A love of history

I was just listening to the radio – yes our new radio has arrived & is now fully functioning. One of the guests being interviewed was Dan Snow, the historian. As a child he was taken by his parents most weekends to see historic buildings. He was asked where had the greatest influence on his love of history.

As I’m a history lover I found myself asking myself the same question. Certainly as a child the place that most aroused an interest in history Castle Rushen in Castletown on the Isle of Man.

The Isle of Man was our usual holiday destination for most of my younger childhood & Castle Rushen was a must every year. Castle Rushen was a hit for us all. The great thing was, in those days, in every room of that 12^th-13^th century castle, they put little models of what life would have been lived in those rooms in the heyday of the castle. These little models helped a young child to envisage life in those far off days – the sort of attire of the people, the decorations & lighting, the residents’ activities etc.

I suppose my other reason for being fascinated by history was my mother. She loved history. She was forever telling us about family history, in particular her own life. She was born in 1910 so had stories of both the World Wars. When I saw some pyjama trousers with only one leg hanging on the  washing line she told me about her Uncle Bill who’d lost a leg in the First World War largely due to gangrene in his wound. She told me about hiding under her desk as the zeppelins flew over Coventry and of knitting socks at every opportunity to be sent to the troops. Then there was the tale of the wooden box of books which had belonged to her Uncle Frank who died protecting his officer. The First War had officially finished the day before but the news of peace had not yet reached those trenches.

She was a good storyteller & always left me enthused & intrigued by the past.

I suppose too, my parents, my mother in particular, tended to encourage me to read books they had loved in their childhood. This way I ended up reading “Little Women”, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, the Katy stories, “David Copperfield”, to name but a few, all books that maybe didn’t seem historical to my mother in that they are set not so very long before her birth, but for me spoke of a different era altogether.