Investigations of a Dog

I’d like to welcome The Wapenshaw to the military history blogosphere. Rich will be taking a critical look at late medieval and early modern warfare, and combining military history with his interest in philosophy. His first post debates some of the issues raised by my posts on cavalry charges and raises some more questions about the meaning of the word “shock”.

Meanwhile I went to Cambridge on Saturday for a conference on “The Experience of Authority in Early Modern Britain”. I’m kind of ambivalent about my experience of the conference. While I would have found all of the papers stimulating if I was reading them in a journal, many of them were let down by poor delivery. This wasn’t really a question of volume — I could hear the words and understand them — it was just that they didn’t really grab me because they were spoken in such an uninspiring way. How can you expect anyone to be interested in your work if you don’t sound interested yourself? I completely agree with Bill Benzon that it’s a terrible idea to write your paper in the style of a written article and then read it out word for word. Steve Hindle was competent as you’d expect, and Helen Good and Rhian Wyn-Williams had the personality and stage presence to get their presentations across well, but only Andy Wood sounded really natural and spontaneous.

In summing up, Andy Wood made some good points about the future of political and social history, particularly the need to integrate gender issues more fully, and to take more notice of the experiences of emigrants to America. I was slightly disappointed that he didn’t mention animals (surely the Next Big Thing?) , but maybe it’s good that I’m ahead of the game. I could write a whole post taking issue with his claim that “politics isn’t about bus queues” if I get time.

Edit: I’ve just remembered that I saw a T-34 in a farmyard near Ely. Dan Todman also saw a T-34 recently.