Times Archive Blog

Othello, played by a horse

More clever horses, hooray. Wouldn't you have given anything to see this - Othello, performed by horses, in Paris in 1818.

I wonder how they did the dialogue: It is the horse, it is the horse, my soul

Also in the Archive blog:

The horse that could spell Victoria and Albert

Valkyrie, 1944: how the real Hitler plot hit the headlines

The hoo-hah round the release of Tom Cruise's Valkyrie has centred on four main strands:

1. Is Tom Cruise actor enough to do justice to the heroic martyr, Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg?
“Too stiff, too short and too dull,” says plotter's grandson

2. Was von Stauffenberg a heroic martyr, or an anti-semitic German nationalist who thought Hitler wasn't winning the war fast enough?
“The population here [Poland] are an unbelievable rabble; a great many Jews and a lot of mixed race. A people that is only comfortable under the lash,” Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg in a letter to his wife

3. Is the film a propaganda coup for Scientology?
"These Scientologists have two goals in Germany. To get their message to children, and make their organisation respectable. The film does both," anonymous source close to the German Agency for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV)

4. Is the film actually any good?
"Valkyrie is a prized chapter of German Resistance for a generation that is eager to distance itself from Hitler’s toxic crimes," James Christopher, The Times

In 1944, no one was that fussed about whose side the plotters were on; they were against Hitler, and that was good enough. At first, news of the assassination attempt was greeted cautiously. The Times leader welcomed it as evidence of shattered German morale, but suspected a minor incident  could be being blown up for propaganda purposes. The news report, based on German radio transmissions, included the text of Hitler's recorded message saying that he was still alive, an unusually subdued performance. 

Leading article: In Germany now, July 21, 1944

The occasion is being fully exploited as a means of stimulating a new access of patriotic devotion ot the Fuhrer. There is need enough for new appeals to the flagging ardour of the German people. No illusions can mask any longer the magnitude of the military disaster sustained by German arms.

Video: Publishing the truth about Buchenwald

January 27 is Holocaust Memorial Day, instituted five years ago on the principle that the Holocaust  "must have a permanent place in our nation's collective memory" and that "future generations understand [its] causes and reflect upon its consequences". Much the same principle was expressed in the Times leading article referred to in this video, which was published on April 20, 1945, the day after the first photographs of Buchenwald concentration camp were published in the newspaper, with the report of Weimar citizens being marched through the camp by US military police:

There have ... always been some who for the honour of human nature have withheld complete belief from the reports, finding it easier to suppose that suffering has caused hallucination in the victims than to imagine a degradation of the soul that could descend so far below the animal level of cruelty. The photographs remove the last possibility of doubt ...

The world must know the truth; and it is above all necessary that Germans shall know and acknowledge it ... There is a larger significance in the lesson that is now being taught to the citizens of Weimar and other German towns. It is the beginning of the re-education of Germany

You can read the original reports and leading article in full here:

Forced tour of Buchenwald, April 18, 1945

German concentration and labour camps, April 19, 1945

The victims; leading article, April 20, 1945

The horrors of Buchenwald: MP deputation's report, April 28, 1945

A teetotal Burns Night? There's an idea

Many successful campaigns have been launched from The Times letters page but it's probably fair to say that this one never got far off the ground.

A hundred years ago, fundraising for a new memorial to honour the Bard's 150th anniversary hit a sticky patch. An Edinburgh reader, signing himself Alister, had this suggestion (click through to read the original):

On the night of the 25th inst., every chiel who drinks to the "Immortal Memory" and other toasts should drink one glass of usquebetha less than usual and hand over the price (say 6d) to the treasurer of his club as his contribution to the monument fund. I estimate there must be well on for a million persons who, on the night referred to, will be in a position to sacrifice this single glass of whisky at sixpence; but, taking the number at only half a million, the result would be something like a contribution of £12,500! Surely this would go a great way to erect a handsome monument to Saint Robin!

If only he'd stopped there, while he was winning. But no:

I was talking about this proposal to a very distingished and enthusiastic admirer of Burns a few days ago, and, not only did he approve of the suggestion, but he made another which I think is even better - namely, that the 150th anniversary might be celebrated all the world over on teetotal principles.

Actually, he wasn't completely mad, and I think there's a lot to be said for his next bit.

Inauguration Day

Follow our live blog on President Obama's inauguration on the Comment Central blog - I'll be posting links from the Archive during the day.

Lincoln, FDR, JFK? The most memorable inaugural speeches

Ben Macintyre’s film on presidential inaugurations is a great reminder of the joys of hindsight. Here are the contemporary reports of some of the masterpieces of rhetoric he refers to, and some of the damp squibs.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1933 inaugural speech, delivered at the height of the Depression, is best remembered for that one unbeatable phrase. The Times reported that the speech was “of little more than ten minutes duration but remarkable for its candour and courage”, and quoted an image of the nation with grim resonances for today:

Here is the picture of America today as he painted it: “Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; our factories are without orders; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; Government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; means of exchange arc frozen in the currents of trade; withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.”

Archive topic: The New Deal

First Ladies' frocks: a conspiracy?

100 years ago The Times reported a Washington revolution. “For the first time in the history of the installation of American Presidents, the Chief Magistrate's wife will drive in the carriage with him from the Capitol to the White House.”

This groundbreaking lady was Helen “Nellie” Taft, wife of Republican William Howard Taft, who was taking over as President from (Republican) Theodore Roosevelt. Mrs Taft was an energetic and distinguished woman in her own right but she was about to find, like Michelle Obama, that whatever her other achievements and attributes there was really only one important matter for discussion.

Mrs Taft's presence on Thursday at the Capitol on the occasion of the inauguration of her husband as President is an innovation which has raised the important question of suitable dress.

And the fashion writers, then as now, went into overdrive:

Assassination threat to President Lincoln? Don’t make me laugh

There doesn’t seem to be a newspaper called the Chicago Post any more. I’m only guessing, but could this be something to do with the prescience of this 1862 article about President Lincoln’s security arrangements? *

Visiting the capital, the Chicago reporter was struck by “the presence of an armed guard at the gates of the Executive mansion”, and gave a detailed description of the President’s arrival and departure:

Famous castrato not disgusting: an apology

Thanks to colleague Michael for sending over this great list of sound recordings from listverse.com. I mentioned one of them on the post about Lord Haw-Haw below, and if you've never heard her I'd also recommend the Les Dawson of sopranos, Florence Foster Jenkins.

Another soprano on the list, and not a lot closer to the notes, is Alessandro Moreschi, "the last castrato" and supposedly the only one who was recorded for posterity. The business of emasculating boys to keep their voices high was illegal by the time sound recording came along and there's some dispute about whether Moreschi was deliberately castrated or had some accident as a child. Whatever, he had a pretty excruciating voice, as you can hear, but you can still get a clear idea of what a strange sound it was.

The heyday of the castrati was the second half of the eighteenth century. By 1825, when a new Italian opera, Il Crociato in Egitto, came to London, they were pretty much on the way out, but its star, Giovanni Batista Velluti was an international mega-celebrity and London opera-goers were agog to see him.

The Times was scandalised. In probably the most brutal preview in theatrical history, the newspaper thundered against the sponsors of the tour, and Velluti himself:

... the manly British public, and the pure British fair, [should be] spared the disgust of such an appearance as that of Velluti upon any theatre of this metropolis. His shameless patrons have dared to insult, not only the British nation, but even humanity itself, by thrusting forward this non-creature upon the stage. But Velluti is to sing - if those dire screams can be called singing, which proceed from a living being that is neither human nor even brute ...

Here’s something Abraham Lincoln did say

Unlucky Scott Sales, speaker of the Montana House of Representatives, is reported to have used a completely spurious set of Abraham Lincoln quotes in his opening speech.

That’s what happens when you do your research on the internet of course. The “Ten cannots” - ''You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong,'' etc -  are apparently a famous trap for unwary speechmakers in search of an uplifting aphorism, as you can read in this excellent article by Thomas F. Schwartz: “Lincoln never said that”.   

I’ve been doing some research on the internet too, in The Times Archive, as it happens. Here is The Times (of London, of course) reprinting a letter printed in the Grant county (Wisconsin) Herald, “giving an account of a recent interview with Mr Lincoln” - so it’s third-hand at least and Dr Schwartz could reasonably take issue with my headline, but what the hell, it’s a great read.

Jairmany calling: can you place Lord Haw-Haw’s accent?

It’s easy enough to find broadcasts by William Joyce, “Lord Haw-Haw”, on the web and to the modern ear they sound just about as weird and distant as any other voices of that generation. But to wartime listeners his voice became something of an obsession, not just for the inept propaganda, which was widely mocked and parodied, but for his spookily mannered pronunciation.

At first, people took him more or less at face value, as some renegade toff. The nickname came from Jonah Barrington, radio critic of the Daily Express, who took the credit for “his progress from a hack Nazi announcer to a national clown and an international buffoon”.

10 freaky finds inside shark stomachs

New Zealand scientists have announced that they’re about to start broadcasting live autopsies of sharks on the web. This sounds like a great idea. I’ve been to a shark autopsy, at the Natal Sharks Board in Durban, where they study the corpses of sharks which get caught in the shark nets off Durban’s swimming beaches.

Until I went to the shark board, which is a brilliant education and conservation set-up, I fondly believed that the nets formed a solid barrier between me, on my boogie board, and the big, fierce sharks of the Indian Ocean. But no; they actually are just a sort of curtain, which doesn’t nearly reach the bottom, but which does apparently annoy the sharks, so that if they get in underneath they turn round and try to get straight out again. At that point, some of them get tangled in the net. The shark board sends a boat out every morning to release any that are still alive and to bring back the dead.

According to the scientists with the scalpels, the sharks’ stomachs quite often contain things like chickens or gumboots alongside the usual fish. On the day I went, typically, the poor blighter’s stomach was completely empty. What a loser.

Anyway, nothing so dull in this list. The fascination with poking around inside these omnivorous opportunists seems to be almost as old as The Times. If you click on the links in the list below, you can read the original stories as they first appeared; you may need to scroll down the page to reach the right item.