The TLS blog

Digging for Richard

© University of Leicester

BY DAVID HORSPOOL

Our reviewer Alex Burghart quoted his old history tutor in the TLS not long ago: "Archaeologists", this sage opined, "are a pain in the arse. They think they know better than the texts and they will find things." As Burghart went on to say,  "If the first point is unfair, the second is undeniably true."  Monday's events in Leicester brought these words to mind. But if we grant that, sensible scepticism aside (and see Mary Beard's blog), the bones in the social services car park are those of Richard III, does that "change the history books", as we have repeatedly been told? This week in the TLS, Sarah Knight and Mary Ann Lund of the University of Leicester trace literary and historical accounts of the King's deformity from the chronicler John Rous onwards. 

Politicians, historians and the Holocaust

DAVID HORSPOOL

Do you know about Godwin's law? You may not know it's called that, but the gist of it is:  "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches". Not only online, of course. There was an example of it this week, when the Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu,  speaking on Iran, held up a historic correspondence from 1944 between the US War Department and the World Jewish Congress, in which the Under Secretary of War gave reasons for his government's refusal to bomb Auschwitz.

Surely Godwin's Law doesn't apply to Israel and its Prime Minister? If anyone has carte blanche to invoke Nazi crimes, the perils of appeasement and to keep alive the memory of victims of the Shoah, is it not the leader of the country which rose from the ashes of those crimes? Absolutely, but that is no reason for listeners to Mr Netanyahu's speech to forget that when politicians use history, it is rarely in the way historians do. That is, they use those bits of the historical record that assist their argument, rather than sifting the evidence and seeing where it all leads them.

I do not presume to go into the case Mr Netanyahu was making for potential military action against Iran. I am ignorant of the details and TLS history editors are probably not the best people to pronounce on matters of international current affairs. But history is another matter. So let's concentrate on that.

Woof, woof, it's the spirit of Prime Ministers past

Much appalled amusement here this morning about the personal appearance by Tony Blair in the White House Christmas TV show.

In case you have missed it, our former Prime Minister appears in the daydreams of Barney, one of the presidential Scotch terriers who want to be Junior Park Rangers.

Yes.

That is exactly what he does

His big line.

Wait for it.

"Congratulations Barney and Miss Beazley on becoming Junior Park Rangers. Well done.
As someone born in Edinburgh, Scotland, it's always good to see the Scots doing well.

What happens next?

'Barney looks at the camera, tilts his head and a "boing" sound effect is heard. Barney's daydream ends and he's sitting with Miss Beazley on Mrs Bush's lap in front of the Christmas tree in the Blue Room" - or so says the direct-this-yourself-at-home note on the First Website.

Someone said it reminded them of an Aesop's Fable and could I remember which?

I couldn't. I was thinking more about our about spirits of Christmas past than of past Prime Ministers. Join our holiday Dickens debate while it's still fresh.

OK. wasn't there that French surreal movie, the one in which one  poodle appears in another poodle's nightmare - and they all go mad?

I have no idea. Sounds too good to be true.

There is definitely a Sam Shephard play of the early seventies in which a man begins with prophetic dreams of winning race horses, declines into dreaming the winners at dog tracks and finally turns into a dog himself.

But that's not quite right either.

There must be something somehwere like the 'Tony and Barney' show.

We don't like to think of unique horrors of art and politics at the TLS. There is always a precedent.

But maybe, just maybe, Tony Blair's final performance of 2007 is one that has genuinely never been seen or conceived before.