sandr020

I normally think of the Edwardian era as time of culture, literature, science, medicine and peace. But 1905 began with a series of strikes and demonstrations in the Russian streets . In Jan a protest march in St Pet­ersburg was led by a workers’ organ­isation, the Assembly of Russian Factory and Plant Workers . c200,000 mar­chers moved to the Wint­er Palace to present pet­itions to the Tsar, but soon 1,000 protest­ors lay shot dead that Bloody Sunday. Anger spread throughout Russia with more strikes and mar­ches. In March the universities were shut down by radicals. In July, sailors on the battleship Potemkin mutinied in Odessa and avoided death only when the firing squad seized the ship instead. Odessa’s citizens turned out to support the sail­ors and many were massacred on the steps leading to the wharf. Albert Einstein 1905 In St Petersburg Leon Trotsky set up a Soviet Workers’ Council to organise opposition to the Tsar. But Trotsky and his supp­or­ters were soon imprisoned. A...

Lesley-Ann Jones' biography,  The Real Life of Freddie Mercury: Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mecury,  revealed a bril­liant musician keep­ing his true self hidden from an adoring world-wide audience. Farrokh Bulsara/Freddie Mercury (1946-1991) was born on the small British protectorate island of Zanzibar , a semi-autonomous reg­ion of Tanzania that specialised in spices. When he was 8, his relig­ious Parsi parents Bomi (a British civil servant) and Jer Bulsara sent him to an English boarding school outside Bombay. At St Peter's School , Freddie loved music. The school prin­cipal noticed Freddie's musical talent, and wrote to his parents suggesting that they might want to pay an extra on Freddie's school fees to help him musical­ly. They agreed, and Fred­die began to learn to play the piano. He also became a member of the school choir and took part in theatrical pro­ductions. In 1958, Freddie Bulsara and four other school friends formed a rock band. But it...

The first part comes from the Blavatsky Archives ; many thanks.  Helena Petrovna von Hahn was born at Ekaterinoslav in Southern Russia, in 1831. She was the daughter of Colonel Peter von Hahn, and writer Helena de Fadeyev. Her mat­er­nal grandmother was Princ­ess Helena Dolgorukov, noted botanist-writer. After her mother’s early death in 1842, Helena was brought up with the grand­parents. This clever linguist was a sensitive child, and was soon aware that her psychic powers puzzled others. At 18 she married the much older Nikifor Blavatsky , Vice-Governor of Yerivan Province. The marriage was never consummated and she soon escaped and travelled across Turkey, Egypt and Greece. Only 2 years later, in London in 1851, she met the Mahatma/ Master  Morya of her childhood visions, and fully accepted his guidance. In 1852, Helena left for Canada, the USA, Mexico, South Am­erica and the West Indies, then went via the Cape to India and Tibet. Then to Britain, America again, India vi...

Sacred sites in India have long been associated with water; the Golden Tem­ple at Amritsar seems almost to float in a vast shimmering pool. The pool was created from a forest lake, which the Buddha himself is said to have visited and at which the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak , meditated. When the site later became the main shrine of Sikhism, the lake was enlarged and given the name Amritsar/nectar of immortality pool. Building of the Sri Harmandir Sahib/abode of God, began in the late C16th for the fifth Sikh guru. Golden Tem­ple at Amritsar and causeway, surrounded by a large pool Pure gold urns that line the terrace This Sikh place of worship welcomed those of all faiths and of all levels of society. It was constructed so that the architecture itself suggested openness and reflected the central tenets of Sikhism. Once inside, visitors had to observe respect by removing their shoes and washing their feet, covering their heads and refraining from smoking, eating meat or drinking alc...

After Prince Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria  (1819-1901) was devastated. Fortunately the Queen became very close to her gillie John Brown in Balmoral, a warn friendship that lasted for decades. When Brown died in 1883, Queen Victoria was devastated for a second time. Now we can analyse the third male relationship in the queen's life that started in 1887. But how close to real history is the film Victoria & Abdul , directed by Stephen Frears? Queen Vict­oria, Empress of India (Judi Dench) took her Indian responsibilities very seriously. She asked for two Ind­ians to travel from India to share in the Queen's Gol­d­en Jubilee in 1887. Mohammed Abdul Karim 1863–1909 (Ali Fazal), a Muslim born in British India, was selected to give the queen an Indian gift. But when the Queen wanted to employ these two Indian servants for the entire Jubilee year, Karim and Buksh had to be tutored in English and in British etiquette. After a journey by rail from Agra to Bombay then by mai...

Last Children of the Raj: British Childhoods in India was edited by Laurence Fleming and published by Radcliffe Press in 2004.  This book is a collection of retrospective reminiscences contributed by people late in their lives, the 120+ story tellers having all spent most of their childhood and adolescence in British India, the Princely States or Burma. The most evocative stories were the personal accounts of powerful em­otional experiences while growing up in India - the sights, smells and sounds of India, their homes, families, staff, schools and holidays. The book was presented in two volumes, perfect for history bloggers who tend to read only one chapter at a time. The first volume (1919-39) was org­anised by geog­raphic regions of India and grouped all of the stories of the child­ren by those areas. The second volume (1939-50) was arranged chronol­og­ically, covering WW2 and soon after. Most of the contributors’ stories were split up and were divided into a few sections. An ...

British historian Suzannah Lipscomb was interested in how film makers did, or did not analyse hist­orical evidence accurately in their films. A review of David Rieff ’s book In Praise of Forgetting was rightly scornful of the practicality of forgetting past atrocities, just for modern audiences’ comfort. Remembering, not forgetting, was im­por­tant in the pursuit of recog­nit­ion and restitution and, ultimately, reconciliation. Two recent films were designed to remember histor­ical atrocities. Both were love stories set against geo­political events. Viceroy’s House by Gurinder Chadha told of the Partition that accompanied the granting of independence to India in 1947, in which a million people died and c12 million were displaced. Bitter Harvest by George Mendeluk recalled one of the least-known tragedies of recent history; the Holod­omor, the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine in which 3-9 million people died. Both examples achieved one of the purposes of historical films: they left Dr Li...

Britain and India are not the only nations making claim to the amaz­ing Koh-i-Noor diamond. Half the nations in Central Asia have been, or will be in court over this treasure. Up until 1304 the diamond was held by the Indian Rajas of Malwa. By 1304 the diamond came into the possession of the Emperor of Delhi, Allaudin Khilji. Then in 1339 the diamond was taken to the city of Samarkand (now in Uzbekistan), where it stayed for centuries. Clearly the diamond variously belonged to all the Indian and Persian rul­ers who fought bitter battles throughout history. In 1526 the Mog­­ul ruler Babur mentioned the diamond, gifted to him by the Sultan Ib­rahim Lodi of Delhi, in his writings. At 793 carats, it must have looked superb. Shah Jahan (1592–1666) was the ruler who commissioned the Taj Mahal mausoleum . But he also commissioned the very glamorous Peacock Throne , the Mughal throne of India in Delhi. The Koh-I-Noor was mounted on this very special piece of furniture. When he was imprisoned ...