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.

The Cutty Sark by John S Smith

Protesting creaks came from the Ariel’s three masts as the wind billowed the sails and whistled through the rigging of the tea clipper tied up at the jetty in China’s Foochow harbour in 1866.

In his cabin, the skipper looked up from his charts and turned to his mate. “Are we ready to sail?” he asked.

The mate nodded. “Cargo’s all stowed,” he said. “What do you reckon of the other clippers, sir?”

“They’re fine vessels,” mused the skipper. “But we’ll show ‘em a clean pair of heels, all the way to England.”

Opening the door of his cabin, the skipper stepped on to the deck to look at his competitors. There were four other sailing ships, either tied up at the jetty or anchored midstream. All were waiting for the right moment to set sail for England and each wanted to get there first.

These were tea clippers, fine vessels of the mid-nineteenth century with sleek lines for fast speed. If their freight space was small, this did not matter for the cargo they carried was worth a good deal in London. But it had to be got there quickly to fetch the best price and to keep its quality. Consequently, there was always keen competition among the clipper captains to be the first to arrive in London.

As he watched, the skipper saw one of these ships, the Taeping, cast off its shore lines and make ready for sailing.

Swiftly, Ariel’s skipper gave orders for his ship to be got underway, for the skipper was determined to shoot ahead of his rival in the exciting dash over thousands of miles of ocean. Unless his skill, and the tides and the winds were at fault, he was certain he would succeed.

Ariel and Taeping and their rivals in the passage from China to Britain were typical of the clippers of their day. Each was committed to a rival merchant in London, who wanted to get his tea on the market ahead of his competitors. So the race between them was real and in earnest.

They lost sight of each other after leaving Foochow and it was not until, thousands of miles later, when they were in the English Channel, that the crew of Ariel spotted the Taeping skimming along before a strong breeze.

At this, the competition became really keen. The rival skippers used all their skill in setting and resetting their yards and sails to get every ounce of speed out of the wind. And it was to tumultuous shouts of joy from the crew that Ariel passed Deal eight minutes ahead of Taeping. However, Taeping reached her dock in London first and an argument arose between the owners of the rival ships as to which was entitled to the prize money of ten shillings a ton (50p.) for winning the race. Finally, it was decided to share the award and harmony was restored.

Their success came at a time when more and more people were drinking tea in Britain and, apparently, they were wealthy enough to pay the astonishingly high prices demanded for it. It is no wonder that the clippers were concentrated on the China tea run, which was so lucrative.

With their slim hulls and enormous spreads of canvas of square yards and sails on all three or four masts, they whipped through the waves at 16 knots, outpacing the steamers which had first ventured on to the oceans in 1813. Even today, some cargo ships cannot equal this speed.

Nevertheless, the clippers were at the mercy of the winds, and they could be becalmed in still seas while their skippers stalked furiously up and down the deck.

The most famous of them all was the Cutty Sark, now preserved at Greenwich near London. This ship made many journeys from China in under a hundred days. Once, she sailed 350 miles a day for many days, a record which puts the steamships of the time to shame.

It was an American who built the first clippers to carry mail from New York to Europe. Sailors refer to those early ships as semi-clippers because they lacked the fine lines and underwater streamlining of the later models. The first real clipper was the Ann McKim of Baltimore, which was built in 1832.

Britain’s first clippers were used to carry goods around the coast. After 1832, they began bringing tea from China. Eventually, they were replaced by smoky steamers which were regular and reliable but far less exciting.

But before this decline, the clippers enjoyed the reputation of being the fastest sailing ships of all time as the sleek greyhounds of the vast oceans.

At Jarrow Bede taught children the message of the Gospel, by Peter Jackson

On September 27, 1825, a steam engine was standing on a newly-built railway line near the little Durham village of Shildon. It would have looked ridiculous to us today, for it was very small, and had a tall funnel that was quite out of proportion to the rest of its size. It looked rather like a present-day tar-boiler, and was coupled up to a string of trucks and improvised carriages.

“This is a fine engine,” said a man with a tall, shiny stovepipe hat and a green brocade waistcoat.

“Aye,” replied the friend who stood beside him. “Our Mr. Stephenson’s done a right good job!”

Suddenly a man appeared, struggling through the crowd towards the engine.

“There he is!” called the man in the stovepipe hat. “Mr. Stephenson!”

George Stephenson smiled at the excited crowd, then climbed on to the engine tender. The man in the stovepipe hat, his friend, and the rest of the assembled crowd, climbed aboard. Although tickets had only been issued to 300 people, nearly 200 more scrambled on to the train!

With a jerk, the engine began to run down the slight incline on which the line had been built. At the bottom, with an angry hiss of steam, it rattled slowly along the rails. Preceded by a man on horseback, it puffed its way through Shildon, stopped at Darlington to take on more passengers, then went on to Stockton. With each puff, history was made that day in 1825, for that short run was the first ever made by a passenger train. It marked the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.

Later Edward Pease, the businessman who had played a part in financing the trip and making it possible, said to Stephenson, “George, thou must think of Darlington; remember, it was Darlington sent for thee.”

For many years, Darlington was to be one of the centres of the British railway network. Today, however, it has diminished in importance.

The railway was first started to provide transport for the coal which is one of Durham’s vital products. Half of Durham is a vast coalfield covering the eastern part of the county. Thus Durham’s contribution to British industry is an important one, for coal remains an important source of power.

During the nineteen-thirties, however, Britain suffered a number of great industrial slumps. As the wheels of industry slowed, the demand for coal lessened. The miners coming up from their shifts in the Durham pits were handed their money and told that there was no more work.

Jarrow, which then lay in the north of the county, but is now in the new county of Tyne and Wear, symbolized the plight of the working man during those disastrous years. From this industrial town a column of workmen set out in 1936 to march to London and draw attention to the great suffering of the working-class. All those marchers were unemployed.

The sight of these weary, ill-clad men, with their pasty, unshaven faces and broken shoes, on what came to be called the Jarrow Hunger March, shocked the people of London in general and Members of Parliament in particular. Action followed swiftly; in the same year a Special Areas Reconstruction (Agreement) Act was passed by Parliament, and it was followed in 1937 by the Special Areas (Amendment) Act, which was designed to regulate industry and keep down unemployment all over the country.

Durham’s history begins with Hadrian’s Wall, built on the Roman Emperor’s orders by the governor of Britain to keep the savage Picts and Scots at bay. The remains of the wall still cross the northern part of the former county.

However, the part of the county on which Hadrian’s Wall intrudes is now in the new county of Tyne and Wear, for Durham lost a part of its area when the county boundaries in England and Wales were changed in April, last year.

Fortunately, it retains one of its most historic towns, Bishop Auckland in which there stands Auckland Castle, the palace of the Bishops of Durham, founded in about 1300.

Christianity found a foothold in Durham through the work of St. Cuthbert, a shepherd boy who became a bishop. He lived on the tiny island of Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumberland, which is known today as the “Holy Isle.”

Another famous Durham man was the Venerable Bede, wise man of Jarrow (formerly in Durham), who finished translating the Gospel of St. John into his native tongue at the moment of his death.

The cathedral in the city of Durham was started in 1091, after the Norman invasion. A great builder, Ralph Flambard, completed the majestic nave and aisles before his death in 1128, and later bishops added the famous Galilee Chapel and the Chapel of the Nine Altars. These Bishops of Durham, who were also Princes, made the county a showpiece of churches, and also of castles, for, due to its position, Durham was in constant danger of attack from the tribesmen of the north.

If these mighty Prince-Bishops could see the county today, with its coalfields and railway marshalling yards, they would be flabbergasted at the change. But in Durham’s western dales they would probably feel that they were very close to their own time for here, nestling on the rugged moors, are tiny villages with churches that date back to Norman times.

The Industrial Revolution changed the face of Durham, and Ralph Flambard would open his eyes wide if he could see the great factories and shipbuilding yards which make up the county’s business today.

Matthew Webb was the first man to swim the English Channel by John Keay

Just 100 years ago next month a lugger and two rowing boats took a little under 22 hours to make the crossing of the English Channel from Dover to Calais.

That may sound a long time to take to cover a distance on the map of some 21 miles but, in fact, their zig-zag crossing was dictated by the movements of a former merchant seaman battling against the waves and tide to become the first to swim that famous stretch of water that separates England and the Continent.

Captain Matthew Webb, a native of Shropshire, had set his heart on making the historic crossing. Early in August, 1875, he had to give up after being in the water for seven hours but had drifted hopelessly off course.

Less than a fortnight later he tried again and succeeded in swimming almost 40 miles through three changes of tides to win a place in swimming history. Sadly, Webb the hero did not enjoy his glory for very long. Eight years later when attempting to swim the rapids above Niagara Falls the task beat him and he was drowned.

However Webb’s Channel crossing did much to popularise swimming as a sporting pastime. Today we take a running tap and a purified swimming pool for granted but it must be remembered that the first swimming pool was not built in Britain until 1828.

The Romans liked bathing and taking the mineral waters and well-preserved remains of their baths at Bath in Somerset are well worth a visit if you pass that way on holiday. But when the Romans left Britain the idea fell out of favour – mainly because it was felt that water helped spread disease!

“Taking a dip” drifted back into fashion in the Georgian era. The spa resorts became more and more popular and bathing machines – little more than changing huts on wheels – began to appear in the summer season at the leading coastal resorts like Brighton and Scarborough.

Competitive swimming started in Britain about 1840. What few baths there were staged the occasional money match until the Associated Metropolitan Swimming Clubs got together in London in 1869 to establish rules for amateur competition. Three years after Webb’s Channel crossing one of the first recorded free-style championships was held in London with the winner taking the 100 yards in 76¬æ seconds.

Japan had made a much earlier start in swimming and it played an important part of her school life from the early 1600s. Elsewhere in the world others followed Britain’s lead and national associations were set up in time for three men’s events to be included when the first modern Olympic Games was staged in Greece in 1896.

Most of the early competitive swimmers, including Webb, swam breaststroke from which all the other styles have been developed. The first major change of style was again recorded in London in 1873 when one John Trudgen brought both arms over the water in an alternate action while his legs continued the frog-like movement of the breaststroke. Thus the Trudgen stroke, forerunner of the crawl, was born.

It was not long before others found new ways of improving on Trudgen’s style by making changes in the leg and arm movement. The Australians, blessed with a good climate for swimming, were now beginning to look at stroke development and Richard Cavill, a member of a strong swimming family, introduced the Australian crawl by using a vertical leg action. The Americans, hearing of Cavill’s exploits, began experimenting with new leg and breathing techniques and world records, first approved in 1908, began to tumble.

Women were now entering the competitive scene and American Gertrude Ederle set nine world records from 100 to 500 metres before turning professional and became the first woman to swim the Channel in 1926. Her time of 14 hours 34 minutes was faster than any man had achieved at that stage.

Backstroke made its first appearance on an Olympic programme in 1908 but the biggest revolution in stroke development came in 1935 when an American, Henry Myers, recovered both his arms over the water while swimming breaststroke and the beginning of the butterfly stroke was born.

There was nothing in the international rules at the time to stop a breaststroke swimmer using the unorthodox arm movement but attempts to use a dolphin kick as well were banned in competition. It was not until 1952 that separate rules were introduced for the butterfly, making it the fourth official style and the second fastest. With four strokes to use, the medley, both individual and team relay, has now become an exciting event on championship programmes.

In the golden days of Hollywood between the wars many outstanding swimmers used their skill to break into a movie career. The studios were always on the look out for any new box-office attraction and one who was eventually lured to Hollywood to star in the Tarzan films was Johnny Weissmuller, the outstanding free-style swimmer of the 1920s.

Weissmuller became the pin-up of the era by winning five gold medals in the 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games with a front crawl which cut through the water like a speedboat. He made an historic breakthrough when he swam 100 metres inside a minute to set a world record of 58.6 seconds in July, 1922.

Those who have seen the film “That’s Entertainment” will have had a glimpse of another of Hollywood’s swimming stars, Esther Williams. She was the American 100 metres free-style champion in 1939 and would have been a strong candidate for Olympic honours had it not been for the war. Instead she turned professional and helped popularise the art form of swimming with her movie spectaculars in the days when the wide cinema screen was the new box-office attraction. Synchronised swimming now has a place on the programme for the world swimming championships which are being staged this year in Cali, Colombia, South America.

Despite the early start by Japan, major international swimming has developed into a U.S.A. v Australia affair in the postwar Olympic Games, particularly since Melbourne in 1956 when Judy Grinham won a rare Olympic gold medal for Britain in the backstroke. Four years later Anita Lonsbrough won another in the 200 metres breaststroke.

Age group swimming programmes, interval training, tumble turning and electronic timing have all helped to re-write the record books in the last decade and produce new stars almost every other year when a major international championship takes place.

Although the American free-styler Mark Spitz won a record seven gold medals in the Munich Olympic Games before retiring, the outstanding international star of the past decade has undoubtedly been Roland Matthes, the backstroke king from East Germany, a country which has now emerged as a powerful force in athletics and swimming.

Matthes has monopolised the two backstroke events in international competition since winning two gold medals in the 1968 Olympics with his effortless, almost lazy-looking style. Since breaking the 100 metres record for the first time in 1967 he has reduced his time from 58.4 to 56.3 seconds. In the same time his 200 metres time has been clipped from 2 minutes 07.9 seconds to 2 minutes 02.8 seconds.

There seems no end to the record-breaking but when all other feats have been achieved, someone may even try to cross that Channel staying on his back all the time.

The Graf Zeppelin by Alberto Salinas

Mountains to the left, mountains to the right and, far worse, mountains straight ahead. They surrounded a twisting valley in eastern Siberia through which Dr. Hugo Eckener was piloting his huge airship, the Graf Zeppelin. The jagged peaks were the Stanovoi mountains, and the pass below the airship, now forcing it to the limit of its altitude, was over 1,500 metres high. The winding canyon grew narrower. While the passengers in their luxurious lounge felt that they could have leaned out to touch the rocks, the crew knew that any sudden gust of wind could blow them to certain destruction on the mountains.

Then they saw the summit of the pass ahead, but still above them. Time seemed to stand still as Eckener squeezed a few more metres out of the silver Zeppelin until, with only a metre or so to spare, they were over the peak. Before them lay the welcoming Sea of Okhotsk, sparkling in the sunlight.

The historic flight had begun on August 8, 1929, from Lakehurst, just south of New York. From there the huge airship, named after its inventor, Count Zeppelin, had travelled across the Atlantic to Germany and thence across Europe to Russia.

Once over the Stanovoi mountians, the Zeppelin headed south to Japan. And there Dr. Eckener found himself with a delicate problem. He and his crew were hurried off to an official reception and they discovered that shoes are never worn in Japanese houses. But Dr. Eckener had a huge hole in his sock and was reluctant to take off his shoes.

“Don’t worry,” said one of his officers, “We’ll all keep our shoes on and pretend it’s against our religion to take them off!” The ruse worked.

Next stop was California, where dozens of aircraft soared into the air to escort the Zeppelin over Los Angeles.

Landing at Los Angeles was not an easy as they had thought. Cold air from the Rocky Mountains made the gas-filled Zeppelin seem much lighter than normal, and Eckener had to release a lot of hydrogen to get her down. Next day the sun shining on the airship made the gas expand, so that more hydrogen was lost. Dr. Eckener decided that the only way to take off was to hurtle the airship along the ground at full power, then lift the nose and force the airship into the air.

Unfortunately the airfield was surrounded by cables and pylons. On the flight deck there was grim silence as the Zeppelin sped towards them. If the airship so much as touched one of those cables it would explode into flames.

The forward control-car cleared the wires by a few metres, but the ship’s tail was barely off the ground. Then the elevator wheel was spun, bringing up the Zeppelin’s tail just in time to miss those deadly cables.

The charismatic novelist, Charles Dickens, gave dramatic readings which captivated his spellbound audiences. Picture by Neville Dear

The fashionably dressed audience applauded enthusiastically as the curtain went up. Most had paid heavily for their seats, some as much as £5, which was a lot of money in 1870. But none regretted it. It was money well spent to hear the great Charles Dickens reading from his own works.

Dickens stood there in the glare of the gas lights, a grey-haired, bearded man in a perfectly tailored evening suit with diamonds gleaming in his shirt front, but looking a good deal older than his 58 years. Then, as the house lights went down, Britain’s greatest living author began to speak. Within a few minutes, no fewer than thirty members of the audience had fainted.

It was not unusual. The medical attendants who set about rendering first aid had known what to expect as soon as they had read the programme. Even veterans of the Crimea were likely to feel distinctly queer when Charles Dickens read one of his bloodthirsty episodes, because he always made it sound even worse than the real thing.

Reading in public from his own work was something that Dickens started quite late in life.

In an age when most writers were men of culture and education, Charles Dickens stood alone as a poor boy who had made good.

Fortunately, Charles Dickens’ personal success came early. By the age of 24 he was producing “Pickwick Papers” by instalments and selling 40,000 copies of each. Almost overnight he had become the most talked about author in the land.

The temptation to follow up “Pickwick Papers” with another funny book must have been considerable, but Dickens had no intention of trying to repeat a success. His second book, “Oliver Twist”, was a good deal grimmer, but again it was hailed as a masterpiece. From then on, his fame was assured.

By the time he was 41, Charles Dickens was a prosperous and highly respected man, married with a small regiment of children and a wardrobe full of expensive clothes. Professionally, he had reached the top. What else was there to do for a man who could command £1,000 for a single short story?

“Why not read extracts from your books in public?” someone suggested. Delighted with the idea, Dickens tried out his first “reading” to an audience of 2,000 in Birmingham Town Hall, and overnight Dickens the spellbinder was born.

He had always shared in the great Victorian passion for amateur theatricals, and the temptation to appear before a paying audience was probably hard to resist.

Dickens did not just read his stories, however, but virtually became each character. He was a silvery-haired man in a green velvet waistcoat who had a hundred voices at his command and used them all with magical effect.

Dickens undertook regular reading tours year after year, while still working furiously as a writer and magazine editor. But as he grew older the strain began to tell. His performances exhausted him. Sleep became difficult and he had trouble using one leg, for his heart and liver were suffering from the huge quantities of food and drink that most well-to-do Victorians consumed as a matter of course.

In 1866, Dickens was offered a minimum of £10,000 to undertake a reading tour of the United States, and he accepted. His reception was rapturous.

Dickens returned to England with his health ruined by the strenuous tour, but he at once started making plans for a new British tour. This time he told his friends, he would include the famous scene from “Oliver Twist” in which the brutal burglar, Bill Sykes, murders his girl friend, Nancy. He even gave them a preview of the reading, and the wretched Nancy’s shrieks for mercy and the sound of her death throes so horrified the small audience that they begged him to forget the whole thing.

But the great spellbinder insisted carrying on with his plans. Up and down England he travelled, and although it left his audience white-faced, shaken and often in a state of collapse, the murder scene only increased the public clamour to hear the master in action.

During the early months of 1870, Dickens not only kept on working at his usual breakneck pace but extended his social activities as well. He lunched with the Prime Minister, was received by Queen Victoria (who regardless of the agony in his left leg kept him standing for an hour-and-a-half) and was finally promised a knighthood. But it was too late, for although he was still only 58, Dickens’ body was worn out. On June 8th he collapsed at dinner, never regained consciousness and died the following day.

What was the secret of Charles Dickens’ almost eerie hold over an audience? Was he just a supremely good performer or was there something else? Many accounts of his readings refer to his audiences being “mesmerised” or “hypnotised” as we should say today. And it is a curious fact that during one period in his life Dickens became intensely interested in hypnotism, not only taking lessons in its use but actually practicing it with some success. Was he perhaps more skilled in this art than anyone ever imagined and literally placed his listeners under a spell? Or did people simply react to some kind of mass hysteria? That Charles Dickens could hold an audience as no one has done before or since is indisputable. Just how he did it is something we shall probably never know.

The duck-billed platypus

Australians are often referred to as “diggers” and in the case of the Duck-billed platypus, it is an apt description. The female platypus digs a nursery burrow into the bank of a stream. The tunnel entrance is sometimes below water level. A spacious chamber equipped with an air shaft is lined with leaves from the gum tree and some dried grass. This then is the home of one of the strangest animals in the world.

The scientific name of our odd little digger is Ornithorhynchus from the words Ornis meaning bird and rhynchos meaning snout. But as well as the snout being equipped with a beak or bill, the female lays eggs (usually two in a single annual clutch). These are soft-shelled and about the size of a pigeon’s egg. When hatched, the helpless young are fed on milk secreted from the teetless mammary glands of the mother. After four months underground, the young begin to take on the appearance of the adults and come out from the nursery to see their first daylight. The observer then may get a chance to see how odd these creatures are. A beak like a duck, fur like an otter, tail like a beaver, large webbed feet and all this on top of laying eggs and feeding the young on milk make it a unique animal. The male is very dangerous for he is equipped with poison spurs. On each hind foot is a hollow spike that can be a very dangerous weapon. It is similar to the fang of a snake and can inflict quite a serious wound.

Even at mating time, these amusing-looking creatures show little affection for each other. But they do like company. So after the breeding season is over, they live together coming out at dawn or dusk or during an overcast day. They feed on worms, snails and other small aquatic creatures. But before the full light of day, they return to that Australian bankside home.

The wombat

Often referred to as the “Badger” in his native Australia, the common or naked nosed Wombat is a most proficient digger. He sometimes digs a tunnel 100 feet (30 metres) long, leading to the den or inside the chamber where he spends the daylight hours. The usual tunnel is however much shorter, about 15 feet (4.5 metres) long, dug out with the stout claws wielded by study limbs that make him a digging champion.

The amiable Wombat is a vegetarian and comes up at night to feed on grasses and roots and the inner bark of trees. It seems to do him good, for he is very long-lived, and tame Wombats have been kept in captivity for 30 years.

The Wombat is a marsupial which means that the female carries the single offspring in a pouch. The pouch opens backwards to avoid becoming filled with soil while burrowing.

Wombats have been persecuted and are now much reduced in range than in earlier years. Hunters, farmers, and introduced species of animals all have taken a toll. Although they are now restricted to the forested hills of South-East Australia, their future would appear to be fairly secure. The solitary habits of the common Wombat are different from those of his relation, the Hairy Nosed Wombat. This type lives in the dry, grassy plains of the interior and lives in large colonies. The range of the Hairy Nosed Wombat is reducing rapidly but some colonies are protected. So future generations may yet see the Wombat as they come out to feed from their underground dens.

General Gordon of Khartoum by Graham Coton

In London, the bells were ringing to celebrate the arrival of the New Year. In houses, great and small, glasses were being raised, and in the streets people were linking arms to join in the singing of Auld Lang Syne. It was a time for jollity, of optimism and hope for a better and more prosperous year than the last. A time when the future was something to celebrate.

But far away in the besieged city of Khartoum there was no cause to celebrate the New Year for the very good reason that it promised only suffering and probably death for everyone behind its walls. For nearly three hundred days, the men, women and children there had been surrounded and hemmed in by an evergrowing army of rebels under the control of the fanatical Mahdi, the self-styled Messiah of the Mohammedans.

Already the situation seemed hopeless. The streets swept by shell fire; rations down to the barest minimum for survival; hundreds already carried away by disease; troops continually deserting; the city held daily with the greatest difficulty and loss of life; communications with the outside world completely cut off: it was hardly surprising that those who still survived saw no reason to celebrate that first day of 1885.

It was, sadly, a situation which would not have occurred but for the stubborn pride of General Gordon, who had been sent to the Sudan charged with a commission to withdraw the British from the Egyptian garrisons of Suakin, Berber and Khartoum. Instead, on arriving at Khartoum, he had decided that its fall would inevitably lead to a widespread revolt and the eventual control of the whole of the Sudan by the Mahdi.

Fearing nothing, and convinced that he was an instrument in the hands of God, he had decided to hold Khartoum. After coming to this decision, he wrote cheerfully in his Journal: “I own to having been very insubordinate to Her Majesty’s Government and its officials, but it is my nature, and I cannot help it. I know if I was chief I would never employ myself, for I am incorrigible.” The possible fate of those under his care apparently did not seem to have worried him unduly.

From the moment that Gordon had taken his fatal decision to hold Khartoum, the situation had deteriorated rapidly. The Egyptian Government had decided to evacuate the Sudan, and from that point the Mahdi’s army had grown daily. In London, the British Government, convinced that Gordon could withdraw whenever he wished, resented his demands for the dispatch of a relief expedition. When the real need was realised, it was still believed that the matter was not urgent and months were wasted in the discussion of alternative routes before the expedition actually started out.

Even then the situation could have been saved, despite the obstacles they faced. At a place called Abu Klea, for example an advance force of 1,600 men of the Camel Corps suddenly found themselves facing a force of 10,000 Dervishes, encamped and awaiting their arrival. Forming themselves in the renowned British Square, they prepared to withstand the onslaught of 5,000 mounted warriors. One side of the square gave way under the attack, allowing the warriors to rush inside the square where the camels were at rest. The other three sides of the square then turned inwards. Using Gardner guns and Martini-Henry rifles, they quickly annihilated the trapped Dervishes. The rest fled.

The advance force pushed on to the river Nile, where another engagement was won. Moreover, here they found steamboats sent by Gordon, waiting for them.

If the British had continued to push forward, there is little doubt that Gordon could have been saved. But Sir Herbert Stewart, the victor of Abu Klea, now lay dying, and Sir Charles Wilson, who had taken over from him, did not have the nerve to drive the spearhead of the expedition into Khartoum.

The news of the British successes had brought consternation to the camp of the Mahdi, who had called a council of his emirs. All but one had said that they should retreat from Khartoum. The one exception was a wily emir named Abd-el-Kerim, who urged that they should attack at once. If the attack failed, he had argued, they would still have time to fall back. The Mahdi had his doubts, but when the British failed to press their advantage, he assumed that the Infidels had suddenly become afraid to attack his massive force marshalled under the walls of Khartoum. Swiftly, he gave his orders. The attack would begin when the moon set in the blue-black sky.

Under its cover, a great horde of bloodthirsty Dervishes, armed to the teeth, crept through the lines. On reaching the ramparts, they attacked openly in great waves of butchering spearmen, riflemen and cavalry. Reaching the Palace, which Gordon had been using as his Headquarters, they cut down the sentries and then massacred Gordon’s loyal negro soldiers. It was at this point that Gordon appeared at the head of the staircase. He looked tired and forlorn, but completely unafraid, as he stood there, calmly looking down at the raging mob, brandishing spears and swords, red with the blood of the people he had condemned to die with him at Khartoum.

“Where is your master?” Gordon is reported to have said to the leader of the mob. “Cursed one, your time has come,” was the reply he received. Seconds later, Gordon’s lifeless body was tumbling down the stairs, pierced by a dozen spears.

The fact that Gordon had managed to hold Khartoum with insufficient defences and poor fighting material says a great deal for his quality of leadership. And perhaps in the end his seemingly unnecessary sacrifice of the people of Khartoum was not entirely in vain. The death of Gordon raised such a storm of indignation in Britain, that the Government decided at once to put an end to Dervish power in the Sudan for all time.

The man chosen to be his avenger was a Major Kitchener, who won back Khartoum with the loss of only two hundred British troops. It was, still, nevertheless, a war which did not really end until 1919, when the son of the Mahdi offered his sword to the British in a token of fealty.

Some motor-cycle stunts are more spectacular than others

Captain Tony Scarisbrick is a man with an iron nerve. He needed this courage on 4th June, 1971, when he volunteered to be the forty-first man in a line of closely packed soldiers at a Royal Artillery motorcycle display at Woolwich, London.

Scarisbrick lay there unflinching as a motorcycle ridden by Sergeant Major Thomas Gledhill roared up a ramp at the end of a line of prone volunteers. As Gledhill reached the summit of the ramp, his 441 c.c. B.S.A. Victor Machine took off like a snarling beast. Would Gledhill have the power at his command to clear the men beneath him? Or would he crash upon them with disastrous results?

The watching crowds knew who was the most likely victim of an accident. It was Scarisbrick, calmly confident that Gledhill’s skill would enable him to rise to his feet unscathed at the end of the feat.

This confidence was fully justified. Gledhill cleared the 41 men successfully in a most spectacular leap on his machine which no man has yet been able to surpass.