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Bethlehem, Christmas Day 25th December 1899. 'Photographed the women in the streets'. Gertrude Bell.
It [Bethlehem] was politics etched into the stones of a built landscape; it was 'tribal'; it was staring Bell in the face. It was a unique and special Christmas at an extraordinary time in history - and it shaped Gertrude Bell.
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A556. 'European woman (possibly Mrs Nina Rosen) bathing in the Dead Sea. June 1900'. Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University
A particular photograph in Gertrude Bell's collection, taken in her very early years as a travel photographer, has drawn me back to it many times. It's an image of a European woman bathing in the Dead Sea in Palestine - then part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire - wearing full Victorian bathing gown and looking for all the world like she's in a state of rapture rather than in a harsh and unforgiving viscous lake of salt which burns like fire in your eyes and scorches even the slightest graze. It's not a typical formal Bell view of a building or a place - it's a thoughtful, intriguing composition.
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'How would you like to do a small job?' asked Martin Millett. 'It's paid,' he added helpfully. (Doesn't that say something about archaeology, when it's a bonus to be paid for one's labours.) I asked what it was, and he said it was a simple writing job for a new encyclopedia on British History. They wanted some stuff on Roman Britain and, if I had the time, it would be right up my street.
Oh that sounds great, I said. So Martin put me in touch with the editor, Professor John Cannon, and forward we went on our great word-restricted, tightly-written adventure. Fifty quid a thousand words and a free copy of the finished weighty tome, The Oxford Companion to British History. I was on my first maternity leave - what could possibly go wrong?
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Shiqmim, Negev Desert 1984. I nearly died. Which was nice.
'That same night, the screaming started, as giant cockroaches flew into the communal awning and landed on people's backs and heads'
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Gertrude Bell's funeral, Baghdad, 12th July 1926. Photo: Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University
How someone died is not always relevant to how they lived; but in the case of Gertrude Bell, I believe that the circumstances of her death tell us a great deal about how she felt about her own life - which in turn casts light on a whole host of historical circumstances of that era, not least the impacts of class and sex, during a time when the Middle East was being carved up and re-plated for Western consumption.
I've studied Gertrude Bell's work for over 25 years. I never felt especially attracted or connected on any personal level to the woman who manifests herself in her writings, but was always fascinated by the richness of her archaeological and photographic output and how that legacy was handled. Yet, just lately, I find myself being drawn again and again to read about the circumstances of her death. I think I know why this is, and it certainly is personal - this year I'll be the age she was when she died. And I think I've finally found the connection that was missing.
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It's so good to see the cheerful images of the band of organisers of TRAC 2017 on social media, and the delegates gathering for the planned events and sessions in Durham and on Hadrian's Wall. I'm struck now for the first time what a comparatively solitary and nerve-wracking undertaking it was to set up and organise the original TRAC in 1991. It also still amazes me a bit just how much TRAC owes its origins to a whole load of random happenings - a set of unforeseen political circumstances in the Gulf, a chance meeting in Jerusalem, and a piss-up with Charles Daniels upon my return to Newcastle.
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Yomper statue outside Royal Marines Museum, Eastney, Portsmouth, 1st March 2017. Photo: Eleanor Scott
It seems that there's little in Portsmouth - including military history that's recent enough still to be raw - that doesn't end up being political slash-and-burn. The Yomper Statue outside the Royal Marines Museum in Portsmouth, who gazes out to sea over Eastney Beach, is hot news. The Yomper memorialises the role of the marines during the Falklands Conflict in 1982 and was unveiled by Thatcher ten years later.
In their traditional campaigning style, the Portsmouth Lib Dems are trying to own it as a 'local issue', and to blame other political parties for the plan to move the iconic figure from the soon-to-close Royal Marines Museum location to the nearby Historical Dockyard where it will be a companion to the Mary Rose, Victory and Warrior - a site which draws hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.
But it is absolutely clear and obvious that this is a decision that lies with the Royal Marines Museum and the MoD - not the local Tories. The thought that the Tories would want, or enable, the removal from Eastney of the Yomper and the commemorative plaque which inscribes Thatcher's name onto the seafront turf is laughable.
In 1982 I was 22 years old and I lived in Newcastle; and I watched the news broadcast live to the nation where Brian Hanrahan said of the planes, 'I counted them all out and I counted them all back'.
Read more![Beadlam Roman Villa [Plan adapted from Britannia i 1970 p.278 Fig.5]. Credit: http://roman-britain.co.uk/places/beadlam.htm](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57481c57f85082e7c413481f/1487516075298-X3T1L27QI884XOA9X2O5/image-asset.gif)
Beadlam Roman Villa [Plan adapted from Britannia i 1970 p.278 Fig.5]. Credit: http://roman-britain.co.uk/places/beadlam.htm
Back in the 1990s the then Inspector of Ancient Monuments David Sherlock decided to take me to visit the site of Beadlam Roman Villa in North Yorkshire, and asked me to write about it. I'd published a couple of bits of my PhD thesis on RB villas, and English Heritage had an interest in David Neal's write-up of the 1966-1978 Beadlam excavations. David Sherlock thought I might have some 'new light' to cast on these old stones.
Standing there in the field on that grey day, staring at lines of consolidated wall footings poking through grass, I wasn't really feeling it. But back in the Department Library in Newcastle, as I studied once again the plans and the information available, a lot of ideas did come quickly, and the inspiration was a blocked doorway. That changed everything. I've always been fascinated by Roman villas, what they were, what they meant, and how British people lived in them.
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I look at my photographs of Greenham Common from the early 1980s and I see more now than I saw then. I see the women again, certainly: defiant, rainbow-colourful and vibrant; and I see the sharp razor wire perimeter and the police presence; but I also see competing masculinities that I hadn't thought about before.
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In 1949, Masada became an Israeli national symbol of Jewish resistance in the face of oppression.
I first visited Masada in 1984, arriving as most visitors did by the modern Israeli-built road on its eastern side which follows the edge of the Dead Sea. Access to the top of the Masada stronghold was only via either the cable car up from the eastern side or the steep footpath. The Roman army who under General Silva vanquished the Jewish zealots at Masada came in from the western side and built their famous ramp and mounted their final assault over this western edge.
By 1990, when this photograph was taken, it was extremely unusual for travelers to be in a position to see and photograph Masada's western side from the Judaean Desert. It's an inhospitable landscape, and close to the border with what was then called the Occupied West Bank (now Palestinian Territories). It's a national park and for obvious reasons protected - which means casual visitors and tourists are discouraged from anything other than organised tours along main routes - which even today takes them inevitably along the main road along the Dead Sea and to the eastern side of Masada and the convenience of a cable car ride.
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