April 23 | Rupert Brooke

August 3, 1887 - April 23, 1915: Age 27

Rupert Brooke was a British poet famous for his sonnets about The Great War, and to a lesser extent for being a good-looking bisexual.

His most famous sonnet, The Soldier, is rather idealistic and contrasts with the bitter nature of the work of poets like Wilfred Owen. It is quoted a lot by people who want to celebrate the "supreme sacrifice" of a young man dying in combat. Weirdly enough, although Brooke died in 1915, it was not combat: like George Herbert, he died of an infected mosquito bite. He was on his way to a battle at Gallipoli. His friend William Brown was with him:

"...I sat with Rupert. At 4 o’clock he became weaker, and at 4.46 he died, with the sun shining all round his cabin, and the cool sea-breeze blowing through the door and the shaded windows. No one could have wished for a quieter or a calmer end than in that lovely bay, shielded by the mountains and fragrant with sage and thyme."

He was buried in an olive grove on the Greek island of Skyros. The text of The Soldier is included below. It was part of a series of poems entitled 1914.

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Source: Wikipedia

April 21 | Sandy Denny

January 6, 1947 - April 21, 1978: Age 31

Sandy Denny was a British singer-songwriter with an extraordinary voice and performing presence. Her sound is an indelible part of my own memories, as it was through hearing her band in the 1970s that I learned to love non-mainstream recorded music. She was the lead singer of Fairport Convention, a British band that explored the possibilities of blending traditional British folk music with modern instruments.

She was actually only with the band for a short time, but the three albums she recorded with them are their best. Although her subsequent work was generally well-received, she had substance abuse problems and was uncertain about her musical direction. In March 1978 she was visiting her parents at their cottage and fell down a flight of stairs. About a month later she collapsed and, four days later, died in hospital of a brain hemorrhage, caused by the previous fall.

Her voice must be experienced, it cannot be described. Here is a YouTube clip, illustrated only with stills but it includes "Who knows where the time goes", a beautiful song.

Source: Wikipedia

April 19 | George Gordon Byron

January 22, 1788 - April 19, 1824: Age 36

George Gordon, Lord Byron, was one of England's most influential poets and one of her many famous bad boys. We met him briefly as the father of Ada Lovelace, the polymath who invented computers, but the two shared only two qualities: brilliance and beauty. As it happens hardly knew each other.

Byron inherited his titles and estates at the age of 10. His first published works, "Fugitive Pieces", included poems he'd written at the age of 14, but the edition was immediately recalled and burned because of its sexy content. Byron was bisexual, and fell in love frequently.

He continued to publish and by the time he was in his mid-20s people with eyes for such things could see he was a very, very important poet. People with eyes for other things were scandalized by the sexual and satirical content of his work. A series of sexual scandals, including adultery, homosexuality, and incest, forced him into marriage with Ada's mother, but he quickly tired of this and left England forever.

In 1823 he was invited, through the Greek acquaintances he met during his "grand tour" of Europe as a young man, to become involved in the Greek independence movement. He entered the fray with gusto, spending a huge sum of money on refitting the Greek naval fleet. While preparing for an attack on a Turkish-held fortress at the Gulf of Corinth, he fell ill, and when the customary treatment of bleeding was applied it made him worse. In early April he caught a nasty cold, which developed into fever. Weakened by continued medicinal bleeding, he died on April 19.

Ironically, it was medicinal bleeding that killed his daughter Ada as well 26 years later. Despite the fact they hardly knew each other, they are buried side by side in Nottingham.

Source: Wikipedia

April 9 | Sir Francis Bacon

January 22, 1561 - 9 April 9, 1626: Age 65

The cat wasn't the only thing curiosity killed: it killed Francis Bacon, too. Through his essays and activities, the brilliant and popular polymath framed and promoted the scientific method — that is, an inductive method of scientific inquiry. In other words, he recommended that scientists actually test their theories, even when the outcome seemed obvious. It was revolutionary.

During a cold winter in 1626, while driving through London with a friend, he was suddenly seized by the idea that snow could be used to preserve meat. The two friends jumped out of the carriage, bought a chicken, and stood outside stuffing it with snow. In doing so, he got a terrible chill and fell ill so quickly with pneumonia that he stopped at the house of a friendly earl nearby to lie down. The earl happened to be in jail at the time for pissing off the king, but his servants welcomed Bacon and his companion and showed them to the guest room. In those days there was no central heating and if things got damp in the winter, they stayed damp; the bed he repaired to was both cold and damp. Within three days Bacon was dead.

Source: Wikipedia

April 6 | Richard I

September 8, 1157 – April 6, 1199: Age 41

Remember Thomas Becket? Richard I is the son of the guy who accidentally ordered him killed. He's also the same good King Richard who appears at the end of Robin Hood stories in his Crusader's outfit to save the day and restore order to England.

Although Richard the Lionheart, as he is known, enjoys great popularity in our imaginations today, the truth is he spent little time in England and could hardly speak English. He grew up in France and, a professional Crusader, used his English holdings to finance his very expensive armies in the Middle East.

He was indeed a great military leader and did wonderful things against Saladin. He also revolted against his own father on a regular basis, attempting on more than one occasion to seize his throne. When he was finally crowned King of England, after his father's death, he barred all Jews and women from the coronation ceremony. When some Jewish community leaders arrived with gifts, he had them stripped and flogged and then flung out into the street. A rumour then spread that Richard had ordered all Jews killed, and the people of London dutifully started a massacre. At this point Richard woke up to the fact that allowing leading Jewish citizens to be murdered and their property destroyed and stolen was a bad idea, had the perpetrators hung, and ordered that Jews be left alone.

He went on Crusade again a year later. When raising funds for this, he remarked "I would have sold London if I could find a buyer." He left the country in the hands of various family members and officials and divided his time over the next ten years between waging war in warmer, bloodier climes, and protecting his interests in France.

In March 1199 Richard was besieging a castle in the region of Limousin, suppressing a revolt in his holdings there. He was walking around the castle walls one evening, inspecting the progress of some sappers. Archers would shoot arrows from the castle from time to time but rarely hit anything important, and Richard felt confident enough to be making his inspection without armour. One archer in particular was standing on the walls holding a crossbow and a frying pan, which he had been using as a shield all day to ward off stones and other flying objects. When he aimed an arrow at Richard, the king laughed and applauded — until the arrow struck him on the left shoulder. Richard returned to his tent and tried to pull the arrow out, but could not, so he called a doctor. The doctor also had difficulty, removing the arrow but damaging Richard's arm.

The would became infected and it became clear he would die. Richard asked that the archer who shot him be found and brought before him. This was done, and the culprit turned out to be a mere boy, who announced that he had shot Richard in revenge as the king had killed his father and two brothers. With egotistic flair, Richard forgave the lad, giving him a sum of money and saying, "Live on, and by my bounty behold the light of day".

Richard made his will, leaving his throne to his brother John, and died on April 6 in the arms of his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. The young archer was recaptured, skinned alive, and hanged as soon as Richard died. So much for medieval chivalry.

Source: Wikipedia

April 5 | George Herbert

June 26, 1866 – April 5, 1923: Age 56

George Herbert, or rather George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, was the man who financed the excavation of King Tut's tomb by Howard Carter. He was present in February 1923 when the tomb was opened, and the greatest treasures of Egyptian archaeology were exposed to light and air for the first time in millennia.

He was still in Cairo several months later when he accidentally opened an infected mosquito bite while shaving. The resulting blood poisoning killed him at 1:55 a.m. on April 5, 1923. At the same moment, all the lights in Cairo went out. Back in England, Herbert's dog, Susie, let out a howl and died.

Over the next 10 years, a dozen others who went inside the tomb met untimely deaths, leading to speculation about the Pharaoh's Curse. Herbert's own son was so frightened that when boxes of treasure arrived back in England, he hid them unopened in the gap between two rooms. Herbert's hotel room in Cairo has never since been made available to anyone else.

Over the course of his life, Herbert collected a vast trove of Egyptian antiquities. The terms of his will stated that, should his wife wish to dispose of his collection, it should be offered to the British Museum for 20,000 pounds, a fraction of their real value. Lady Carnarvon made the offer, but gave the Museum until 4pm the same day to pay in full. When they could not, she was free to sell the collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for a much higher price: $145,000.

Sources: Wikipedia, Top News

April 2 | Arthur Tudor

September 19 or 20, 1486 - April 2, 1502: Age 15

When Arthur, Prince of Wales, was born a month early, he still seemed a healthy child. He was named after the legendary King Arthur of Britain, and he himself was heir to the British throne.

When he was two years old he was contracted to marry the youngest daughter of the same Ferdinand and Isabella who financed Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World. As he was growing up, he was heaped with honours and tutored by the finest minds in the kingdom. He and his bride-to-be wrote formal letters to one another in Latin. In November 1501, when he had turned 15 years old, the two met at a Palace in Hampshire, and were married ten days later.

Their marriage was very short. Arthur and his new bride, living in Wales, became very ill and, just over four months after the wedding, Arthur died. It is thought that he may have had what they called "sweating sickness", which is now presumed to be a form of hantavirus, or he may have had consumption or diabetes. Suddenly his younger brother Henry, who was just nine years old and destined for a career in the Church, became heir to the throne.

Catherine, who recovered from the fever only to find herself a 16-year-old widow of uncertain status. Because their marriage had been so short and, according to her, unconsommated, the normal procedure would have been for her to return, with her dowry, to her parents, and find someone else to marry. But her father-in-law, a notorious miser, could not bring himself to part with the money. Instead he made vague promises about her marrying the new heir, but since he was only nine years old the whole thing would have to be put off until the young man was old enough to marry. For eight years Catherine was isolated, living on a tiny allowance, unable to pay her staff, and having no official status.

Everything turned up roses when the old king died in 1509. Young King Henry immediately announced his intention to go ahead with the marriage, and for 15 years the two enjoyed a famously loving and happy union. But then, we all know how that ended.

How different the history of England, Europe, and the world would be had Arthur not died so young.

Source: Wikipedia

March 28 | Virginia Woolf

January 25, 1882 - March 28, 1941: Age 59

Virginia Woolf was an English writer whose novels and essays had a lasting impact on English literary style. She was a member of the very influential Bloomsbury group, a collection of writers, artists, and thinkers who explored and promoted radical ideas about feminism, sexuality, and pacifism.

Woolf suffered her first nervous breakdown as a teenager after her mother and her sister both died within two years of one another. Her father's death when she was just over 20 had the same effect. She was also sexually abused as a child by her half-brother. Throughout her life, her temperament was delicate and she endured regular, debilitating periods of depression.

In March 1941 she was living in the country, trying to avoid having another nervous breakdown. Not that she had much of a choice: her home in London had been destroyed in bombing raids. Feeling another breakdown was inevitable, and not wanting to endure it, she wrote a suicide note to her husband Leonard, weighted her pockets with stones, and walked into a river near her home. Her body wasn't found for nearly three weeks.

"I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been."

Source: Wikipedia

March 24 | Alex Mitchell

1925 - March 24, 1975: Age 50

Alex Mitchell was a bricklayer from King's Lynn. On March 24, 1975, at the age of 50, he died laughing while watching an episode of The Goodies. According to his wife, who was a witness, Mitchell was unable to stop laughing while watching a sketch in the episode "Kung Fu Kapers" in which Tim Brooke-Taylor, dressed as a kilted Scotsman, used a set of bagpipes to defend himself from a psychopathic black pudding in a demonstration of the Scottish martial art of "Hoots-Toot-ochaye." After twenty-five minutes of continuous laughter Mitchell finally slumped on the sofa and expired from heart failure.

And guess what! You can watch the very episode that killed Alex Mitchell, right now! It has been uploaded onto YouTube in three parts. Part 2 is the segment that contains the fatal sketch, but if you're a true Goodies fan, you'll want to start with Part 1 and watch all three segments in sequence (Parts 2 and 3 will be linked in the "related videos" column when you watch Part 1). Warning: I take no responsibility whatever for the consequences, fatal or otherwise, of watching it.

Bonus video: The Funniest Joke in the World by Monty Python. Pythons John Cleese and Michael Palin went on the make Danish audiologist Ole Bentzen die laughing when he watched them in A Fish Called Wanda.

Source: Wikipedia

February 18 | George Plantagenet

October 21, 1449 - February 18, 1478: Age 28

George Plantagenet seems to have been a rather ordinary man, with ordinary weaknesses, plunged into an extraordinary situation — that is, the dynastic mess already referred to on these pages recently with his great-great-great uncle, Richard II, and his neice, Elizabeth of York. Seems like February was a bad time to be royalty in Britain in the 15th century.

George Plantagenet, a.k.a. the Duke of Clarence, was the younger brother of Edward IV, the guy who deposed Henry VI, who was the grandson of the guy who deposed Richard II. In fact the only person who got the throne by direct inheritance during the 15th century who wasn't deposed and/or murdered was Henry V, who died of dysentery 9 years after he became king. And of the seven monarchs who ruled Britain in that century, a majority — Henry IV, Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII — got the throne by means other than conventional inheritance. (Given the quality of life of those who had it... why?)

Back to George. It's very simple really, he got embroiled in some kind of plot against his brother Edward. Edward had him imprisoned and condemned to death. Legend has it that he was given his choice of execution methods, and he famously chose to be drowned in a butt of malmsey, that is, a giant keg of wine. Apparently he was fond of the stuff. It sounds like urban legend, but Shakespeare knew a good story when he saw one (as do I) and wrote it into Richard III. In fact Plantagenet's body was exhumed many years later and although not even the CSI guys can prove drowning from a skeleton, it was clear he had not been beheaded, the usual method of execution for those of noble birth.

By the way, I have a little souvenir booklet purchased in Britain many years ago that shows all the lines of succession of Britain's monarchs. I have had to refer to it so frequently in this past two weeks that it now practically falls open at the page showing the line between Edward III (Richard II's grandfather) and Henry VII.

Sources: Wikipedia; Montague-Smith, Patrick, The Royal Line of Succession

February 14 | Richard II

January 6, 1367 - February 14, 1400: Age 33

Richard II was actually not a horrible king, but he lacked one essential quality: the ability to understand how to compromise among competing concentrations of power. He naively believed that absolute power should, and therefore did, lie with the King, i.e., himself. It did not. In England and in anywhere else, any leader rules by consent of multiple social and economic power bases. Piss off enough of those bases, and you're out.

In 14th century England those bases were the established nobles, many of whom he sidelined in favour of his friends. When they pushed back, he pushed harder, and the ultimate crisis came when he imprisoned and murdered the most powerful lord of the realm, the Duke of Gloucester, and exiled two more. He was childless at the time (his wife was just 13). The putative heir to the throne was a great-nephew, but the real threat was another nephew, Henry Bolingbroke, whom he also exiled.

Exiling a group of powerful nobles to a wealthy foreign country not entirely devoted to your interests is a very bad idea. Bolingbroke gathered a force, returned to England, and deposed Richard without encountering any resistance: nobody would lift a sword in favour of the King. Richard was captured and taken to London, where crowds threw garbage at him. He renounced his crown before Parliament and was imprisoned in Pontefract Castle, where he died around the second week of February, 1400, either by starvation or murder. Henry Bolingbroke became Henry IV.

In some versions of the tale, including that of Raphael Holinshed, a chronicler of the 16th century and source for Shakespeare's play, Richard II is murdered, and very dramatically at that:

"Sir Piers entered the chamber, well armed, with eight tall men likewise armed, every of them having a bill in his hand. King Richard perceiving this, put the table from him, and stepping to the foremost man, wrung the bill out of his hands, and so valiantlie defended himselfe, that he slue foure of those that thus came to assaile him. Sir Piers being half dismayed herewith, lept into the chaire where king Richard was wont to sit, while the other foure persons fought with him, and chased him about the chamber. And in conclusion, as king Richard traversed his ground, from one side of the chamber to another, and comming by the chaire, where Sir Piers stood, he was felled with a stroke of a pollar, which Sir Piers gave him upon the head, and therewith rid him out of life, the 14th of February, 1399. It is said that Sir Piers of Exton, after he had thus slain him, wept right bitterlie, as one stricken with the pricke of a giltie conscience, for murthering him whom he had so long time obeied as king."

And here is why I've included Richard II's death here: Sir Piers of Exton is my ancestor. The name "Exton" is given to many of the men in my family on my mother's side in commemoration of this.

Sources: Wikipedia; Fox, George, The History of Pontefract, in Yorkshire, 1827.

February 13 | Catherine Howard

1523? 1525? - February 13, 1542: Age between 17 and 19

Catherine Howard was another of those poor misplaced characters. Pretty, sexy, romantic, full of vitality, she might have had a happy life as a middle-class householder. She was, however, a pawn of a ruthlessly ambitious family, and made some pretty foolish choices. But then what teenager doesn't?

Her mother died when she was very young, and she was cared for by a step-grandmother, who paid little attention to her. She hung out with the other unmarried women of grandma's household, who all slept together in a kind of dormitory. It seems the sexual education available in that dorm was rich and extensive, and by the time Catherine was 12 she was enjoying the pleasures of womanhood with at least two male household employees.

If she was unlucky in losing her mother so young, her next bit of bad luck came when she attracted the attention of the King. Her family had obtained for her a position in the household of Anne of Cleves, then (briefly) Queen of England. Anne's marriage with the King was clearly not going to last, and the entire court was in the throes of the familiar game of "Who Can Get a Woman in the King's Bed Fastest?" Her family, the Howards, won.

Catherine was foolish, but the King should have known better. He was nearly 50 years old had already been married four times, and had slept with countless other women. However he was in the grip of an elaborate fantasy about his "English rose without a thorn", and despite all evidence to the contrary (including the fact that Catherine slept with him before the annulment of his marriage) he was convinced that she was a pure and chaste as she appeared. It was rumoured that she was pregnant when they married, but that proved untrue.

Once married, Catherine discovered she was unable to keep up the pretense of being attracted to her new husband. He weighed about 300 pounds and had a smelly festering sore on one of his thighs, and in fact his wily previous wife had convinced him to annul their marriage on the grounds of non-consummation (pretending of course that she was too ugly for him). With her appetite for sex, her eye began to wander, and she began an affair with one of the courtiers.

This was not as stupid as it appears. Despite many marriages and pregnancies, the King had only one living male heir; it was imperative that a "spare" be produced. The King himself had been a "spare"; it was his older brother who had been brought up to rule, but he died before their father. Tongues were already wagging about Catherine's licentious past; the cost of bribes to keep them still was escalating and the Howards were aware that their position was getting fragile. If Catherine could become pregnant and produce a son, she (and the family) would be safe from any gossip.

By 1541 she had not become pregnant, and the truth about her conduct was known to everyone in the realm except her husband. He was finally informed, delicately, that Catherine had be "precontracted" to someone else before her marriage to him; this would invalidate the marriage legally, and she could safely be removed from court with minimal loss of face all round. All she needed to do was confirm the precontract.

She was arrested in November. Upon her arrest she pulled away from her guards and rushed to the church where the King was taking Mass. She pounded on the doors and screamed his name, but was ignored, and the guards caught up to her and dragged her away.

At this point she completely lost it. She became continuously incoherent and hysterical, steadfastly denying the precontract, desperately trying to hang on to her position as Queen. Repeated gentle questioning, hints, and outright stern advice didn't move her... her family, who should have supported and helped her, completely abandoned her at this point, feigning shock and outrage at her "deception" and otherwise trying to lie low and not be noticed. (It didn't help most of them, so many of them were arrested the Tower became overcrowded.) This brought about the unpleasant necessity of proving she had committed adultery after her marriage. Her two lovers confessed under torture and were executed for treason.

She was summarily convicted of intent to commit treason (Parliament had to be hastily summoned to pass a law making this a capital offence) and sentenced to death. On the night before her execution, the poor kid spent hours practising how to lay her head up on the block with dignity. When she approached the scaffold, pale and terrified, she had to be helped up the steps. There she gave a little prepared speech about her "worthy and just punishment" and begged for mercy for her family (who hardly deserved it). Her head came off with one stroke.

And I have reached the end of this story without once mentioning the fat bastard's name.

Sources: Wikipedia, Catherine Howard

February 11 | Elizabeth of York

February 11, 1466 - February 11, 1503

Elizabeth was at the centre of one of the stickiest dynastic tangles England ever experienced. She was one of eleven children of Edward IV of England; you'd think that having 11 children would make a throne secure in a culture of inherited kingship. But this was not so, for a number of reasons: one, Edward died when his eldest son was still just a boy. Two, Edward's own claim to the throne was not direct, but merely in preference to his mad cousin, Henry VI, whom he deposed. Three, he had a very able and powerful brother who was hungry for the kingship himself: Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who became Richard III.

The means by which Richard III came to the throne is still in dispute. Legitimate inheritance depended on disinheritance of Edward's two preteenaged sons. This could be accomplished in a number of ways: either they could be declared bastards, or they could disappear. Both occurred: Richard had Parliament pass a bill declaring his brother's second marriage to be invalid, thus turning all 11 of his children into bastards and making Richard the legitimate heir. The young princes also disappeared after a period of "protection" in the Tower of London.

All this took place when Elizabeth was a teenager. Obviously, as the eldest child of the previous King, she was a key figure in the political contests of the day, but personally seems to have been a gentle, private person who wanted no part of the struggle. She was also famous for her beauty. When Henry Tudor killed Richard during a rebellion, he secured his own somewhat tenuous claim to the throne by marrying Elizabeth.

The marriage seems to be been a success. She was 20 when they married, and the union produced seven children (or possibly eight). Henry VII was an able king who brought peace to the kingdom and time for much-needed social and economic healing after decades of civil strife. In 1501, however, the couple's eldest son and heir, Arthur, died suddenly at the age of 15. They were devastated. They had only one surviving son (a couple of others had died in infancy) and Elizabeth became pregnant again, in hopes of strengthening the succession. In early February 1503 she gave birth to a daughter, who died the same day. Elizabeth herself developed childbed fever, a postpartum infection very common in cultures where women give birth in unsanitary conditions. Nine days later, Elizabeth herself died: it was her 37th birthday.

Henry was deeply sad at her death and, despite being famous for his miserliness, gave her a splendid funeral. Elizabeth of York is the only English Queen to have been a wife, daughter, sister, niece, and mother to English kings. She's also the model for the Queen of Hearts in the traditional deck of cards.

Source: Wikipedia, Tudor History

February 5 | Violette Szabo

June 26, 1921 - c.February 5, 1945: Age 23

Violette Szabo was an Allied secret agent in France during the Second World War. She was born in Paris, her mother being French and her father English. When she was 19, she met and married a French soldier of Hungarian descent, who was killed in battle shortly after the birth of their daughter in 1942.

She offered her services to the British Special Operations Executive, based on her fluency in French and her knowledge of the country. After extensive training she was sent into France to research munitions factories in order to establish efficient targets for Allied bombs. After one successful mission, she returned to France in June 1944, but was wounded by a German patrol. She insisted that her companions escape while she provided covering fire, which they did. Once she ran out of ammunition, she was captured.

She was tortured and interrogated but revealed nothing. She was transferred to eight different prisons during her incarceration; when she was in one lightly guarded prison her comrades organized a rescue mission but arrived just two hours after she had been sent away to Ravensbruck, a notorious concentration camp for women, where nearly 100,000 women were killed. Violette, ultimately, was among them. After enduring hard labour and malnutrition there, and later in a labour camp on the Russian front, she was returned to Ravensbruck and executed by firing squad in February 1945.

Sources: Wikipedia, findagrave.com, The Violette Szabo Museum

February 2 | Sid Vicious

May 10, 1957 - February 2, 1979: Age 21

Born John Simon Ritchie, he was one of the best known artists of the punk rock movement. He began playing music publicly in 1976 with The Flowers of Romance, along with Keith Levene (who later co-founded both The Clash and Public Image Limited). John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) of the Sex Pistols asked him to join the band in 1977.

The band brought punk into mainstream consciousness. For one thing, they were canny; Lydon and their manager, Malcolm McLaren, were both extremely sensitive to the Zeitgeist of the day and knew just what buttons to push to ensure maximum public reaction. At the time, popular music had reached an apogee of self-indulgent, commercial crappiness, young people were frustrated (as usual) by the lies being told them and wanted something truly new. Punk rock was it. It was new, it was real, raw, very creative, and it delivered a satisfyingly profound shock to the previous generation.

Six months later Ritchie met an American named Nancy Spungen, a groupie who introduced him to a heroin habit. Their relationship was passionate, violent, and not particularly healthy for either of them, and Ritchie deteriorated a lot during their 1978 tour of America. The band broke up in San Francisco, and Ritchie embarked on a solo career. He was very successful because he had an amazing attitude: he raised not giving a shit to high art. He never did learn to play the bass properly.

In October 1978 he and Spungen were staying at the Chelsea Hotel in New York (already famous for so many deaths, including Dylan Thomas). He woke up to find her dead on the bathroom floor, with a single stab wound in her abdomen. She had bled to death. He was arrested and charged with murder, although he had no memory of doing it. His mother posted bail for him and plans were in place for him to record an album to raise money for his defence.

During his time in prison he had cleared his system of drugs, but once bailed out he obtained some heroin from his mother (who was a dealer). He overdosed and, despite being revived once by his girlfriend, died at about 10am the morning of February 2, 1979. Lab tests revealed that the heroin was 80% pure, rather than the more usual 5% of the day.

According to Lydon: "Poor Sid. The only way he could live up to what he wanted everyone to believe about him was to die. That was tragic, but more for Sid than anyone else. He really bought his public image."

Here are the Sex Pistols performing Pretty Vacant on YouTube. Enjoy!

And just for fun, check out the top 100 hits of 1977 here. This is what the record companies were pushing down our throats, what was playing everywhere in cars, in malls, on the telly. It's enough to make you want to go throw up on an old lady.

Source: Wikipedia

January 31 | Guy Fawkes

April 13, 1570 - January 31, 1606: Age 35

Guy Fawkes was a professional soldier, forever famous for his involvement in a plot to blow up the House of Lords in London. Although it is his name that is synonymous with the events, he was not the mastermind; that was someone else. But Fawkes was the first to be discovered, and something about him caught the public imagination.

Fawkes was a Catholic at a time when England's Catholics were feverishly dreaming of a national return to the Church of Rome. It was rather unpopular to be Catholic at the time, there were a lot of rules about open practice of the Faith and a great deal of informal social prejudice. Fawkes kept quiet about his convictions and spent as much time as possible out of the country. As a professional soldier he had many opportunities to do so.

The staunchly Protestant James I (the Scottish king who had succeeded Queen Elizabeth only three years previously) was seen by Catholics as the biggest obstacle to the glorious return to true Christendom. A small group of conspirators decided that by blowing up the House of Lords, with James and his family and most of the aristocracy inside, they would initiate a general uprising across the country, supported of course by foreign troops arriving from the continent. Fawkes was put in charge of the practical details of executing the plot because of his experience as a soldier. Under his management, they rented a cellar under the House of Lords and began surreptitiously filling it with vast quantities of gunpowder and firewood.

Unfortunately for the group, some of them had consciences, or a partial consciences anyway: they were concerned about the few Catholics who would be present at the opening of Parliament. One went so far as to write an anonymous letter of warning to Lord Monteagle, who promptly took it to the authorities. At least, that was his story. Many believe today that he found out about the plot through his own Catholic connections, and concocted the "anonymous" letter himself in order to gain credit for the discovery and distance himself from the conspirators.

In the early morning of November 5 he and another Lord searched the vaults under Parliament, aided by a band of stout constables, and discovered "tall and desperate fellow" skulking around — Fawkes himself, disguised as a servant. They seized and bound him. The other conspirators quickly heard of the arrest and fled London, vainly trying to raise mobs of angry Catholic sympathisers along the way.

Meanwhile, back in London, Fawkes was being tortured for information. He was very strong, calm, and a fanatical idealist; he held out for several days (earning the respect of his torturers and even the King in the process). It was only when he learned that his co-conspirators had revealed themselves by publicly taking up arms that he began to talk, but even then gave only the names that were already known or of those already dead. By this time, it was a formality. Most of the details of the plot were known, and everyone remotely involved in it had been arrested.

Fawkes was sentenced to be hung, drawn, and quartered on January 31, 1606, along with three other conspirators (four others had already been executed). Visibly "weak with torture and sickness" he asked forgiveness of the King and state, but maintained his Catholic faith to the end. He was barely able to mount the ladder to the scaffold, and had to be helped up by the hangman. He was able, however, to mount high enough and then leap from the scaffold, breaking his neck and dying before being taken to the quartering table.

Under the public outrage against Fawkes, which was considerable, there was always a sneaking admiration, that has come more and more to the surface, the more time passes. To this day November 5 (the date of the discovery of the plot) is Bonfire Night, when children put together an effigy of Fawkes and then burn him. But he was also voted #30 in the BBC-sponsored list of "100 Greatest Britons" in 2002. In 2006 the film V for Vendetta, set in a future British dystopia, had the mysterious protagonist take Guy Fawkes as his historical inspiration. It includes a re-enactment of his capture and execution. Kinda fun (as these things go).

Sources: Wikipedia; Fraser, Antonia, Faith and Treason, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1996

January 26 | Chinese Gordon

January 28, 1833 - January 26, 1885: Age 51

Major General Charles "Chinese" Gordon was an extremely popular and influential figure in the British Empire. He served in the Crimea, China, South Africa, India, and the Sudan. Brave to a fault, he often rode ahead of his troops, swinging his sword and engaging the opposition in hand-to-hand combat. This made him popular, but one wonders at his judgment.

In 1884 he was sent to Sudan to evacuate occupying Egyptian troops in the face of a rising tide of angry Moslems, who did not fancy British overlordship. Instead of evacuating, Gordon fortified their position and demanded that the British government send reinforcements. "I shall hold out here as long as I can, and if I can suppress the rebellion I shall do so," he wrote. "If I cannot, I shall retire to the equator and leave you the indelible disgrace of abandoning the garrisons."

Knowing the cause to be lost, the government was reluctant to agree, but public opinion eventually forced them to send relief. It came too late. By December 1884 both of Gordon's aides had died, leaving him the last British official in Khartoum. "I think the game is up. We may expect a catastrophe." The leader of the Moslem forces sent word to him that if he surrendered, he would be spared and sent back to England. Gordon characteristically refused. On January 26 the rebels swarmed into Khartoum, and Gordon's remaining forces lasted only 30 minutes.

Gordon himself stood outside his quarters in the palace, dressed in his white uniform, with his left hand on his sheathed sword and his right hand holding a revolver. He used neither as a Moslem fighter shoved a spear through Gordon's breast. Gordon fell forward on the palace floor as other rebels jabbed their spears into his body. He was decapitated and his head delivered to the Moslem leader.*

The British reinforcements arrived two days later, on what would have been Gordon's birthday. Seeing the city in ruins, they turned back without a fight.

Back in England, the public reacted to his death with rage. No matter that the cause was hopeless, and that the whole endeavour of colonialism was becoming more and more obviously untenable. Gordon was a hero: if anything had gone wrong, it was the government's fault. By the summer, the government had fallen, and Gordon had a statue in Trafalgar Square.

*Forbes, Malcolm, They Went That-A-Way, Simon and Shuster, New York, 1988

January 20 | George V

June 3, 1865 - January 20, 1936: Age 70

"I pray to God my eldest son will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lillibet and the throne."

George V was the grandson of Queen Victoria and the grandfather of our current monarch (those of us who are British subjects). He ascended the throne in 1910 and ruled during the First World War, although it cannot be said that an English monarch actually "rules", given that he or she has no executive powers. Nevertheless the symbolic importance of the monarchy was, and is, critical.

Thus when the King's health suddenly deteriorated, it was a matter of international interest and importance. A heavy smoker, he suffered from chronic lung problems including emphysema and pleurisy. He took to bed with a cold on January 15, and within a few days was clearly dying. "The King's life is moving peacefully toward its close," wrote his physician, Lord Dawson of Penn, in a note to the Queen and her children on January 20.

In fact Dawson, recognizing that the King had reached an irreversible state, decided to hasten his end. In a private set of notes not published until 1986, he noted,

"At about 11pm, it was evident that the last stage might endure for many hours, unknown to the patient but little comporting with the dignity and serenity which he most richly merited and which demanded a brief final scene. I therefore decided to determine the end."

This decision was supported, he continued, by the family. (Euthanasia was and is illegal in England, but it was commonplace, although not openly discussed, in cases where the patient was beyond hope.)

The official story is that the King's last words were, "How is the Empire?" Another tale (never substantiated) is that, when the King was told he might soon be well enough to visit the seaside resort of Bognor Regis, he said, "Bugger Bognor!" In fact Dawson's notes reveal a different ending. As the nurse was giving the King a sedative that night, he mumbled, "God damn you!" He never woke up. Later, Dawson administered a lethal injection of cocaine and morphine. George V died at 11:55pm, in time for news of his death to make the morning edition of The Times.

Evidently God was listening to the King when he prayed that "nothing come between Bertie and Lillibet and the throne". The "eldest son" was of course the future Edward VIII, a handsome, popular man who flirted both with older married women and with facism. Within a year of ascending the throne, Edward VIII forced a constitutional crisis by proposing to marry an American divorcée, Wallis Simpson. When it became clear that the government would never accept the marriage, he chose to abdicate. His brother, "Bertie", became King George VI, who ruled until his death in 1952, when "Lillibet" ascended the throne as Queen Elizabeth II.

Sources: Wikipedia; Forbes, Malcolm, They Went That-A-Way, Simon and Shuster, New York, 1988.

January 18 | Bruce Chatwin

May 13, 1940 - January 18, 1989: Age 48

Bruce Chatwin wrote the best first paragraph in the history of essay writing. It goes like this:

"The Emperor Wu-ti (145-87 BC) was the most spectacular horse-rustler in history. He craved the possession of a few mares and stallions which belonged to an obscure ruler at the end of the known world, and in getting them he nearly engineered the collapse of China."

When I first encountered this paragraph, I was awestruck by its raw power to fill me with an intense desire to know more about a man, a place and time in which, 5 minutes before, I had no interest whatsoever. I also wanted to hear more from Bruce Chatwin. He had that effect on people.

(That first paragraph is from an essay in a book called What Am I Doing Here?, a collection of essays about Chatwin's travels. I wholeheartedly recommend it, and indeed any of his books, to you.)

Chatwin started out working as a porter in the art department at Sotheby's in London in 1958. He developed very sharp eye for visual detail in general, and fine art in particular; a sensitivity that greatly enhances his writing. His eyes, however, began to fail in the mid-1960s, and a doctor recommended a rest, suggesting that travel might be a good distraction. The subsequent trip to Africa changed Chatwin's life.

From 1966, when he resigned from Sotheby's, to his death in 1989, Chatwin travelled the world, supporting himself by writing about his experiences. He had a talent for finding and connecting with interesting people, both famous and obscure, and conveying his passionate interest in their worlds through his essays.

In the late 1980s he contracted AIDS. At the time the disease was "the gay plague", and public knowledge of it would have quickly ruined him, so he pretended that his symptoms were the result of fungal infections, or the effect of the bite of a Chinese bat. The very odd thing is, he seemed to actually believe the lie. Even in his final months, he would say things like, "I don't understand why I'm not getting better." The word "AIDS" was never mentioned in his household or among his friends. His symptoms included periods of mania during which he toured the auction houses of London, making extravagant purchases which his wife then quietly returned.

When his condition became worse, they moved to the south of France, where they spent his final months living in the house of a friend. At the very end, his denial, combined with the intolerance and ignorance in France at the time, greatly added to his suffering, as it was difficult to get medical care and although Chatwin was bisexual he refused to draw on the resources of the gay community, who knew a lot about caring for AIDS patients.

He was afraid of dying, but in his lucid moments was aware that it was at hand. He lost consciousness for the last time on January 15, reduced to a skeleton, unable to speak clearly because of the fungus in his mouth, in great pain. When his nails started turning blue, his wife and friends took him to hospital in Nice, where he was kept alive a few more days by machines. On January 18, his wife ordered that he be taken off life support. He died a few hours later.

Sources: Wikipedia; Shakespeare, Nicholas, Bruce Chatwin, The Harvill Press, London, 1999.

January 13 | Harold Shipman

January 14, 1946 - January 13, 2004: Age 57

Dr. Harold Shipman was one of the most successful serial killers in history. He was an English doctor who dispatched an estimated 250 of his patients by giving them overdoses of heroin, and then forging medical records to make it seem they were already in poor health.

In 1998, a colleague became uneasy at the number of cremation forms he was asking her to countersign. She felt sure that he was somehow killing his patients, but she didn't know how, so she approached the district coroner with her suspicions. An initial police enquiry did not produce enough evidence for charges. A few months later he killed a woman for whom, bizarrely, he produced a will cutting out her own children and leaving a tidy sum to him. Her daughter went to the police, who had the dead woman's body exhumed: it showed traces of heroin. When Shipman was arrested it emerged that his own personal typewriter was used to make the fake will.

In January 2000 he was convicted of killing 15 of his patients; a further inquiry after he was sentenced to prison for life concluded that he was probably responsible for about 250 deaths, including that of a four-year-old girl. Because he was usually the only doctor to sign the death certificates, and because many of the patients were cremated, it would be difficult to know for certain. He never spoke about his actions and although in one case there was a will, in most of the other cases there was no clear motive. He did steal jewelry from some of his victims, but not systematically.

On January 13, 2004, Harold Shipman was found dead in his cell, hanged using bed sheets tied to the window bars of his cell. He had told his probation officer that he was considering suicide so that his wife could receive a pension; she would not have been entitled to one if he had died after the age of 60. January 14, 2004 would have been his 58th birthday.

Sources: Wikipedia, The Sun