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2 comments about Citizen Lord: The Life of Edward Fitzgerald, Irish Revolutionary.

1. You'll have to look elsewhere for a full picture of the catastrophic Irish rebellion of 1798, but Ms, Tillyard paints a lovely picture of its most romantic leader. I first heard of Lord Edward as a teenager, dipping into Yeats and reading Lord Edward's name linked to Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet..."that wild delirium of the brave...". I have read numerous accounts of '98 since, but found little about Lord Edward in them, save for the melodrama of his arrest and death-an extra-judicial murder, if ever there was one.

   So I am grateful for Ms. Tillyard's rendering of the man himself. She gives ample proof of the sweetness of his character, showing how his inborn beauty was nurtured and how it blossomed under the doting care of his formidable and unconventional mother. Their tenderness for each other lights what otherwise is a stark and tragic story. More significantly it gives the lie to the masculinist theory that maternal love weakens and "feminizes" male children. True, young Lord Edward had a "strong male role model"-his tutor, who was also his mother's adulterous lover!-but every step of Mr. Ogilvie's tutelege was directed by the attentive and indulgent Duchess of Leinster. The letters between Lord Edward and the Duchess make lovely reading for any mother concerned with the making of boys into men.

   Of course, Ms. Tillyard includes the apparently obligatory expressions of horror about "political violence" a phrase used only in reference to Lord Edward's revolutionary enterprise, not to the ongoing repression and dispossession of the native Irish. Taken against the whole of the book, however, this is only a minor stupidity, one so ubiquitous in books about Ireland published since 1969 that Republican readers can pass over it without undue offense.

   The main thing is that Lord Edward Fitzgerald lives on these pages as a beloved and loving human being, worthy of all the praise heaped upon him over the centuries. How often does a shining name in history still shine under close inspection?

   Anna Bradley




2. In her writing,Stella Tillyard manages to span the difficult gap that separates fiction from non-fiction. Her style is lyrical - almost like a historical fiction - but without the emotive judgement. I find that it makes her books highly evocative and very easy reading.

   However that should not lead people to think she has a flare for dubious tabloid presentation. She is quite ruthless in ensuring that her facts are correct, and in 'Citizen Lord' she has stripped away many of the romantic layers that have concealed the true story of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. These were myths that had been spread by Lord Edward's family following his death, and have coloured his story since. The stripping away of these layers makes this book no less interesting, indeed the true story still very much romantic and tragic.

   A younger son of the first Duke of Leinster and his wife Emily, a daughter of the Duke of Richmond, Lord Edward was born into privelege and influence. Tillyard traces his gradual move from this life, to one of revolutionary in Ireland of 1798 without descending into either pathos or into judgement.

   I was first introduced to Tillyard's writing with her first book, 'Aristocrats' which is also available at Amazon. I would recommend this book as also worth reading, and gives marvellous background to 'Citizen Lord' - it is about his mother, Lady Emily Lennox, and her three sisters.

   I think Tillyard is a "Must Read!"

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1 comments about Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066-1166 I: Domesday Book.

1. Prosopography is the study of pedigree, biography, and genealogy, especially among royal and noble families (i.e., those of power and influence in society), including the study of family names, and focusing especially on the person, his environment and his social status -- that is, the individual within the context of family and other social groups, the place or places in which he was active, and the function he performed within his society. Keats-Rohan is director of the Unit for Prosopographical Research at Linacre College, Oxford, and this project is an heroic attempt to synthesize the genealogy of families in the first century following the Conquest and the histories of the manors which they either owned or labored on. For "only by determining the identities of persons concealed in a repetitious mass of names in the text of Domesday Book can we hope to understand what happened next, or who was who in subsequent records such as the Pipe Rolls." Domesday Book contains some 45,000 personal names, many of them duplications since tenants-in-chief held land in several counties. If you also leave out the churches (as tenants) and the surviving English tenants, fewer than 20,000 names remain, and about 8,000 of those are identified by forename alone. The author has analyzed 19,500 records of continental names into about 2,500 individual persons, including some 200 tenants-in-chief and about 600 Englishmen. Their entries, which make up the bulk of this large volume, range from a single sentence (Harduin was a"Domesday tenant of William fitz Nigel under earl Hugh in Chester") to several pages for those at the top. Citations to appearances in Domesday Book itself, as well as in later charters and other sources, are very complete. The descendants of the great men whom the new king made tenants-in-chief became the great barons of the English feudal system, and nearly all of them appear here. For instance, Eudo Dapifer, son of Hubert de Ryes, married Rohais, daughter of Richard de Clare. One of Eudo's tenants in 1086 was Osbert, husband of his sister Muriel. Eudo also acquired the land previously held by his brother, Adam, who was a tenant of Bishop Odo. Farther down the social ladder were men like Herbrand de Sackville, tenant of Walter de Giffard, who had sons named Jordan, William, and Robert, and a daughter named Avice, who married Walter d'Auffay. The author also has included seventy-five pages of background history and prosopographical methodology, which make this work very accessible to the non-specialist. This is apparently the first published installment (there are also several online databases) of an extraordinary and fascinating enterprise which should open new avenues of research for those interested in medieval English genealogy.

3 comments about Hitler's Women.

1. I just finished this book today, and I must say, it is pretty good. I like the angle of it. The book is basically composed of six "mini-bios" of the prominent women surrounding Hitler during his ascension to power, and throughout the 12 Year Reich.

   The most intriguing character in this book was a toss up between Leni Riefenstahl and Winifred Wagner. Both had incredible influence upon Hitler, but I think Winifred had the most personal relationship. I sincerely believe that Hitler would have probably married Winifred eventually if she had not already been betroved. In her bio, you could really sense the personal relationship between the two, and how this played out during the Wagner festivals at Bayreuth during those years.

   On the other hand, Hitler's relationship to Riefenstahl was much more on a professional level. Hitler appreciated Leni's artistic value, and used it to his advantage as long as she would let him. Leni Riefenstahl will always have a place among the greatest filmakers that has ever lived. Her genius in filmaking will definitely never be forgotten. If you haven't seen TRIUMPH OF THE WILL...that is a movie you should rent. The sheer emotion of it will have you wanting to see more of her...no translation needed.

   As for the other ladies, Knopp treats them just as well, but it seems as if Wagner and Riefenstahl just stood out more. The bio on Marlene Dietrich was especially good, and Zarah Leander also led a pretty interesting life. I had never heard of Leander before reading this book. Magda Goebbels was quite an evil woman, and Eva Braun was just a plain ol' airhead....and my least favorite.

   A couple things did stand out in Knopp's assessment. Most of these women were artistic types. Besides Eva Braun, all were either artists, musicians, and/or movie stars. This is quite interesting since Hitler loved art, and aspired to be an artist himself before taking on politics. Also, for women to be so artistic seems a bit contradictory to the Nazi standard of the "perfect Aryan woman", whose job was to produce children for the Reich and remain behind the scenes. None of these ladies fit the blonde haired, blue eyed ideal of the Aryan lady. Eva Braun would be the closest to it, I would imagine, due to her airheaded-ness and physical attributes.

   All in all, this was a very interesting and revealing book. Knopp did his research well, and there are extensive notes and quotes throughout. The only complaint is that the quotes within each section that are listed through the text make it somewhat hard to read....and makes your eyes have to skip around the page. Also, the transition has rendered a few places of improper sentence structure or missing words in the text. Other than that, this book is really great....and you should try it! You might like it!




2. Guido Knopp is quite famous in Germany as a pop biographer and filmmaker on Hitler. His many films on the Fuehrer have some merit, but his abilities as an author are limited, to say the least. This effort is not helped by a poor translation. I've read the book in its original German, and it loses quite a bit in the English version.

   If you know little about Hitler and women, this might be an enjoyable book, though Knopp (weirdly) focuses mostly on women who had a platonic relationship with him. Eva Braun is the only women profiled who actually consumated her relationship with Hitler. Glaringly absent are a long line of Hitler's lovers: Geli Raubal, Jenny Haug, Suzi Liptauer, Mimi Reiter and others. His chapter on Bayreuth legend Winifred Wagner is the highlight of the book, though he inexplicably doesn't quote from her many, fascinating, interviews about Hitler.

   The book is a decidedly mixed bag and for people with a serious background on the epoch, it's something of a waste of time.




3. Anyone who knows anything about Adolph Hitler certainly knows that, just before he killed himself, he married Eva Braun; that he was obsessed with Wagnerian music; that Magda Goebbels poisoned her six children then killed herself because she couldn't envision living in a world without Adolph Hitler in it; and that Marlene Dietrich was adamantly opposed to everything Adolph Hitler stood for. But I suspect that even these people know very little, if anything, about Eva Braun, Winifred Wagner, Magda Goebbels, or the other three ladies whose biographies are included in this volume.
   
   I, for one, knew that Hitler married Eva Braun just before they both committed suicide. But I didn't know that she had been his mistress for seventeen years; that he kept her secreted and seldom let her attend state functions, and never in an official capacity; that her relationship with him was known only to his personal staff; or that that relationship may very well have hinged on her resemblance to Hitler's niece, Geli Raubal, who committed suicide some years earlier. Neither did I know that Joseph Goebbels' wife, Magda, said that she loved her husband but would lay down her life for Adolph Hitler. Nor did I know that Hitler was on such intimate terms with Richard Wagner's widow, Winifred, or that he spent a great deal of time at her estate and supported her efforts to keep her deceased husband's music alive. And it came as a surprise to me to learn that, although Hitler's regime tried desperately to coerce Marlene Dietrich into returning to Nazi Germany, Marlene apparently never met Adolph Hitler. And, truth be told, I'd never even heard of Leni Riefenstahl or Zarah Leander.
   
   So, if you'd like to learn a bit about four remarkable women who influenced Adolph Hitler's life, one who despised him with a passion, and a sixth who took that lady's place in Nazi films, then you'll certainly enjoy reading about these fine ladies. And you may conclude that even the worst tyrants might have a kinder/gentler side.

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