OCTOBER 2014
CONTENTS
Features
Every month
Lucy Worsley explores the world of historical dances, on page 45
22 The rise of the human Yuval Harari describes how Homo sapiens came to dominate the planet and questions whether this has brought us happiness
26 Did the Tudors invent the Wars of the Roses? Dan Jones argues that we’ve misunderstood these 15th-century civil wars for centuries – and that we have the Tudors to blame for that
36 Scotland on the brink Karin Bowie describes the state of the country in 1707, just before union with England
6 ANNIVERSARIES 11 HISTORY NOW 1 1 The latest history news
14 Backgrounder: Housing 17 Past notes
18 LETTERS 21 MICHAEL WOOD’S VIEW 34 OUR FIRST WORLD WAR 65 BOOKS Experts review new releases, plus
Charles Spencer discusses the killers of Charles I
77 TV & RADIO The pick of this month’s history programmes
80 OUT & ABOUT 80 History explorer: The Chartists
84 Ten things to do in October 86 My favourite place: Germany’s Black Forest
89 MISCELLANY 89 Q&A and quiz 91 Sam’s recipe corner 92 Prize crossword
40 When Poland was torn to pieces Roger Moorhouse reveals the shocking brutality in icted on Poles by both the Nazi and Soviet invaders of 1939
45 Steps in time Lucy Worsley matches popular dances to the social mores of their age
50 The real Joan of Arc Helen Castor peels back the myths to uncover the true story of the teenage heroine’s rise and fall
98 MY HISTORY HERO TonyParsonsonBobbyMoore
32 SUBSCRIBE Save 27% when you subscribe* to the digital edition
Joan of Arc
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The statue of Joan of Arc at Meridian Hill Park in Washington DC depicts the French heroine leading troops into battle. She is “an icon who, in the modern world, has developed the protean capacity to be all things to all people,” says Helen Castor
“The real Joan of Arc is every bit as extraordinary as the myth”
BBC History Magazine
BBC History Magazine
BBC History Magazine BBC History Magazine
Helen Castor endeavours to isolate the fact from the ction in the tumultuous, tragic story of a French national icon
I E F LY FA R E
J U L
Joan of Arc is a historical name to conjure with, her image instantly, vividly recognisable across a distance of half a millennium. Her tale is both profoundly familiar and endlessly startling: the peasant girl sent by God to save France, dressed in armour as though she were a man; the maid who rescued Orléans and led her king to be crowned at Reims; the martyr who became a legend – and later a saint – when she was burned at the stake by the English enemy. We know her story so well because of the survival of two remarkable caches of documents. Her case was heard in court twice over: one trial, in 1431, condemned her to death as a heretic, and the other, completed 25 years later, cleared her name. In the transcripts we hear first-hand testimony from Joan, her family and her friends. What could be more revealing?
But all is not as simple as it seems. The memories recounted by Joan and those who knew her were deeply infused with the awareness of who she had become and what she had achieved. In many ways, then, her story is a life told backwards. Not only that, but at almost every point there are discrepancies between the accounts of different witnesses, and sometimes within the testimony of a single witness, including that of Joan herself.
Glossing over these contradictions has helped to create the legend of Joan of Arc, an icon who, in the modern world, has developed the protean capacity to be all things to all people. But if, instead, we trace the evolution of key elements in her story through the evidence of the two trials we get closer to the real Joan. And she, a roaring girl who – in fighting the English, took sides in a brutal civil war – is every bit as extraordinary as the myth, as the five examples that follow prove…
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56 A smile revolution Colin Jones explains why some victims of the French Terror chose to smile at their persecutors
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56 Smiling on the guillotine in 18th-century France
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“A er Homo sapiens arrived in Australia, 95 per cent of the large animals became extinct”
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BBC History Magazine
