History's People: Personalities and the Past
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 1487001371
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
History’s People is about the important and complex relationship between biography and history, individuals and their times.
Rimbaud the Son (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West
Beyond the Epic: The Life and Films of David Lean
Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1882-1940)
people that geography no longer kept them as safe as it once had; advances in air power meant that the oceans were no longer a secure barrier, and long-range bombers would sooner or later be able to reach the continent from Europe or the Far East. If he roused too vehement a response, he artfully backtracked. In a famous 1937 speech in Chicago, home to some of the most diehard isolationists, he warned against the aggressive nations who were threatening the peace of the world and committing
may we bring harmony.” Irony, like humour, was not something she did. Her first years as prime minister were not easy ones. To be sure, the opposition was badly divided, and in 1981 a dissident group split from the Labour Party to form a new Social Democratic Party. Yet the unions were still challenging the government, the British economy went from bad to worse, and her own party was unsure of what to make of her. A group of influential Tories, some within her cabinet, strongly opposed
in Vienna before the First World War, had picked up and embraced the racist and Social Darwinist ideas floating around Europe at the time. The belief that the human race could be divided into separate species of varying qualities, and that the different races or nations were condemned by nature to struggle against each other for survival, became a deep-rooted conviction. For Hitler, the German race was at the top of the evolutionary tree and ought to be able to impose its will on lesser peoples.
humans whose values and practices were as worthy of respect as her own. They held lengthy councils, she reported: “I have seen some translation of speeches full of well-expressed fine sentiments, & marking their reliance on the Great Spirit.” Many of the Indians reminded her of the ancient Greeks and Romans and looked “like figures painted by the Old Masters.” She found the Ojibway in particular very handsome, “& have a superior air to any I have seen.” Joseph Brant, the distinguished Iroquois
small world, of the view from below. As the Nazis stamped out all opposition, it became increasingly dangerous to keep anything from a book to a drawing that could be interpreted as subversive or critical of the regime. The German secret police, the Gestapo, made unscheduled searches, and suspicious material or forbidden objects frequently meant death. “I shall go on writing,” Klemperer wrote in 1942. “That is my heroism. I will bear witness, precise witness!” His wife, who as an Aryan was