonomy and the idea of any form of uniform or centralised control, as originally represented by the Cisalpine Republic and then by both versions (Napoleonic and Piedmontese) of the Kingdom of Italy. However, I also use Banti's cultural concepts to demonstrate the creation of a powerful counter‐myth of Italian Swiss nationalism in the character of William Tell.