By Natasha Tidd, illustrated by Emily Feaver, Michael O’Mara Books Limited, 2023.
With so much to cover in under 300 pages, beginning with the Achaemenid Persian Empire from 550 BC and ending with the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, this proceeds at a breakneck pace and is necessarily pretty dense. The author’s irreverent wit, knowledge and acuity easily overcome those potential obstacles.
Her website is more than worth a visit:
F Yeah History – History…but better (wordpress.com)
I learnt a very great deal and was reminded of much that I had long forgotten. I noticed certain recurring truths, in particular that just because a lie has long been exposed, a forgery revealed, sadly often that makes little difference for those who choose to carry on believing them, nor their victims. As a result tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and even millions of human lives have been lost.
As one half of a mixed race couple, I was fascinated to learn that that unpleasant word ‘miscegenation’ was invented in 1863 by two newsmen who produced an entirely fake incendiary pamphlet as part of the fight against the abolitionist movement in America. It was only in 1964 that American law began to be changed to prevent states from banning interracial marriage.
There is a great deal in the book about anti-Semitism, particularly blood libel, the accusation that Jewish people ritually sacrifice Christian children for their blood, to be used in religious ceremonies. This lie began in Europe in the twelfth century. Horrifyingly, it has never really gone away. A staple of anti-Semitic propaganda, it was used by the Nazis in the 1930s as was the notorious The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In 1475 the body of a two-year-old boy, Simon of Trent, was found washed up underneath a Jewish moneylender’s house. Blood libel reared its vile head again, the entire Jewish population of Trent was arrested and several men were burned at the stake following confessions extracted through torture. The ‘Cult of Simon’ lives on to this day in neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. A gunman who entered a synagogue in San Diego in 2019 and opened fire gave the reason for his crime: revenge for Simon of Trent.
The Testament of Peter the Great, which seems not to have existed at all, was used as anti-Russian propaganda as recently as the Cold War.
I would love to have seen Natasha Tidd go even further forward in time to use her rapier on George Bush (x 2) and Tony Bliar (sic) whose lies were responsible for the illegal war in Iraq, and of course the latter’s thuggish henchman Alastair what was his name? Campbell, that’s it. Of course I remember it but I like the idea that he would hate to be forgotten. Bliar’s pitiful attempt to imitate Bush Junior’s swaggering power walk on a visit to America tells you everything you need to know about the man.
Recent times have given us plenty of other liars and scoundrels, many of them covered in James O’Brien’s superb How They Broke Britain, WH Allen, 2023, including Murdoch, Dacre, Farage, Cameron, Corbyn, Cummings, Johnson & Truss, a book I will post about later. I have tended to think Corbyn was one of the good guys, brought down only by the right-wing media, but no doubt I will be enlightened.
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