Wilhelm II: Seventy Years On

"Anyone who reads about the personalities of his era cannot but be intrigued by him. Vilified and caricatured as he was - and his speeches and distinctive appearance were a gift to opponants - it is clear with hindsight that he was a much more complex and interesting figure than he once appeared. At times bombastic and vainglorious, at others insightful and far-sighted, a man who could be both bullying and selfless, he still arouses strong feelings..."

Over on his blog Once I Was A Clever Boy, John Whitehead reflects on attitudes to Kaiser Wilhelm II on the seventieth anniversary of his death. The former emperor of Germany passed away in exile in the Netherlands on June 4th 1941, after having abdicated at the end of the First World War twenty-three years earlier. The emperor was survived by his second wife, Hermine; his first wife, Augusta-Viktoria, had died shortly after the downfall of the monarchy. And by six of the seven children from his first marriage - Crown Prince Wilhelm, Prince Eitel-Friedrich, Prince Adalbert, Prince Oskar and the Kaiser's only daughter, Viktoria-Louisa, Duchess of Brunswick. His youngest son, Prince Joachim, who had struggled with severe depression for much of his adult life, had tragically committed suicide in 1920 in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles and his divorce from Princess Maria-Augusta von Anhalt. 

The emperor was buried in Doorn, Holland, where he had lived in exile since 1918 and his tomb can still be seen there today (below). 

Review of the new "Queen Elizabeth"

After travelling on her for a five day European cruise, the blog Tips for travellers reviews the new 92,000-tonne Cunard vessel Queen Elizabeth (above.) For ocean liner enthusiasts, the ship is the successor to the famous Queen Elizabeth 2, which was retired in 2008 and which was herself the successor to the original Queen Elizabeth, which was launched in 1938. With the maiden voyage of the new Queen Elizabeth, Cunard is once again operating three major luxury liners, along with her sister-ship Queen Victoria and the company's flagship, Queen Mary 2. This is the first time Cunard has run this service since the early 1930s, when they operated a transatlantic service with the 52,000-ton Berengaria, the speed queen Mauretania and the slightly larger Aquitania, nicknamed "the Ship Beautiful." When the former two liners were retired due to the Great Depression, they were replaced by a single vessel, the original Queen Mary, which served for thirty years and which is today a floating hotel in Long Beach, California.

You can access Tips for travellers full review here, along with some videos and photographs of the new ship. To quote: -

"I had also read very mixed reviews about the Queen Elizabeth, mostly related to the food and the service. It is always exciting though to go on a new ship, and of course even more so when one of the famous Cunard ones. In the end, we loved the ship. It has great looking decor, very stylish and very Cunard. The service was outstanding across all areas of the ship. The food we had in Queens Grill was amazing ... As mentioned, the design and look of the ship is very classy. It has an art deco feel, and is classy and rich looking. It is done with style." 

New still from Meryl Streep's Margaret Thatcher biopic

Ironically, after posting Courtney Pannell's fantastic article on the stagnation of conservative womanhood (below), I came across this still on-line, showing Oscar-winner Meryl Streep as the longest-serving Conservative Prime Minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher. Seen here with Jim Broadbent as her on-screen husband, Dennis, the pair are recreating the famous 1980 Conservative Party conference at Brighton, at which Prime Minister Thatcher told the delegates of her government's plans to deal harshly with the Trade Unions and to end the long-term recession which had crippled Britain for the previous decade. It was also the conference where she made her famous declaration, "The Lady's not for turning," which you can watch below. Really can't wait for this movie, which The Daily Mail talks about here.

The Stagnation of the Conservative Woman: Courtney Pannell reflects

Writing in The Yale Herald, my friend Courtney Pannell, a young conservative woman herself, reflects in an absolutely brilliant article on the problems that many women are experiencing with American conservatism and the Republican Party today: -

"The GOP doesn’t plan on win­ning the female vote in 2012 — or ever, at this rate. Demo­c­ra­tic oppo­nents are call­ing the recent House move to slash fund­ing from Planned Par­ent­hood another exam­ple of the GOP’s “War on Women.” This war is only strength­ened by con­ser­v­a­tive female fig­ure­heads, such as Michelle Bach­mann and Sarah Palin, and the ideals that they are laud­ing, which are out of step with the desires and strug­gles of the mod­ern woman.

Last week, I attended CPAC, the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence, which is basi­cally a red car­pet event for the Who’s Who of the right... As a con­ser­v­a­tive woman myself, I was looking for­ward to com­mis­er­at­ing with fel­low right-leaning ladies — but they were awfully hard to find. Walk­ing into the con­ven­tion cen­ter lobby, I tweeted, “Where are all the women?” in an attempt to send a ral­ly­ing cry. I was hard-pressed to find any­one that wasn’t a wannabe-cowboy or Mitt Rom­ney look-a-like, much less some­one with a two X chromosomes. 

I finally found a room of women at a panel dis­cus­sion called “The Awak­en­ing of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Woman.” The golden girl of the panel was Phyl­lis Schlafly, an 86-year-old woman who was piv­otal in killing the Equal Rights Amend­ment in the ‘70s. Along­side her was colum­nist S.E. Cupp, campaign-finance lawyer Cleta Mitchell, and Rep. Michelle Bachmann. 

Although all the pan­elists were accom­plished work­ing­women and the event was about awak­en­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive woman, I was shocked by their repres­sive and out­worn mes­sag­ing points. Some­one should prob­a­bly look up “awak­en­ing” in Webster’s, because I might as well have been tak­ing life lessons at the kitchen table of June Cleaver. 

Now, I’m not here to debate the value of stay-at-home wives and moth­ers; my mother has been one for 25 years. In my view, the fam­ily is the cor­ner­stone of a great soci­ety, so mar­riage and moth­er­hood should be cel­e­brated. But... behind their glory sto­ries about find­ing their mates was the idea that a woman has to com­pro­mise her career goals in order to achieve the sup­posed great­est goals of wom­an­hood: mar­riage and moth­er­hood. “You can’t have it all at the same time,” Mitchell even said to the crowd. She fol­lowed up the state­ment with an anec­dote. A young woman (a Har­vard stu­dent, no less) told Mitchell that she would even­tu­ally hire a nanny to help run her house­hold, because she hoped to have a job and chil­dren. “Can’t you just get a dog?” Mitchell snark­ily replied to the young lady. 

What’s ironic about this work­ing mother dichotomy is that in any other room at CPAC you would have heard speak­ers plead­ing with young atten­dees to go into busi­ness, become entrepreneurs, help Amer­ica inno­vate. But the GOP women seem to want to leave that dream up to the boys..."

For Coco's full article, click HERE.

The Mysterious Death of Henry VI

Novelist Susan Higginbotham, whose most recent book The Queen of Last Hopes was inspired by the life of Henry VI's controversial queen, Marguerite of Anjou, takes a look at the mysterious death of Marguerite's husband, Henry VI, when the Yorkist family deposed him for a second time in May 1471.

"Even if the evidence from the exhumation does not conclusively prove that Henry VI died a violent death, it still seems likely that he did. Henry had suffered many reversals over the years before his death, and had personally witnessed the Lancastrian defeat at Barnet, having been dragged along to the site with Edward IV's army. While the news of his son's death at Tewkesbury and his wife's being taken captive must have been shattering for Henry VI to hear, it is hard to believe that it was such an unexpected shock that it would have caused his death. And with Edward of Lancaster dead, it would have been foolish for Edward IV to keep the Lancastrian cause alive in the shape of his father. 

If Henry was murdered, as seems most likely, the identity of his murderer or murderers is one of the best-kept secrets in English history. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, has been credited with the deed in popular legend, but there is no evidence that he was the murderer or that he carried the deed out alone if he was. He was present at the Tower the night of Henry's death, but so were many others."

For the full article, click here to go to Susan's blog.

Anniversary of the Coronation

Today marks the fifty-eighth anniversary of the Coronation of the Queen in Westminster Abbey, the great church where more recently her grandson married Catherine Middleton. 

Pretty magnificent footage from the BBC via YouTube of the day itself and the intricacies of the ceremony is shown below. The latter half is in colour.

For those interested, in Britain, Her Majesty's full official title is Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.

Upon becoming Sovereign, the Queen and her advisers decided that in reference and deference to the many other countries over which she was now Head of State, she would bear an individual title within those countries, representing her position as Head of the Commonwealth. This means that today, Her Majesty is also the Queen of Canada (in French, her full title is Sa Majesté Elizabeth Deux, par la grâce de Dieu Reine du Royaume-Uni, du Canada et de ses autres royaumes et territoires, Chef du Commonwealth, Défenseur de la Foi), Duke of Normandy (Guernsey and Jersey), Lord of Mann (the Isle of Mann), Queen of Barbados, Queen of Jamaica, Queen of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Grenada, Queen of Saint Lucia, Queen of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Queen of Australia, Queen of New Zealand, Queen of Papau New Guinea, Queen of the Solomon Islands, Queen of Tuvalu, Queen of Antigua and Barbuda, Queen of Belize and Queen of Saint Christopher and Nevis ("St Kitts.")

"Popular" by Gareth Russell now available to pre-order

Hi everyone,

I wanted to let you know that my first novel Popular is now available for pre-ordering on Amazon.co.uk, in preparation for its British and Irish release on July 7th. It's really exciting to see Popular up on the Internet at last.

For our international readers, Popular will be available in South Africa on August 1st, Canada on August 23rd and Australia and New Zealand on August 29th.