Buch lesen: «The Times Great Events»
COPYRIGHT
Published by Times Books
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First edition 2020
© This compilation Times Newspapers Ltd 2020
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Acknowledgements
Cover image © MSSA / Shutterstock
Our thanks and acknowledgements go to Lily Cox, Joanne Lovey and Robin Ashton at News Syndication and, in particular, at The Times, Ian Brunskill and, at HarperCollins, Jethro Lennox, Lauren Murray, Kevin Robbins, Louise Robb and Lauren Reid.
We’d also like to thank Alan Copps for all his help and expertise.
eBook Edition © October 2020
ISBN 9780008419455
Version 2020-09-18
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Georgian Times
The Fall of the Bastille
The Battle of Trafalgar
The Abolition of Slavery
The Assassination of Spencer Perceval
The Battle of Waterloo
Peterloo
An Early Railway Accident
The Age of Victoria
The Coronation of Queen Victoria
The Treaty of Waitangi
Revolution in Vienna
The Great Exhibition
The Charge of the Light Brigade
The Outbreak of the Indian Mutiny
Big Ben Nears Completion
The Death of Prince Albert
The Underground Railway
Gettysburg
The Road Hill House Murder
The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
The Opening of the Suez Canal
The First Test Cricket Series
The Relief of Khartoum
The Murder of Mary Jane Kelly
The Dedication of the Eiffel Tower
The Trials of Oscar Wilde
The Diamond Jubilee
The Funeral of Queen Victoria
The Edwardian Era
The General Election of 1906
The End of the Dreyfus Affair
The Olympic Marathon
The Messina Earthquake
Louis Blériot Flies the Channel
The Arrest of Dr Crippen
The Last Emperor of China
The Titanic Sinks
Disaster at the South Pole
The Great War
Archduke Franz Ferdinand Assassinated in Sarajevo
War Declared
The Easter Rising
The First Day of the Somme
The Russian Revolution
The Execution of the Romanovs
The End of the Great War
Spanish Influenza
Women Vote for the First Time
Lady Astor Takes Her Seat
The Twenties and Thirties
Prohibition
Tutankhamun’s Tomb
The Death of Lenin
John Logie Baird Demonstrates Television
The General Strike
Lindbergh Flies the Atlantic
The Wall Street Crash
Gandhi’s Salt March
Telephone Links the World
Hitler Becomes Chancellor of Germany
Bonnie and Clyde
The Flying Scotsman
Spain
The Jarrow March
The Abdication Crisis
The Hindenburg Disaster
The Fall of Nanking
The Second World War
War Declared
The Norway Debate
The Battle of Britain
The Blitz
Pearl Harbour
Alamein
D-Day
The Liberation of Bayeux
Hitler Dead
Victory Celebrated
Hiroshima Inferno
From Austerity to Astronauts
India Gains Independence
The Berlin Airlift
The Olympic Games in London
The People’s Republic of China Proclaimed
Festival of Britain
The Korean War
Everest Conquered
The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
The Four-Minute Mile
The Missing Diplomats
The Hungarian Uprising
Suez
The Munich Air Disaster
The First Motorway
Marilyn Monroe
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Assassination of President Kennedy
Beatlemania
The Death of Winston Churchill
Abolition of the Death Penalty
The World Cup
Aberfan
Paris ’68
Prague Spring
Concorde’s Maiden Flight
The Moon Landings
The Seventies and Eighties
Decimal Day
Bloody Sunday
Munich Massacre
Britain Joins the EEC
Nixon Resigns
Saigon Falls
Elvis Presley Dies
Star Wars
The Test-Tube Baby
The Election of Pope John Paul II
The Worst of Times
Independence for Zimbabwe
The SAS Storm the Iranian Embassy
The Death of John Lennon
The Brixton Riots
The Shooting of Pope John Paul II
The Headingley Test
The Royal Wedding
The Falklands War
The Miners’ Strike
The Brighton Bomb
Live Aid
The Challenger Disaster
Chernobyl
Wapping
The Lockerbie Bombing
Tiananmen Square
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
Modern Times
Nelson Mandela
The Fall of Margaret Thatcher
Desert Storm
The First Briton in Space
Black Wednesday
History in a Handshake
The Channel Tunnel
OJ Simpson Acquitted
Peace in Bosnia
Tony Blair Leads Labour to Power
Hong Kong Handover
The Death of Diana, Princess of Wales
The Good Friday Agreement
The Millennium
September 11
The Death of the Queen Mother
The Fall of Saddam Hussein
July 7 Attacks
The Financial Crisis
The Inauguration of Barack Obama
Coalition
The Royal Wedding
The Death of Colonel Gaddafi
The London Olympics
Andy Murray Wins Wimbledon
Brexit
Grenfell
Coronavirus
George Floyd
Index
About the Publisher
INTRODUCTION
The urge to know what is happening beyond the horizon is as old as humankind. There were printed newssheets circulating in Venice by the sixteenth century, and newspapers well-established in Britain by the early eighteenth. Yet it was The Times which, almost from its founding in 1785, redefined what newspapers should report and, accordingly, what news was.
Britain was unusual in having a press not controlled by the state, but its journalism hitherto had often been merely gossipy, or polemical, or interested purely in politics, or just parochial. The approach of The Times was more professional, reflecting the growing size of the mercantile class and its need to be informed.
In particular, the paper sought from its earliest years to provide regular news from Europe and, later, became one of the first to employ war correspondents to report from the battlefield. Its willingness to print despatches from closer to home, notably details of the Peterloo massacre, was another sign of its independent thinking.
The early development of The Times acknowledged a changing world in which the repeal of taxes on papers hugely increased their circulation and new technology transformed the speed at which news could be gathered; its report in 1840 on the Treaty of Waitangi, which established British governance over New Zealand, took six months to arrive by sea. (Publications that had sat alongside The Times in its early days, but did not focus on the events of the day, turned into magazines.)
Thereafter, The Times evolved as greater competition in the late-nineteenth century challenged its dominant position. It added other sections – editorial leaders, letters, obituaries – which became similarly renowned and valued by its readers. Yet news remained at its core, and still does, even if these days it is filed and edited ever more remotely.
What newspapers afford journalists, that a lens does not, is the opportunity to combine immediacy with a period of reflection. The camera can convey the drama of the moment – an aircraft flying deliberately into a building – but it cannot judge what it signifies. News in print preserves not only the facts, but also the human dimension to great events.
So, in this cavalcade of almost 250 years of history, Times correspondents witness triumph and disaster, but they also bring home their impact on those affected by them. Here is the unsuspecting Doctor Crippen about to be handcuffed by the policeman who has tracked him down, and there the spectators willing the exhausted Dorando Pietri to reach the finishing line of the marathon in the 1908 Olympics.
Japanese soldiers sweep into Nanking, watched by many who will soon become their victims. The Berlin Wall falls, and the Cold War ends, when a single bureaucrat makes a mistake. Thousands of ordinary people queue to pay their respects to the great figures who helped to shape their lives: Sir Winston Churchill; the Queen Mother; Elvis Presley.
Then there are the scoops. It was The Times that broke the news of Everest’s conquest, just in time for the Coronation, and it was William Howard Russell’s reports from the Crimea that changed the nation’s opinion of the war, of soldiers and of their right to be nursed. The government first learned of Russia’s proposals for peace from the paper. And while The Times may not have stooped to cover the first international football match, it did write up the first cricket Test match, in Australia in 1877.
In other words, even if those caught up in it do not always realise at the time, the history of news is the history of the world as it unfolds. To read it is to see how a society that in the eighteenth century had changed little in millennia became, in short order, the modern age.
But it is to see it from two perspectives, that of the day and with the advantage, too, of hindsight – of knowing how the story ended. Reading it, one appreciates how quickly events move and how rapidly their central figures pass from sight, caught in the backwash of time.
It may feel like the not-too-distant past to some, but few people under 50 can recall the drama that led to the downfall of Margaret Thatcher, let alone remember how the Exchange Rate Mechanism worked. (Indeed, how many know that it was she, improbably, who took Britain into the ERM?)
How we consume and discover news is changing faster than ever. More and more, it is becoming individually tailored to readers’ own interests, and perhaps via some outlets to their prejudices. Fewer people now have to physically turn the pages of a paper to reach their favourite parts, being exposed to news on the way, whether they are interested or not. Historians of the future will find it harder as well to gauge how a story evolved when the multiple editions of a newspaper have given way to the unrecorded swipe of an app.
What the news in this volume therefore represents is an experience that its readers had in common, a consensus – now fractured, if not yet vanished – about what counted as news. For centuries, that did not change, even if the personalities did. The nature of celebrity evolved, society became less deferential, but history was still made by forces and by human factors that were eternal.
What appetite there will be for news in the information age remains to be seen and, above all, how objectively it will be presented. Yet, one thing is certain: people will always want to know what happened next.
The way that stories were reported in The Times changed significantly (if not rapidly) over two centuries, not least in response to technological innovations. This included the introduction, for instance, of photographs, but these were rarely integrated into copy until the 1960s, and not widely until rather later.
Many news reports, therefore, especially in Victorian times, ran at great length – those from the Crimea were several pages long – and accordingly it has been decided to limit the extracts in this anthology to about 500 words each. The selection has been confined to accounts of events, rather than taken from editorial opinion or individual comment on them.
Notwithstanding that many of the articles in this anthology were written at a time when views that might give offence today were tolerated, the original language, style and format of them as they appeared in the newspaper has not been amended. The date on the article is that on which it first appeared in the newspaper, and an index of people, places and events can be found at the end of the book.
In case it might be helpful, I have added some contextual notes as seems necessary to explain the background to the events recounted, outline additional accepted facts, and describe what happened subsequently.
JAMES OWEN
GREAT EVENTS
GEORGIAN TIMES
THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE
20 July 1789
The public are already in possession of M. NECKER’S [the finance minister] dismission yesterday se’nnight [a week] which was followed by a total change in the French Cabinet. It does not appear that M. NECKER’S removal was in consequence of any ill will which the KING [Louis XVI] bore him; on the contrary, his Majesty showed him every mark of respect; and it is even said, advised him to resign. It was, however, this change in Administration, which was the immediate consequence of the present violent commotions.
They began on the Monday morning, and have continued unremittingly ever since. It cannot now be said that the present violences are the effect of a mere unlicensed mob, but they are the acts of the public at large. The concurrent voice of the nation demands a new constitution, nor do we foresee that any power can resist it.
On Monday the people joined in greater numbers than they had hitherto done and seemed determined to be revenged for the insult which they said was offered to them, by removing M. NECKER. Previous thereto, the mob had destroyed several of the toll-gates belonging to Government in the vicinity of Paris, as well as the books belonging to the Excise Officers, by which very large entries of goods passed without paying the revenue, and every part of the metropolis exhibited a scene of riot.
The regular troops held for the protection of Paris were persuaded to join the people; they were encamped in the Champ de Mars, to the number of 5000 men, and marched to the Hotel of Invalids, a building in the out-skirts of the city. The invalids joined the rest, and brought away all the great guns, and other ammunition, belonging to the Hospital. With this reinforcement the people then attacked the Bastille Prison, which they soon made themselves masters of, and released all the State Prisoners confined there, among whom was Lord MAZARINE, an Irish Nobleman, who has been confined for debt near 30 years. The prisoners in the other goals were freed in like manner, excepting such as were under sentence of death, whom they hung up within the prisons. This seemed to argue a premeditated design, as well as great caution.
On attacking the Bastille they secured the Governor, the MARQUIS DE L’AUNEY [now spelled de Launay], and the Commandant of the Garrison, whom they conducted to the Place de Grieve, the place of public execution, where they beheaded them, stuck their heads on tent poles, and carried them in triumph to the Palais Royal, and through the streets of Paris. The MARQUIS DE L’AUNEY was particularly odious to the people, from the nature of his employment, and it is therefore no wonder that he should be singled out amongst the first victims of their resentment.
The Hotel de Ville, or Mansion-house, was the place that was next attacked. M. de FLESSIL, the Prevot de Marchand, or Lord Mayor, had made himself obnoxious by attempting to read publicly some instructions he had received from the King. In doing this he was stabbed in several places, his head cut off, and carried away. M. de CROSNE, the Lieutenant de Police, shared the same fate, only that he was hung up in the public streets.
For Britons – those property-owners that read The Times, at any rate – the French Revolution was the most astonishing and shocking event of their era. The fear (or the hope) that the same might happen in Britain coloured much of the foreign and domestic politics of the next century.
The toppling of the French monarchy had begun as a debate about how to fund the state more fairly, but anger at broader grievances in society spiralled into mob violence. The aim of the crowd in storming the Bastille – built as a fortress during the Hundred Years War – was not, however, to destroy a symbol of despotism, but to find powder and shot for the thousands of muskets they had seized earlier. There were only seven prisoners inside; the Marquis de Sade had been moved to a lunatic asylum the previous week.
News of the attack is said to have prompted Louis XVI to ask if this was a revolt. “No, Sire,” replied the Duke de la Rochefoucauld. “It is a revolution.”
