Summoned to the Tower of London for wine & canapés? Do you honestly think I could refuse?
Every year, the History Today Awards organizers find ever more inspiring/imposing historical venues to give out a small set of prizes (best undergraduate dissertation, best historical book, best picture editing in a book, and this year’s special award for “best vaguely historical person called Simon Jenkins who we happen to like very much“): but how they plan to top the fog-enrobed theatricality of the Tower of London for their 2010 shindig I don’t really know. Buckingham Palace? Windsor Castle? Aboard the Mary Rose? 😉
Of course, the real point of such events is to meet a whole succession of nice & interesting people in and around the general History sphere, such as Terka Acton from Thames & Hudson and James Bellini (AKA The Historian of the Future), etc and perhaps get mildly drunk with them. And so at 9pm a good proportion of the attendees decamped from the Tower to the Wetherspoons just opposite, where I got to chat with the small (though perfectly formed) History Today team, particularly Paul Lay (the new editor) and Sheila Corr (who did such a splendid job on the pictures for my telescope article), as well as with other recent History Today contributors such as the Royal Holloway’s Daniel Beer (and his über-engaging partner Katya).
The only downer of the evening was that as we all went to leave, I found that some ethically-challenged attendee had apparently stolen my copy of Deborah Harkness’ very enjoyable “The Jewel House” from the table in the pub. It wasn’t a review copy, it was a Christmas present from my wife, and frustratingly I was just about to get to every historian’s favourite bit (the copious endnotes). All the same, I’ll post up a review here while the book’s still fresh in my mind, doubtless cursing under my breath as I type. Oh well!
Nick–send me your snail mail and I’ll send you a copy! Can you reveal who won??
Hi Deb,
Thanks for the offer! However, Paul Lay has already very kindly offered to twist a publisher arm to try to get another copy sent through, so I’ll see what happens there first. Sadly, The Jewel House lost out to Tim Tzouliadis’ Forsaken: From the Great Depression to the Gulags – Hope and Betrayal in Stalin’s Russia: more details here.
Best wishes, ….Nick Pelling….
Nick–well, if Paul doesn’t come through let me know. I have contacts :). Thanks for letting me know about who won. Tim’s book is wonderful, and it’s an honor to be on the short list. With the time lag, I didn’t hear until today of course, and you were the first person to post about it which is how I discovered there was a Jewel House thief. Maybe they thought the book was about something else?? Hope they weren’t disappointed when they got home to find no actual gemstones were inside.
If (as I suspect) it was an impoverished historian who picked it up, I’m sure they’ll be anything but disappointed! 🙂