The Untold Story of Edith Cavell – BBC Sounds Documentary (spoilers)

I wrote about Edith Cavell in May 2015 in an article about WWI Executions.

Born in 4 December 1865 in Swardeston, Norfolk, UK. Edith Cavell was a British Nurse.

In 1907 she became the Matron of the newly established L’École Belge d’Infirmières Diplômées in Ixelles, Brussels.

Executed by firing squad on12 October 1915 at Tir national , Schaerbeek, Brussels, Belgium,

She was charged with Treason, despite being neither a German or Belgian national.

Stella Rimmington, retired Director General of MI5, investigated and a few months after my article she declared evidence had been identified that proved Edith Cavell was connected to espionage.

Fox by Adam Hardy – a 14 Book series (and my journey completing it)

One Summer while I was living on an RAF base in Norfolk, fairly sure it was 1980, my father handed me a second hand book. Fox: The Press Gang.

He had picked up a few of these books recently and thought I’d enjoy them. We had similar tastes in fiction. He’d previously encouraged me to read broadly.

I was 12 in 1980, so I can’t imagine it was earlier than that year and we moved in July 1981 to Leeds, Yorkshire.

The first paragraph read:

Fox, second lieutenant of his Britannic Majesty’s twelve-pounder thirty two gun frigate Duchess, sprang up on the quarterdeck to deal with the emergency there in time to see a nine pounder shot take off Mr Midshipman’s head. The body still gripping the quarterdeck rail withwhitened fists as blood spurted upwards ten feet into the air.Fox saw four distinct dininishing pulses as the heart continued to beat. The wind caught the plume of blood and swepot it splatteringly across Fox’s uniform coat and white breeches.

Vivid description of visceral indiscriminate death. My attention was seized. For me this was also the day I realised my Father was saying ‘you are growing up’. He deemed this book suitable for me.

I read on and met George Abercrombie Fox. A man named for his Uncle, executed for being a Highwayman, who joined the Navy aged 10 in 1775. Promoted to Lieutenant at the age of 18 in 1793 at the beginning of war with France. The book was set in 1800 and the back of the book made it plain that despite 7 years of war Fox had not been promoted.

Well I had 8 books, Books 1 to 4 and 6 to 9, when my Father gave me all the books he had. I read them all more than once.

I knew there were more, not just Book 5, because at least one of the books was a repring and mentioned another book I didn’t have. My original copies are stored away so I can’t double check those details.

So sometime around 1986 I started searching for the missing books.

What I learnt This Week – 28 June to 04 July 2020

The more Eagle-eyed reader might spot a difference this week.

Last Week I covered 22nd to 28th June. This week I’m starting on 28 June. I realised that publishing on Sunday was restricting me a little as I was including the day I published. So from now I will cover the previous Sunday to Saturday. That way if I learn something after publishing I don’t need to squeeze it in to Monday…

I’m aware no one reading this would know I had fudged it… but if it troubled me when I realised.

This article won’t double up on anything I learnt on 28th…

You may also have noticed I have dropped the ‘th’ in the date format. I am doing this as I am aware non-native English Speakers sometimes struggle with ‘st’ and ‘nd’. Dates are clear enough without them. I use Month name to avoid International/US date convention confusion.

So, what did I learn in this week?

What I learnt This Week 22nd June to 28th June 2020

Now regular article about what I learnt in a week.

I need to get back to regular articles about Comics too but with my day job and planning my Fiction Writing I’m short of time. I will try to find some time in the coming week.

As I’ve said before I learn new things regularly. Most of us learn new things but dso we always pause to acknowledge this?

As well as not having enough time to write articles about Comics I’m also watching less Documentaries, thus restricting chances to add to the list of what I’ve learnt. But still, I think I have learnt a fair number of things recently.

What I learnt This Week – 15th June to 21st June 2020

My third weekly article recording things I have learnt.

Learning is a life long journey. No matter who you are and what you do you are a sum of what you have learnt.

I learn in many ways. I read a lot and I watch Documentaries. And if I come across something that intrigues me I will research. I did this from childhood and would often sit reading Encyclopaedia entries. Now of course with a 4G Smartphone in my pocket my research can be fairly thorough quite quickly.

I often have Insomnia, it manifests in many ways and I have different Coping Mechanisms to deal with this. Watching Documentaries can distract me and afterwards I can sleep. Other times I will read; that could be a novel, News Articles, Scienticis Papers, all sorts.

Slavery – It was not the Prevailing Morality during the Slave Trade

Frequently when Racism and Slavery are mentioned some people will state that Slavery was a product of the prevailing morality of the day. This simply isn’t the case.

There is adequate evidence easily found to show a different story. That isn’t to say morals were not different, clearly morals have varied throughout all Human History.

Everything I am including in the article is readily available to find. It has been documented for centuries. We know many of these things exactly because they were documented.

History isn’t hidden, but these facts are not widely taught and it skews understanding, often to fit a preferred narrative. Take for example the UK commemorating the Bicentennial of the Abolition of Slavery in 2007 and repeating the disingenuous quote that Britain was the first country to outlaw Slavery. Even though the Slavery Abolition Act was not passed until 1833. I wrote about this claim in 2015, spoiler Britain wasn’t the first.

I’m starting in Tudor England to illustrate my point.