This edited article about Hughenden Manor originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

Hughenden Manor

Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, bought Hughenden in 1847. The manor is really Georgian in style but was altered to its present Tudor appearance to satisfy the romantic passion for English tradition of the young Disraeli.

Hughenden has an incomparable position, standing high among the Chiltern Hills, overlooking a lovely park in which stands the church where Disraeli is buried.

With its contemporary decoration, the house is a typical example of a Victorian gentleman’s country seat and contains many relics of the statesman.

There are portraits of his friends, letters from Queen Victoria and some of the manuscripts of his novels. His study is arranged exactly as he left it at the time of his death.

The statesman’s son, Major Coningsby Disraeli, lived at Hughenden until 1936, When Mr. W. H. Abbey generously purchased the house, contents and the park for preservation. It was opened to the public in 1949, and is now run by the National Trust.

During World War II, the house became a storehouse of target maps which were used by the Allied air forces.

This edited article about the Rothschilds originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 704 published on 12 July 1975.

Baron Nathan de Rothschild

The news from the Continent in the summer of 1815 was bad. Napoleon had escaped from Elba. His old army had flocked to his banner and the French were on the march again. Then a flicker of alarm ruffled the already uneasy atmosphere in London: Field Marshal von Blucher, the Prussian commander, had been defeated by Napoleon’s troops at Ligny on June 16.

In the City of London, the Stock Exchange, international economic barometer, reactcd predictably. Share prices fell.

But in his office, Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 38, financial genius and opportunist supreme, was listening avidly to one of his agents, who had just arrived from the Low Countries. With obvious enjoyment, he heard the emissary disclose that the combined British and Prussian forces had vanquished Napoleon at Waterloo two days after Blucher’s set-back. The financial coup of the century was about to break.

With such valuable knowledge, most speculators would have bought government shares by the armful. Nathan Rothschild decided to sell and even encouraged other business houses to do the same. The already depressed shares became even cheaper.

It was literally minutes before the great news of Waterloo was officially announced, that Nathan Rothschild produced his master-stroke. He began buying back the low-priced shares in immense quantities. When the victory of Waterloo burst upon London, share prices soared. So Nathan Rothschild counted his profits in millions of pounds.

Bankers, stockbrokers and dealers gasped; more with admiration than astonishment at his nerve and audacity, for they were quickly becoming accustomed to the rising eminence of the family that sprang from a Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt in the mid-1700s. The Rothschilds rivalled royalty in opulence and splendour, financed governments by their strength as the veritable economic backbone of Europe, bought palaces and rare paintings, established quality vineyards and influenced almost every branch of public life for more than 200 years. Bourbons, Hapsburgs. Bonapartes and Hohenzollerns all came under the Rothschild spell.

In the turbulent Europe of the 18th and 19th centuries, they pulled the political strings in every capital. The art of money-making with its dynamic influence, seemed to come easily to the Rothschilds. Just as it did to the man who started it all: Mayer Anselm Rothschild, who was born in 1744 and lived in the “House of the Saucepan” in Frankfurt. Though a modest dwelling, it sported a red shield which was later to become the family coat of arms emblazoned with five arrows – Mayer’s sons – in the grip of a strong arm.

Mayer, once a bank apprentice, started on the road to fortune by selling old coins to the Prince of Hesse, arguing that they would increase in value and offset inflation. For 36 years, he traded coins and trinkets with the prince who rewarded him with a loan that led to business contracts, percentages, discounts and all the paraphernalia of money-making. During this time, he married and his wife, Gudule, had ten children and lived to the advanced age of ninety-six.

After his marriage, Mayer seized opportunities to expand. He settled four of his sons in London, Paris, Vienna and Naples where they set up money-lending businesses. The eldest son, Anselm Mayer Rothschild, stayed with his father and subsequently took over the Frankfurt establishment, became a member of the Prussian Privy Council of Commerce and, in 1820, Bavarian consul and court banker.

Solomon went to Vienna where he was known as a confidante of Klemen Furst von Metternich, the diplomat behind Austria’s rise to power; Karl operated from Naples; Jacob established himself in Paris where he later negotiated loans for the Bourbons; and Nathan embarked on his career in London.

The sons and their father built up an unrivalled news service in European financial and political centres and, by using its “scoops” to buy stocks and shares at the right time, they rose to dominate governments and treasuries throughout the Continent.

Perhaps the height of respectability arrived in 1875 when the London bank of Baron Nathan Mayer, the first Jew to be raised to the British peerage, learned that the controlling shares of the Suez Canal were for sale. The asking price was £4 million.

Parliament was in recess. Prime Minister Disraeli had no means for raising such a sum; even the Bank of England could not produce it. So once again, the Rothschilds seized the chance and put up the money to give Britain the control over the vital lifeline to the Red Sea and beyond.

Yet the Rothschilds knew misfortune as well as success. Through decades of financial battles with rival finance houses, they were equally capable of meeting adversity. When an employee embezzled cash worth c.£4 million at today’s values, one brother alone was able to bear the loss. And as recently as 1938, the entire family estates in Austria were ransomed to the Nazi Gestapo to free Baron Louis Rothschild who had been held for 13 months.

Yet curiously enough, Lord Rothschild, current head of the British family, a Cambridge don, Socialist and holder of the George Cross for bomb disposal work, became an eminent scientist instead of a banker. His sister, Miriam, is an acknowledged expert on nature study and an authority on fleas, taking years to produce a huge reference book cataloguing the habits of 4,000 species.

Lord Rothschild’s continental counterpart is Baron Guy de Rothschild, businessman and industrialist, who turns over companies at c. £400 million a time and snaps up race horses for as much as c. £60,000 each. When the Baron wanted to build three holes for his private golf course at his chateau, Henry Cotton, the famous British golfer, flew over to lay them out for him.

Another Rothschild – Philippe – owns the Chateau Mouton vineyard. It was bought more than a century ago for c. £250,000 and today produces some of the finest wines in the world.

Socialists by political persuasion, the Rothschilds are essentially Jewish, revering the family and its remarkable history. It was appropriate, therefore, that the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, stating that the British Government viewed with favour “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine should be addressed to the reigning head of the British House of Rothschild. So while remaining fervently patriotic to the country of their adoption, the Rothschilds’ hearts and sympathies are with Israel. Somehow they symbolise the indomitable Jewish determination to survive.

This edited article about King Faisal of Saudi Arabia originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 703 published on 5 July 1975.

King Faisal of Saudi Arabia

Dressed in a long white gown that effectively concealed the pistol he was holding. Prince Faisal bin Museid Ibn Abdel Aziz of Saudi Arabia began slowly to walk the length of a hall in the royal palace in Riyadh, the capital. At the far end of the hall sat his uncle, King Faisal, who was receiving the members of his family and court. It was March 25th, this year, the birthday of the prophet Mohammed, a holy day.

The courtiers had given the king the customary kiss on each cheek, and they drew to one side to allow the prince to do the same.

When he was only a few yards from the king, the prince stopped. While the attendants waited politely for him to advance, he drew his pistol. They saw the glint of metal, heard the sound of three shots fired at point blank range and saw the king collapse with blood staining his royal attire. The attendants rushed the king to hospital, but they were too late. Thirty minutes after the shots had been fired, he was dead.

The killer’s motives were not clear. Some said that his mind was deranged. Others declared that he had murdered out of revenge for his brother, who was killed at a political demonstration by Faisal’s security forces.

But whatever the motive was, the fact remains that with Faisal’s death there passed from the Middle Eastern scene a man with the power to control the flow of one of the world’s most vital commodities – oil!

King Faisal, a man of austere habits and untold wealth, was becoming the most important chieftain of all Arabia. This was because a measure of unity had been reached among the desert lands after the 1973 war with Israel. The fuel crisis in the West stemmed directly from his decision to stop exports of oil to countries which supported Israel. Even those like Britain, which tried to remain neutral, suffered from the oil restrictions.

The soaring price of oil brought vast riches to the already wealthy land of Saudi Arabia, where the king counted his fortune in millions of pounds. As the country with the largest oil fields in the world, Saudi Arabia earned £10,000 million last year – or roughly £300 a second. Her financial reserves grew almost too fast for accurate assessment.

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This edited article about Hatfield House originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 702 published on 28 June 1975.

A picture history of Hatfield House

Only 21 miles from London, is this celebrated Jacobean house which stands in its own great park. It was built between 1607-12 by Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury and Prime Minister to James I. It has been the family home of the Cecils ever since.

The accounts show that the design is due to Robert Lyminge and supervised by Simon Basil, the predecessor to Inigo Jones as Surveyor of the King’s Works.

The plan is unusual in that it was among the earliest to combine domestic comfort with provision for State visitors or as we would call them now, V.I.P’s. The centre is devoted to State rooms with a separate dining room with kitchen adjacent.

The staircase is exquisitely designed and decorated and the beautiful stained glass in the chapel is original. Adjoining is Hatfield Old Palace where Queen Elizabeth I was confined during her sister Mary’s reign.

The Staterooms contain famous paintings, fine furniture, rare tapestries and historic armour. Hatfield House is one of the most completely adorned and preserved of mansions.

This edited article about Robert Clive originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 699 published on 7 June 1975.

Clive of India

The boy who was to grow up to become the chief founder of Great Britain’s Indian Empire, was a most unpopular pupil with his schoolteachers in Shropshire where he was born in 1725. For, instead of attending to his books, young Robert Clive used to go off on perilous adventures, and spent hours dreaming of exciting places all over the world that he would like to visit.

At the age of eighteen, Clive joined the East India Company and went out as a clerk to Madras where he hoped to make his fortune.

At that time, the French were at war with the English and in 1746 they attacked and captured Madras. Clive managed to escape and decided to become a soldier, a profession in which he was able to prove both his military and organisational abilities.

In 1751, British settlements were again threatened by an Indian ruler and his French allies. Clive counter-attacked and managed to capture the enemy capital, Arcot. Then, in a half-ruined fort with a force of only 500 Europeans and sepoys, (Indian soldiers), he held off an army of 7,000 for 53 days.

In 1753, Clive returned to England, having made a considerable fortune, and then returned to India as governor of Fort St. David near Madras. It was at this time that the Nawab of Bengal attacked and captured Calcutta. Clive set out with a relief expedition and rescued a group of European prisoners who had been shut up in a cramped, almost airless guardroom which was afterwards named ‘The Black Hole of Calcutta’. In 1757, Clive defeated the Nawab at the Battle of Plassey with a loss of only 23 men, and it was this victory which ensured British control of Bengal.

Clive returned to England, again acclaimed as a hero, and was created a baron.

Then, back in India, as governor of Bengal, he did his best to make the East India Company more efficient and to prevent its officials from accepting bribes. But when he returned home for the last time, Clive found his enemies accusing him of plundering and accepting bribes. Angered and bitter, the soldier said he was being treated more like a sheep-stealer than the founder of an empire. Such criticisms were too much for him to bear and on November 22nd, 1774, he ended his own life.

This edited article about Kung-fu originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 697 published on 24 May 1975.

The Boxer Rebellion brought about the siege of the British legation in Peking by Andrew Howat

Bands of men could be seen carrying out a strange ritual all over the Shantung province of China in the year 1900. They were bowing, stamping and knocking their heads on the ground with their bodies facing the south-east.

Under the exhortation of their leader, these men would work themselves into a trance-like frenzy in which they believed they were immune to bullets or swords.

Finally, in their thousands, they would hurl themselves at the homes and offices of the Europeans living in Peking, determined at all costs to throw the “foreign devils” into the sea.

These were the I Ho Chuan, or “Fists of Righteous Harmony”, better known as The Boxers, the most famous army of kung-fu fighters in history.

Skilled, fearless and fanatical, the Boxers proved no match for Western fire power. Peking was besieged for 55 days, and when the city was finally relieved, the great mass of peasant-fighters melted away, leaving thousands of casualties behind them.

Puzzled and dismayed, they felt themselves betrayed by their leaders, who had sworn that nothing could harm them. What had gone wrong? The great kung-fu teachers of the past would have had a ready enough answer: the secrets of China’s great martial art had been divulged to non-Buddhists and those who were not “gentle and merciful.” And, of course, utter disaster had been the result.

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This edited article about the Durbar of 1911 originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 697 published on 24 May 1975.

The last great Durbar in June 1911 by Graham Coton

The people of Delhi were no strangers to those great state ceremonies known as Durbars, which had been held in their city from time immemorial. They had seen them held to celebrate the conquests of barbaric Indian princes, and they had seen them held under British rule. Most of them had been impressive affairs indeed, particularly the one that had been held to celebrate the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India in 1877. But even that particular Durbar had not stirred their imagination as the one that was now about to be held. It had nothing to do with the breathtaking pageantry that had been arranged, or with the fact that every arm of India’s fighting forces would be there to represent India’s military strength. Nor had it anything to do with the fact that the whole twenty five miles of Bawari Plain, just outside the city, was now covered with a sea of tents of every imaginable size and description, including one particular encampment reserved for the Indian princes, which consisted entirely of tents that were so large as to be able to include drawing rooms as comfortable as those to be found in the fine houses of any major capital. All this was familiar stuff, interesting and colourful enough in its own way. But hardly guaranteed to raise the emotional temperature of the city to the state of fever it was now in.

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This edited article about Simon Bolivar originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 697 published on 24 May 1975.

Simon Bolivar by Ron Embleton

On a summer’s day in 1805, Simon Bolivar stood on the warm green slopes of Monte Sacro, just outside Rome and made a vow. Black eyes glittering with fervour, he raised his hand and proclaimed: “I swear on my life and my honour that I shall not rest until I have liberated South America from the rule of Spanish tyrants!”

Simon Rodriguez, Bolivar’s tutor, who was with him on Monte Sacro, later recorded that, at the time, he thought his pupil was just playacting. In the years immediately after the French Revolution of 1789, many imaginative, fiery young men like Bolivar caught “freedom-fever”. They fancied that “liberty, equality, fraternity”, the slogan of the Revolution, was the cure for all the ills of civilisation. Usually, Rodriguez remembered, they recovered quite quickly and if, like Simon Bolivar, they were wealthy, aristocratic young men, they usually settled for the comfortable, carefree life to which they had been born.

However, when Rodriguez wrote that, in the late 1840s, he had had plenty of time to realise how utterly wrong his first judgement had been. For not only was Bolivar perfectly sincere when he made his vow, but at the age of 22, he already possessed the ruthless ambition and driving determination to make it come true. These qualities, all combined in one dedicated patriot spelled the death of an empire and the birth of several South American nations.

By 1805, South America had suffered the brutal burden of Spanish rule for over three centuries, ever since the conquistadores had come there in the wake of Christopher Columbus to exploit its enormous wealth in gold and silver and make slaves of its Indian inhabitants. When Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1783, Spain’s grip was still powerful and there seemed little hope that it would ever weaken. Then, at last, in 1808, that grip momentarily relaxed when disaster struck Spain itself: in that year, Napoleon invaded Spain and across the Atlantic, South Americans rushed to exploit the plight of their masters and claim their liberty.

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This edited article about Emperor Mitsuhito originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 696 published on 17 May 1975.

Mitsuhito, Emperor of Japan

Emperor Mitsuhito entered the council chamber in the slow-moving, dignified fashion that tradition required of him. His face wore the expression an Emperor was required to wear in public, the stern, haughty look the Japanese recognised as a sign of power and authority.

He swept a disdainful gaze over the group of government ministers who were making obeisance before him. As soon as he had appeared in the doorway, they had averted their eyes, dropped to their knees and placed their foreheads on the floor. There, they squatted doubled over in a pose of complete humility. Now, they addressed the Emperor in reverential tones.

“Divine one,” the ministers murmured. “Inviolable divinity of Japan. We exist to serve and obey the Emperor’s infallible will!”

“Rise, lowly servants!” the Emperor intoned in reply.

The ministers got up and stood with heads bowed, still not looking directly at the emperor as he moved towards his chair round the council table. Then, after a suitably respectful interval, they took their seats. Prince Ito Hirobumi, the prime minister, took his place next to the emperor and opened the file of government documents he had brought with him.

Inside the file, for discussion during the council meeting, were papers dealing with the formation of the first Japanese parliament, the setting up of European-style law courts, the formation of a modern, mechanised Japanese army and navy and also longer term plans for providing Japan with railways, electric lighting, tramways and telephones.

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This edited article about Mustafa Kemal originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 694 published on 3 May 1975.

Kemal Ataturk replaced the traditional Fez with western-style headwear, by John Keay

For an arrogant, despotic man like Mustafa Kemal, the moment when he first realised that he was ashamed to be a Turk, was a very painful one. Yet, at the same time, Kemal could not deny that his feelings of shame were justified. In the vigorous, progressive, industrialised world of seventy years ago, when Kemal was a young army officer, any country would have been dubbed undignified if, like Turkey, it was ruled by a remote autocratic Sultan and a corrupt, inept government. And any people would have been called backward if, like the Turks, they were for the most part illiterate, impoverished and inert. The mentality of the average Turkish peasants could be summed up in the phrase, “It is the Will of Allah!” (the Muslim God), a phrase which greeted almost every disaster, natural or man-made that afflicted them. Mustafa Kemal, who was born in 1881 in Salonika, was totally repelled by this attitude. He refused to believe, as millions of peasants did, that it was the will of Allah that floods should destroy the peasants’ meagre crops, or that disease should kill and cripple their children or that rapacious government officials should rob and browbeat whole villages. Kemal believed instead in a force he considered to be much more powerful – the will of Man to improve and progress. Most of all, Kemal believed in his own will to bring that improvement and that progress to backward Turkey and so transform it into a strong, modern state.

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