The Rest Is History - 137. 1922: The Birth of the Modern World Part 2

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

In part 2 of this centennial episode, Tom and Dominic cover the triggering of the Irish Civil War, the birth of the BBC, and Howard Carter's 'Tutmania'.  Plus, have you ever wondered how many stars Dominic's 1995 Edinburgh Fringe performance of Becket REALLY received from The Scotsman? Featuring appearances from Winston Churchill, Michael Collins and Just William, this podcast is not to be missed!  Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. What a disappointment this century has been. We have seen in every country a dissolution, a weakening of those bonds, a challenge to those principles, a decay of faith, an abridgment of hope, on which structure and ultimate existence of civilized society depends. We have seen in every part of the globe one great

country after another which had erected an orderly, peaceful, and prosperous structure of civilized society relapsing in hideous succession into bankruptcy, barbarism, or anarchy. Can you doubt, my faithful friends, as you survey this somber panorama, that mankind is passing through a period marked not only by an enormous destruction and abridgment of human species, not only by a vast impoverishment and reduction in means of existence, but also the destructive tendencies have not yet run their course, and only intense, concerted, and prolonged efforts, among all nations, can avert further and perhaps even greater calamities. Tom Holland, who is that?

Well, it's not Liam Neeson. It's not. You know perfectly well who that is. I think, considering the amount of grief you gave me over my very, very good impersonation of Liam Neeson. If you're telling me that that was Churchill. That was Winston Churchill. I will believe you. Addressing the electors of Dundee in 1922. Give me my Dundee cake.

Where is my Dundee cake? And he came forth, didn he he did come forth he came forth and he was beaten by a man called edwin scrimgeour who is the only person ever to have won a seat in parliament standing for the scottish prohibition party so what banning alcohol yeah so that tells you just how that's how highly the scottish voters thought of winston churchill um they're prepared to elevate mr scrimgeour in his place well scotts have a long history of banning things that are fun they do christmas they didn't do christmas as we discovered in hogmanay this year yeah well yes that's true so um so yes

we're in 1922 aren't we um we should come back to churchill in a little bit that's i mean you know i probably won't do another impersonation but that gives you a flavor it's almost like you're back in 1922 standing on the streets of dundee a flavor of what was lost are you telling me that that wasn't actually audio footage when i was denied dominic when i was so cruelly denied the part of paddington as regular listeners will know well well dominicic, on that theme, could I just interrupt at this point? Because people who've listened to a lot of the podcasts will know that you missed out on the chance to play Paddington. Yeah. Because this was on the back of, so the director of Paddington directed you in Edinburgh.

He did. In the mid-1990s. Playing Thomas Beckett. Yes, in Jean-Louis's play Beckett. Yeah. A tremendous performance. And the Scotsman came to see it, is that right? Gave us two stars. I think it was out of five. Well,

Dominic, at this point I just have to print off the review. Hold on. Oh no, you're kidding me. Did he say two stars, Dominic? They did. Did he say the Scotsman gave you two stars? i believe they gave us two stars out of five didn't they no no they didn't and i'll tell you how i know this because uh rebecca stubbs friend of the show keen listener uh someone who very generously sponsored me to show her and her family around roman london in aid of my benefit yeah um she informed me just a couple of days ago that her husband was the producer of that of that show and he's kept the review

well must be good then if you I can which I can now read and Dominic I'm afraid Scott Smith only gave you a single star oh one star in years to come the cast of Always Beckett will regale dinner guests about their

opening night at the 1995 Fringe they will tell of the stumbled lines, fumbled set changes, creaking chairs, creaking floors, creaking dialogue. Well, the dialogue's not happening.

I mean, that's John Hanwee's fault, surely. Of the guitar that appeared in the third act. only to resound again as it hit the floor off stage in the fifth. Of the tourist who wandered in through an exit, followed 10 minutes later by a mime artiste in full makeup. Beckett is a complex play about conflict between Henry II and Thomas Beckettett between church and state norman and saxon honor and duty and this is the line that you remember teenage bishops in trainers rarely convey the authority of the church acting styles from brando to hoffman to woody allen work against intellectual cohesion i think it was probably brando a powerful performance from

the central character of henry. Oh, come on. Could not rescue the play and only threw it off balance. He is a young man well endowed in many respects, but cannot be named since the programme gives no cast list. The age old conflict between valour and discretion, perhaps. The companies are from various universities and will no doubt become lawyers, doctors, scientists, journalists, but not, I venture, actors. Oh, dear.

That was Douglas Young for the Scotsman. And he was right, wasn't he? Because you didn't become an actor. I didn't become an actor, but I don't think he's really, I don't think he really got it. The whole brilliant kind of subtle riff with the tourist and the trainers i think a lot of people would now say scottish arts criticism was going through quite dark days in the mid yeah well it's like virginia wolf isn't it or indeed the sporting life on ulysses yeah it's that's very

didn't get the point anyway listen we've blown massively off course there. What were we talking about? I can't remember. We were talking about, so we're about to talk about 1922. Yes. So yesterday when Tom Holland wasn't reading out disobliging reviews of top actors, we were talking about 1922, about modernism, about Bolshevism, the birth of Italian fascism and so on. And I mean, obviously one thing that was completely missing from yesterday's podcast, apart from you reading out

ridiculously ill-judged notices in Scottish newspapers, was America. And in a weird way, America is politically... Kind of impotent, isn't it? It is. It's kind of turned inwards. It's not joined the League of Nations. the press was an american initiative woodrow wilson but basically other americans don't want to join it so they've they've rejected his idea the president is now called warren harding who is just very bland and and boring republican he's a bit corrupt

i mean his big thing is he promises a return to normalcy after the sounds familiar yeah well i mean. Well, I mean, he's a man who basically makes no impact at all on the international stage. And that's partly by design, because America is obviously isolationist in the 20s. And actually, the things that, looking from outside, are really striking is obviously prohibition. I mean, we mentioned Churchill losing. So prohibition has been underway since the beginning of the decade.

And also the support for the Ku Klux Klan, which is extraordinary. So the Ku Klux Klan has revived after D.W. Griffith's birth of a nation. And we talked yesterday about the sort of paramilitary violence of the early 20s. And I think the Klan is America's equivalent of that. So it's got about a million members. Right. So that's massively about a million members. Right. So that's massively influenced by a Hollywood film. Yeah.

And film, I suppose, is the big thing, isn't it? And I guess what you'd say is that America is maybe politically, you know, it's retreated from the stage. But this is the age where popular culture it's it's america is for the first time absolutely the popular flavor of the month i think so this is the jazz age yeah you get to talk about americanization people talking about the americanization of the world and hollywood as you say um so it's interesting actually when you look at 1922 a lot three very significant firsts well i mean there, three very significant firsts. Well, I mean, there are lots of significant firsts,

but Charlie Chaplin moves into feature films from doing the short films he'd done earlier. Charlie Chaplin is the most famous man in the world, isn't he? He probably is. Yeah, I think he probably is. So he has joined up with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford to form their own kind of studio. He wants to move into serious feature films, but you also have Walt Disney

doing his first animated films. Hitchcock in England. So Hitchcock does a film called, I think called Number 13 that is now completely lost. But you see... But you say Disney is probably the biggest of those. Disney is the huge thing.

Because Little Red Riding Hood is the first, but you've got Cinderella coming out at the end of the year. And also you've got the kind of escalating expense on blockbusters. You mentioned Griffiths, who then from Birth of a Nation went on to make Intolerance.

But then Intolerance gets lapped in this year by Robin Hood, made by Douglas Fairbanks, which is the most, I think, I mean, by far the most expensive film. Almost one and a half million dollars, I think. And you know what's a fascinating thing about, so Robin Hood is the first film to be given a proper Los Angeles premiere. And the name of the... Do you know the name of the cinema, Tom? It would appeal to you because it would allow you to talk about something that I know you're very interested in.

The cinema is Grauman's Egyptian Theatre. And interestingly, that is a month before something very close to your heart. Discoverers, which is, in a way, I mean, purely as a news story. So as something to get people talking that isn't, you know, about high politics or whatever. You'd say the biggest of those kind of news stories, possibly of the century, happens in 1922, which is the discovery of the tomb of those kind of news stories possibly of the century happens in 1922 which is the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen

yeah biggest news story of the century that's a very big claim so it established so craze is a word that is first used

in the 20s the archetype of the craze is kind of tutmania which is generated by discovery of

by Howard Carter november 1922 of the first and only intact pharaonic tomb ever to be found so full of wonderful things as yeah carter didn't actually say but his ghost writer made him say so uh you know we talked about this in the akhenaten episode but cut it's incredible story. Carter had been toiling away for years and years and years on behalf of his patron, Lord Carnarvon. And he goes into the summer of 1920, the digging season of 1922, and it's the last chance saloon. You know, Carnarvon's going to withdraw the funding after this and on the 4th of november they discover a step and carter's been looking for tootin carmen's tomb and they clear away the step and by the 6th of november it's clear that carter has discovered what he what he's been looking for and of course he can't go straight in because he has to wait for lord canarvon. He wires Lord Carnarvon and Carnarvon wires back, possibly come soon.

Oh no. She'd think, no, get here. And Carnarvon very rapidly realises exactly what it is that Carter's found and what he means. So they zip over. And so the 26th of November, they enter the tomb. You know, can you see things? Wonderful things.

A gleam of gold. They know that they've found it. And on the 30th of November, the news is splashed in the Times. So it's exclusive for them. And the world goes mad for it. Yeah, in his book we were talking about last time, Constellation of Genius, Kevin Jackson's book about the events of 1922, he says,

doesn't he say that the opening of Tutankhamen's tomb is basically the first mass media world event? That's what I was struggling to articulate. And I suppose it does start this sort of Egyptian mania, doesn't it? And I suppose it also, what it reflects, though, is that technologically you can have mass media world events. Absolutely, yes. And you know who gets elbowed out of it? I don't uh from the press

coverage um is a guy called arthur agle who is being employed by the daily mail wow the newspaper that we discovered last time created modernism yes but also the daily mail creates the legend of the curse because arthur agle is so furious at not being allowed exclusive access to the tomb that he comes up with this idea after Lord Carnarvon dies that he's been felled by the curse. So another triumph. Well, you know what also the Daily Mail also created, which is a huge part of the culture of 1922. And in some ways, you could argue the year's most lasting and important legacy radio right so tell us about radio dominic so you know people have been experimenting with radio broadcasts and whatnot um for years um the key person in britain is a man called marconi

who set up the marconi company who's obviously obviously an Italian immigrant. And in 1920, he gets sponsorship from the Daily Mail to do the first live entertainment broadcast, which is done by Dame Nellie Melba. She sings the song, and the Marconi Company broadcast it. And this is one of their – the Daily Mail are hugely into stunts at the beginning of the 20s. So at one point, Lord Northcliffe invents a new hat, for example. And they're always trying all these different wheezes.

Why are they not doing that now? I think they probably are. I mean, I haven't invented a new hat for them, but give it time. Get on with it. But yeah, the Marconi Company, I mean, they're the real pioneers in Britain of radio. So it's in early 1922 i think it's um february actually 14th of february that you have the first regular broadcasts which

are from a hut which i've been to tom actually because i did a documentary about this for for the bbc because this is where the bbc comes from there there's a hut um in a place called rittle which is outside the marconi factory in chelmsford in essex and a man called peter eckersley would broadcast on tuesday evenings for half an hour and they were the first regular radio broadcasts in britain or in the world in britain now what's happened in america is that you have had this explosion of radio at exactly the same time. But in America, it's completely unregulated. So you have maybe 100 radio stations by the spring, and then in the summer, you have hundreds of radio stations in America.

Right. So it's like kind of internet startups. It's exactly that. It's exactly that. So lots of people have asked questions about, you know, what is the most important invention or discovery that is associated with the sort of modernity of the 20s? So Kevin Douglas asks about broadcasting. Chris Salmon says, which is the most important invention? And I would say the answer is radio, actually.

And I think what's so interesting about it is in America, it is advertising funded, and there's this explosion of radio stations throughout the summer of 22. There's this sort of sense of chaos and free for all. And in Britain, the people observe this and they say, oh, my God, we can't have anything like this. This is an absolute sort of this would be the worst possible thing. And they actually say, you know, it's an anarchy. It's chaos and of course that we were talking last time about that the the absolute ubiquitous fear of anarchy and of bolshevism and all this kind of thing and the thirst for order

at the beginning of the 20s and i sort of wonder whether that's in in people's you know they have this hatred of disorder and of uncertainty under unsurprisingly after what they've been through and so the marconi company and and five of the other big companies get together and they want to set up a monopoly licensed by the government, which will be called the British Broadcasting Company. And that's what basically happens. And that's what happens.

So they get together. And by October, they have formed what becomes basically the BBC. And the BBC starts its first regular radio broadcast on the 14th of November 1922 and to basically to listen to them you need a radio set which I mean they're not cheap and you have to pay a 10 shilling license fee and the license fee right from the beginning yeah the license fee is there the license fee is there right from the beginning what isn't there right from the beginning is complaining about the license fee which comes in later right um but you know who um

who despises the bbc tom our old friend from the previous episode virginia wolf does she she does not believe in um she's horrified by the idea of bringing high culture to the masses because she said they won't understand it it'll destroy her culture it's not quite so wolf complains at one point that the bbc's first director of talks who is this pioneering extraordinary woman called hilda matheson uh wolf doesn't like her she says um there are two things wrong with her one she's got a wooden face right and the other virginia wolf's face famous yeah of course we're all people and then virginf says the other thing she doesn't like is that she lives in South Kensington.

The vulgarity. She regards as middle class, drab and dreary. Yeah. She's a cracker. Yeah, a lovely person. So, yeah, so from a British point of view, I would say that that's absolutely the most important thing about 22.

Did you read about the first drama broadcast on BBC? No, go on. It went out on Christmas Eve. Yeah. And it was called The Truth About Father Christmas.

Oh my God. What a thing to put out on Christmas Eve. I know everyone's put away their Christmas decorations but a little festive, last final festive touch there.

That was the first ever BBC radio drama. Does it tell thebc what does it does it tell the real what's it say i don't know i don't know what it's about i'm guessing it's the truth about father christmas don't worry that's probably lost now maybe it's not maybe it's on bbc sounds with their unfair monopoly i don't think there's anything else on bbc sounds worth listening to tom don't think so certainly not. No, just stick to us. So anyway, 14th of November, 22, is the BBC's start broadcasting. And you know what happens on the 15th of November, Tom?

No. General election. Ah. Very important general election. But we should come to that in a bit. We should talk about, because Britain is still kind of top nation in the 20s, isn't it? Well, are we? Well, this is the question.

Are we? This is the question. Because is it not a straw in the wind that a naval conference is held in Washington? Yeah, fair point. And it's the first attempt at arms control, an arms control treaty. Well, yeah, it's one of the first. But is this in the context of the dreadnoughts

and everything in the arms, the naval race before the First World War between Britain and Germany? And it's an attempt to try and regulate the size of fleets. Yeah, it is. And Japan is kind of starting to muscle in. Exactly. So it's agreed that the balance of power will be Britain 5, US 5, Japan 3. So equal billing between Britain and the United States. And in effect, that draws a line under the many, many centuries of British naval supremacy.

I think you're absolutely right. Because before the First World War, the British, the Royal Navy, it still operated what they called the two-power standard, which was… That they had to have twice the number of had to ships of the next two competitors exactly and that they had yeah exactly that they had to basically outmatch their their two biggest competitors and um they ditched that and as part of the washington naval treaty they agreed to scrap 24 ships that they're already planning to build capital ships so that's the point at which i think they they realize then then you know they're already planning to build, capital ships. So that's the point at which I think they realise that the Americans are going to overtake them.

Yeah, they're not going to compete in the same way. And is there a sense that that's okay because America is likely to be an ally? That's a good question. I don't know enough about it to... Possibly. Possibly. I think there's also a sense though of I mean they're

desperately trying to cut spending at the beginning of the 20s so Lloyd George's government that's something called the Geddes axe which is all about cutting spending because they've obviously run up absolutely astronomical debt to pay for the First World War and I think there is a as you as you alluded

to there is this really odd paradox that on the one hand, if you look at the map, the British Empire is pretty much at its greatest extent. So there's more pink on the map than ever before or since. But at the same time, there's already this sense of retrenchment. Well, and also that the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom, of Great Britain and Ireland, is no more. Yeah, that's right. And actually that's such a huge part of this story. And something we haven't talked about at all in this podcast since we started it is Ireland.

And we should really go into it because it's such a sort of fascinating and tragic story. Do you think we should take a break before we get to Ireland, Tom? Yes, let's take a break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about Irish independence and the Civil War. I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club.

If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. What is that sound high in the air, murmur of maternal lamentation? Who are those hooded hordes swarming over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth, ringed by the flat horizon only? What is the city over the mountains, cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air? Falling towers, Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna, London, unreal.

T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland, we talked about in the first part. Just pointed you didn't do it in T.S. Eliot's voice. That's all I'll say. Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna, London, unreal. Whoa. Unreal. Oh, I wish I hadn't said that now. The reason for that, of course, is that Eliot is writing about the sense of an order cracking, great imperial orders, great cities collapsing.

And one of the areas of parts of the world where, and it must have informed that, where things are definitely imploding is the Levant. Great cities of Jerusalem, Athens and Alexandria are all embroiled in kind of convulsions in this year. But he also mentions London. Yeah. And on the 22nd of June in London, Eaton Square, to be precise, a field marshal called Sir Henry Wilson is shot.

And he's shot by two men who had served in the first world war in the great war. And one of them had actually lost a leg at Ypres. They shoot Sir Henry Wilson as he's coming back from opening a war memorial at Liverpool street railway station to the dead of the great war. And they shoot him because they are members of the ira yeah so they've been in the british army they're now in the irish republican army um and dominic this this assassination on the streets of london of a guy who was actually irish he was uh you know vehemently anti-home

rule uh anti-irish independence anti-Irish independence. The Irish War of Independence had been going on. He was pressing the British government to carry on. He said that the truce that ended the Irish War of Independence was rank filthy cowardice. And it's unclear actually who was behind it. But it has a kind of knock-on effect, doesn't it? It does, absolutely. It's a landmark in British and Irish history,

even though in Britain, pretty much nobody, I imagine, listening to this podcast will remember it. I mean, he's a massive figure. He's the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Henry Wilson. And the cabinet meets that night. They take the revolvers that had shot him, the police, and they put them on the cabinet table.

And Lloyd George and Churchill look at these guns and they say, my God, you know, these are the guns that just an hour ago shot Sir Henry Wilson, who they both knew really well. And this is the trigger in some ways for the Irish Civil War. irish civil war right but it also exists in as a kind of full stop in the process of negotiation that had led to um ireland leaving the free state as it becomes leaving the united kingdom yeah and the partition and everything so just dominic just give us fill us in on the background of because a treaty is signed between the united kingdom and this kind of emergent Irish free state in 1921. And whether you accept this treaty or not, if you're Irish, becomes a key determinant. Okay, thanks, Tom.

So an Englishman trying to sum up the complexities of Irish politics in the early 20s in like 30 seconds. What could possibly go wrong? We've had so many Irish listeners say, why don't you do something on the Irish Civil War? And the reason for that is... It's your terror. It's your terror.

So I hope Irish listeners will forgive Dominic's summation that he's now about to give. So ever since the Easter Rising in 1916, and particularly... Terrible beauty is born. In the final years of the 1910s and the first years of the 1920s, violence has come to the streets and the countryside of Ireland as the IRA have been fighting for independence from Britain. And at the end of 1921, to cut a very long story short, the sort of Irish plenipotentiaries who have come to London have agreed a deal. They've been browbeaten

partly into agreeing a deal, the Anglo-Irish Treaty, in which basically what was then called Southern Ireland will get, well, all of Ireland actually, will get self-governing status within the British Empire as a dominion,

rather like Canada, Australia. And so it's like lorging the crown. Yeah, it'll be the Irish free state. Now, the people who sit in the doyle will have to swear an oath of allegiance to the king. So the king will still, King George V will still be the king. They'll have to swear an oath of allegiance, which a lot of people don't like. And there's one other element that a lot of people don't like perhaps they don't which they know

is probably inevitable which is that northern ireland will be given a month to withdraw from the irish free state if they want and stay in the united kingdom and everybody knows that northern ireland because of its protestant population yeah will will will make so. So Catholics are about 20%. Is that right at that point? Something like that. Well, I think possibly slightly more, but yeah, you're right. There are obviously some areas of Northern Ireland that are very strongly Catholic.

So a lot of people expect that there'll be some swapping after partition, which actually never really... Which doesn't happen. In the Levant. But yes, so basically the treaty is agreed now the the key thing um uh which will surprise people who don't know anything about irish politics is that the main figure on the irish side amon de valera has not come to london um with his men to sign the treaty. And there are all kinds of theories about and speculations about why he doesn't do it.

Some people say that basically he doesn't do this for cynical reasons because he doesn't want to be associated. Doesn't want to dabble his fingers in the blood of compromise. He knows that they'll have to compromise and he doesn't want to be party to it. So basically what happens is when they bring the treaty back,

the key guy, by the way, in negotiating the treaty is a man called Michael Collins. And when they bring the treaty back the key guy by the way in in negotiating the treaty is a man called michael collins and has he been the hero of a film he's played by liam neeson yes he is tom can you do a michael collins i will find you and i will kill you is it that or as you would say i will kill you uh let's reverse i should never have mentioned this anyway if you want to hear tom's version of liam neeson you should listen to our podcast in the cia uh it's gone down as one of the most the landmark impersonations in modern cultural history but anyway michael collins was the head of intelligence uh for the ira he said everybody in the british side says this is a tremendously

impressive young man i mean he does look a bit like Liam Neeson, actually. He does. Yes. He doesn't look like you. I don't think he looks like you at all. No. I don't think you could play my,

I mean, I can play Thomas Beckett and Paddington. I could play him on a BBC radio drama. It's obviously the power of my, my accent and voice. You could, you could you could are you pitching for work i am in the centenary production what could possibly go wrong so anyway collins comes back with the treaty de valera doesn't like it um so it passes the doyle the

irish parliament um but de valera it passes by seven votes but de valera doesn't like it at all and de valera actually campaigns against the treaty that his own allies have negotiated so he basically says the ira will wade through the blood of the soldiers of the of the soldiers of the irish government to get their freedom if necessary so basically the stage is set for the sinn fein and and the IRA to fall out among themselves. Because they're all Sinn Féin. They're all Sinn Féin. So actually Ireland has a general election in June,

four days before the murder of Sir Henry Wilson, where there are two Sinn Féin parties running against each other, one pro-treaty, one anti-treaty. And the pro-treaty win. But what's also complicating things is there's still quite a lot of violence on the ground. And in April, some anti-treaty IRA men have occupied the Four Courts complex in Dublin,

which is this big sort of complex of courthouses. As a part of that, they think that by occupying these buildings, they will provoke British reprisals and that that will allow the war, that will mean the war starts again. To start up again, yeah. And that that will unite all the... Now, so they're there in the forecourts and the British have not yet reacted.

The British haven't reacted for once, unbelievably. But also, they still have possession of Dublin Castle, I think. Yes, there are still British troops. There's a military, they've got guns and artillery and all kinds of stuff exactly so the british are poised but unbelievably for once for once in the entire history of ireland the british stay their hand restraint exactly so normally what happens and even in the 70s is the british make absolutely catastrophic decisions and are far too heavy handed but for once they don't do anything. But that night after Sir Henry, you mentioned Sir Henry Wilson.

Sir Henry Wilson is killed. And the British say, OK, we've had enough. They blame this, some people think possibly wrongly, on the men who have taken over the Four Courts complex in Dublin. Is it not a possibility that Michael Collins was actually behind it?

Yes, it is. That he'd given the order but then forgotten about it? It is a possibility. It's incredibly unclear who gave the order to kill Sam. Or indeed if anyone did, maybe these two men just did it. Exactly right. The British side, Lloyd George and Churchill,

who were the kind of prime movers in the government at this point in their relations with Ireland, they basically say, OK, enough is enough. You know, get your house in order. If you won't kick these guys out of the forecourts, we will do it for you. And so on the 28th of June, so that's what, six days later, well, they actually, I've got that wrong, Tom.

They say to the British garrison, it's time for you to act. And actually the commander of the British garrison, he says, I think not sure about that. He says, I think we should wait and give Collins a chance to do it first. Again, unbelievably a British general. Which Collins then does. And you know, at WB Yeats,

we've had a lot of poetry in this. Actually, Yeats, we had Yeats in the episode on the Rubicon. Did you see what Yeats, it's quoted quoted by Kevin Jackson in Constellation Genius, what Yates said on the morning of the 28th of June? I don't. You're going to tell me, though. All is, I think, going well.

And the principle, I think Yates spoke like that, didn't he? All is, I think, going well. And the principal result of this turmoil would be love of order in the people and a stability in the government not otherwise obtainable. Oh, my God. Don't go to the eights for political prognostication. Yeah, so he's a great poet. But as a political pundit, he's maybe...

He said that on the very morning that the war started. He said that on the very morning of the start of the war on the 28th of June when Collins goes in hard against the anti-treaty men. Yeah, so Collins basically orders the recapture of the four courts, and that starts a week of very heavy fighting in Dublin. And then basically the Irish Civil War, the Irish government, so Collins,

the pro-treaty forces quite quickly capture all the major towns, so Cork and Waterford and so on. But the guerrilla fighting goes on and Collins himself is ambushed on the 22nd of August and is killed outside Cork in County Cork. Do you know who else gets shot at in the Irish Civil War? You're going to tell me.

Who we've mentioned in this podcast yesterday. We mentioned yesterday. Who did we mention yesterday? Lenin. Irish. No, it's an Irish person. Is it James Joyce? It's not James Joyce, but you're in the right ballpark.

It's Nora Barnacle. So Joyce's wife by this point, originally from Galway, and she goes with her two children back to Galway. And obviously she's married to James Joyce, so they're not interested in international politics at all. They haven't noticed there's a war. So she goes to her house in Galway and discovers that it's being used for target practice. So she thinks, oh, I'm not sure about this.

So she gets on the train and then people start shooting at the train. Oh, my word. Joyce was wise to stay in Zurich. Yeah, he was. And so she gets to Dublin and goes back to Paris. I think she never gets back to Ireland, I think. Well, you wouldn't, would you, if you were shut out? No, I think so.

So, yeah. Yeah, so she has an experience of it. So it's quite a sort of grim story, all things considered. The death toll, I have to say, by comparison with some of the other death tolls we've been talking about in these 1922 podcasts, it's not massive. I mean, probably irish people die in the in the civil war than in the war of independence oddly so probably about 2 000 people die and there are also some pretty horrific killings in belfast so there are kind of what people call perhaps with with with pardonable exaggeration they're kind of called pogroms of catholic

civilians so there's a uh killing of them at mar a man family in this what's called the arnon street killings in the spring of 1922 um but in general so about two two thousand people probably die in the irish war of independence and they're always burning down country houses aren't exactly a lot of country houses are kind of sacked and despoiled and so on but that actually pales by comparison with what's going on at the same time which kind of monopolizes a lot of british interest in the middle east so right so although we were talking about britain being sort of top nation big empire there's a constant sense of firefighting and and kind of um struggling to cope with all these crises sort of and if we're talking about 1922 as a year where the modern world, as its foundations, I think's the Persian Empire, Macedonians, Romans, Arabs, Ottomans,

and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It's the end of an era and the beginning of the era that we now live in. Absolutely. I mean, the Ottoman Empire, when did the Ottomans start? 13th century? Yeah. The empire is a successor to Byzantium. You're looking from 1453 onwards.

And the Ottoman Empire has been the bulwark of order, I suppose, in the Near East for as, you know, what are we talking, 700 years? I mean, it's often very brutal. I mean, I think the Yazidis for instance, would, would not say that Ottoman imperialism was, was anything tremendous,

but it, like all the previous, you know, all the previous great empires, multi multiculturalism, multi ethnic cities are just the way things are. So whether it's Alexandria, whether it's Smyrna or Izmir, as the Turks call it,

whether it's Constantinople or Istanbul, as it will become. These are great polyglot cities full of merchants from across the Levant, so Greeks and Turks and Jews and Syrians and Egyptians, and they're all mixed up. And what happens in 1922 is that you start to get the population swaps that you don't get in Ireland in this period, where basically the idea of ethnically-based nation-states or faith-based nation based nation states starts to emerge from out of the kind of very, very ancient chrysalis of this idea of the universal empire.

And it's a horribly bloody process. It's extraordinary. I mean, it's extraordinary in some ways that the Ottoman Empire is still still is still a legal entity uh as late as 22 because they've lost the the first world war the british have taken over the british and french have taken over in the levant haven't they yeah so the british have been in palestine but i think um you have a fact don't you about the uh the league of nations only approves the british mandate that's right yes yeah in 1922 and i think that again that's really in so the obviously the um the balfour declaration means that the british are

um well they've got the balfour declaration and they've got the promise that they've made to um various uh arab princes yeah and they attempt to balance this by setting up the Hashemite kingdom, Transjordan, or become the Kingdom of Jordan, and allowing Jewish immigration into Palestine. The Jewish population of Palestine grows by 10% year on, year on, year on throughout the 20s but the fact that that this gets rubber stamped by the league of nations i think is actually significant because britain britain although it's captured palestine um as a result of it you know alanby moving in in in the in 1917 in the in the war there is a sense that that that that britain now and all the great powers are answerable to a kind of international standard of behavior. And that is kind of new. And it's something in a way stake in is something that is first

signaled in 1922 by the league of nations giving its imprimatur to the british mandate yeah i suppose what you can say is you um the great european empires are deferring to a sense of of kind of international morality aren't they but they're also they're also trying to provide a degree of international supervision to a process of population transfer that is on an absolutely massive scale but what happens in palestine is not what happens in turkey so that's the contrast isn't it that when palestine you have this ethnic mix which is never ironed out as it were forcibly so you still have to this day well well but you are getting a kind of population swap in that you're getting jews who are coming in yeah and who are starting to buy land i mean it's it's a kind of it's it's it's a very very slow

motion population swap that will obviously be expedited by the events of the second world war but what you don't have is but what you but you did yes but but you expedited by the events of the second world war but what you don't have is but what you but you did yes but but you don't have the kind of massive instantaneous population swaps that you do get in 1922 between greeks and turks i mean that that is a story that it's very hard to read without feeling this tremendous sense of kind of loss and tragedy on both sides absolutely nothing yeah well. Well, again, you know, we're talking about how old the roots of this order are in the Levant, and there have been Greeks, you know,

on the Turkish coast of the Aegean since the time of the Trojan War. Yeah. I mean, just think when we did our Alexander the Great podcast, Alexander marching through all these cities, Sardis, Miletus, Halicarnassus. Yeah. And that world is about...

And Constantinople was a Greek-speaking empire. Yeah. And all of that is lost. And in a way, the Greeks bring it on themselves. I mean, it's a kind of land grab. They've been on the Allied side. The Turks have lost. And the Greeks say, grab they're trying you know after they've been on the allied side the turks have lost and the greeks say you know we what we want as our reward is to revive the byzantine empire

basically you know i suppose you can see it from of course everything is up for grabs in the collapse of the ottoman empire but no one knows what's going to happen um the greeks have invaded yeah they have overreached they've marched so 1922 they get defeated the battle of saccaria which is the furthest that they get into anatolia and they're defeated by uh muster kemmel who was the hero for the turks of glippoli yeah and he then drives the greeks back and the great great tragedy horror atrocity is in September, the burning of Smyrna, Izmir, one of the great, great melting pots of the Mediterranean, which gets absolutely wiped out.

Yeah, about 100,000. I mean, we're talking about death tolls. 100,000 people probably died in the sack of Smyrna. So basically what happens is, as you say, the Greeks have overextended themselves. The Turks pushed them all the way back to Smyrna. And then the Greeks and the entire Greek and Armenian population of Smyrna and all international citizens are on the quayside, basically.

And the city is burning. And a lot of them don't have time to get away. And Mustafa Kemal does give orders to his army to restrain themselves, don't kill any civilians and stuff. But as both armies had throughout this war, I mean, it's an incredibly horrible story. Both the Greeks and the Turks had committed endless atrocities against civilians in the course of the war,

as is inevitable, I suppose, when course of the war as is inevitable i suppose when you have a war that is driven by a kind of sense of national and ethnic sort of self-affirmation and i'm sure that that's you know that's what elliot is is kind of alluding to in his image of of cities unreal cities cracking and and reforming and well there's a there's a there's somebody from smyrna yeah mr eugenides smyrna merchant's somebody from Smyrna in the wasteland. Yeah, Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant. So there are echoes of it throughout the wasteland. Yeah, but I think that that establishes the geopolitical contours of the Near East,

of Greece, of Egypt, of Israel, of Palestine, that we still have. But what it also does, Tom, in a way that's in a really surprising link, it helps to create modern British politics. Okay, so tell me about that. So this is a really fascinating story. So Mustafa Kemal has taken Smyrna. He has basically taken Ionia, the region that the Greeks wanted in Asia Minor.

There's one bit left and that is constantinople and the area around constantinople and eastern thrace and that is being occupied by the allies by the british and the french and at the end of september must have a camel is closing in on this area um so this is in some ways the last act of the First World War. He's closing in on the British there. And Lloyd George and Churchill, who I talked about before with Ireland. So Lloyd George is the prime minister. He's the former. Well, he's still a liberal, but he's basically sold out.

He's not a friend of this podcast. I think it's fair to say. You're very hostile to him. He's just basically, in my mind, an absolutely terrible man. Hemingway hostile to him. He's just basically an absolute, in my mind, an absolutely terrible man. Hemingway adored him. Yeah, but Hemingway adored kind of great men, didn't he? Yeah.

As Churchill did. Lloyd George has abandoned a lot of his old kind of Welsh radicalism. He's become a very establishment figure. He's been prime minister too long. He's incredibly corrupt. And they sit there in Downing Street and they say if the turks attack we must go to war and so two interesting things happen first of all they say we and the empire will go to war against the turks so we'll now you know we'll throw britain churchill who has completely not learned his lesson from gallipoli yeah it's like crack yeah let's have another crack. Yeah, let's have another go. Worked brilliantly last time.

And one interesting thing that happens is that Canada, Mackenzie King, the Canadian Prime Minister, says, you know, they say, just to check you're all on board with this. And he says, no, I'm absolutely not on board at all. Britain must stop assuming that Canada will just pitch up and throw our men into battle. So that's, you know, talking about straws in the wind for the empire, that's a really, really telling and important moment that Canada is not going to be just an appendage

to Britain anymore. A blank check. But the second thing is, Lloyd George is leading a coalition government and many of the Tories are absolutely sick of Lloyd George. They think he's corrupt. They think he's dangerous. They think he would be a dictator.

And they don't want to have a war with Turkey. Lloyd George decides he wants an election. And he wants the election. And is the election fought around this issue? No, it's not going to be fought around this issue because it's become increasingly clear that nobody really wants this war. But he decides to go for an election anyway um the tourists are due to have a meeting

on where is it on the 19th of october at the carlton club you know this you're a great man for clubs tom st james's club just down from your club brooks's um they're going to have the meeting of all the tory the tory sort of backbenchers and so on to decide will they fight the election 1922 in 1922 yeah the 19 i see where this is going the 1922 committee is today the sort of the the caucus of tory backbenchers and it takes its name ultimately from this moment so they meet and their leader, Austin Chamberlain, who is the son of the great Joseph Chamberlain and who basically is a pale shadow of his father,

who models himself on his father and orchid in his buttonhole. He says, well, we should absolutely back Lloyd George. He's a tremendous fellow and all the rest of it. And now finally making his podcast debut, one of the great men of history, the Midlands' own Stanley Baldwin. Yay! He stands up and says,

no, we shouldn't fight it up with Lloyd George as the leader. Lloyd George is a dynamic force, and a dynamic force is a terrible thing. That's very Balfour. And the Tories vote. Sorry, did I say Balfour? I apologise. What did you say? I said Balfour? I apologise. What did you say? I said Balfour.

Balfour. How could you do that to Stanley Baldwin? Sorry. He makes his appearance in the podcast and you mistake him for other Balfour. And I ruin it. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. So anyway, Baldwin helps to carry the day.

The Tories agree to leave the coalition. Austin Chamberlain is out as the Tory leader. And the unknown Prime Minister, as he's later called, Bonner Law, born in Canada, Scottish extraction, self-made man, he comes in as Tory leader and there's going to be a general election. And the 1922 general election is one of the absolute landmark British general elections. So it happens in November, the day after the first radio broadcast.

And I think to general surprise, the Tories win a massive victory. They win 344 seats. The Liberals, who had been the party of government taking Britain into the Great War, they're nowhere because they're divided between Asquith and Lloyd George. So Asquith gets 62 seats. Lloyd George gets 53. The Liberals are split, doomed, destroyed by the electoral system. And is another party coming up on the left flank? It is.

The Labour Party, which has never before been one of the top two parties, comes second under its leader, J.R. Clines. Now, J.R. Clines is utterly forgotten. I've never heard of him. I would bet that of the listeners to this podcast, of the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of listeners to this podcast,

millions, none but a handful will have heard of J.R. Klein's. So he's from Lancashire. He's an Irish background. He went to work in cotton mills at the age of 11, learned the Bible and Shakespeare and Milton by heart. Great. He is a man. That's the kind of Labour leader we want.

He is the kind of Labour leader you like. And he leads them to 142 seats. And from this point onwards, I mean, there are going to be two more elections in the next two years, but ultimately from this point onwards, British politics will become a fight between a middle class and Tory party

that wins maybe one in four working class votes and a labor party that wins the other working class votes and the kind of old high-minded kind of bohemian types who'd voted liberal in the past so this is the strange death of liberal england this is the death of liberal england but the great commentator on politics in this period tom you know who the great commentator on politics in this period, Tom, you know who the great commentator on British politics in this period is? Is it? Yes, I do know, and I'm not going to spoil it. So you tell me, Dominic.

Yeah. They put it this way. There are four sorts of people trying to get to be rulers. They all want to make things better, but they want to make them better in different ways. There's conservatives, and they want to make things better by keeping them just like what they are now. And there's liberals, and they want to make them better in different ways. There's conservatives, and they want to make things better by keeping them just like what they are now. And there's liberals,

and they want to make things better by altering them just a bit, but not so that anyone would notice. And there's socialists, and they want to make things better by taking everyone's money off them. And there's communists, and they want to make things better

by killing everyone but themselves. And you know who that is? Just William. It is. Well, it's William Brown's friend, Henry, who is the brain box of the gang the outlaws and and just william a lot of british listeners to this podcast will know he is the ultimate naughty schoolboy and he's created in 1922 by the writer richmond crompton very conservative novelist and she writes these stories for um women's magazines and they become tremendously

popular and sell end up selling millions and millions of copies martin jarvis um work for the rest of the rest of his life he does the brilliant audio books of them and william is an absolutely tremendous and and the stories he's a tremendous creation the stories are the most brilliant view viewpoint sort of window into the everyday anxieties of kind of middle england in the 1920s and 1930s they're full of all these sort of do gooders and league of nations enthusiasts and prohibitionists who are always moving into the house next door and trying to get william involved in their schemes and william always undermines their schemes and destroys them and it ends up with all the boys having a massive fight yeah it's yeah they're great

they're great well I think that's a wonderful note on which to end our tour of 1922 and Dominic you have completely convinced me that the modern world began there is just one there is just one last question yes I know what it's going to be I know know exactly what it's going to be. So it's from a friend of the show and a titan of tech. Would you like to read it out? It's from Mark Andreessen, who I think is the co-inventor. I think he would say co-inventor. We'll call him the inventor of the web browser, Netscape. And he says, how long did the modern world actually last?

I nominate approximately 1965, but I'm curious what you guys think. 1965 is quite a good call, I think. I mean, it depends how you're defining modernity, doesn't it? I mean, would you end in... Well, Marc Andreessen would, I mean, you know, I mean, he knows his tech. Yeah. And I'm not qualified to judge on that.

But I would have thought that actually the continuity between, say, radio and the internet is, I mean, it's kind of recognisably... So you think there's a continuity? I do think there's a continuity. You don't think the arrival of the kind of microprocessor or something is a... I think it's sped up the trends that were already there. And I think Hollywood is, you know, BBC, that a lot of the cultural trends are cultural and technological trends. I think modernity does carry through.

I think the idea of modernism is dead. I agree with that. Because it gets replaced by postmodernism, doesn't it? And it is in 1965. So the idea that there is a kind of great tradition that you can trace through is gone. And we live in a maybe now a post-modern world. So I would probably agree with you about that, Tom.

I think that some, I mean, let's say you're thinking about in terms of tech and in terms of kind of popular culture. I think what you definitely have from the 1920s through to probably the roundabout the 1980s, 1990s, is you have a kind of monopoly of culture and a monopoly of technology. So for example, in Britain, the BBC basically create, and I would say create a national mass culture for the first time.

A sort of, I recognise being modern, national mass culture where people in completely different parts of the country are watching and listening to the same things, sharing the same cultural references, where there is a unified national kind of cultural vocabulary and so on and with something like hollywood you have the same thing so you can you know if you've seen star wars in 1977 everybody else has seen it if you've seen gone with the wind yeah everybody else has seen it that doesn't exist anymore we have a much more fragmented culture that has moved away.

The gatekeepers are gone. The monopolies are generally gone. And I think also there's a kind of ideological suspicion of that kind of culture. So, I mean, both Ulysses and the Wasteland depend on a shared culture that people will recognise. On a canon, because they're engaging with a canon. On a canon. Whereas now the very idea of a canon is regarded as oppressive and supremacist and and so on um and in in that

sense uh modernism you know is rather than being the the kind of the grave digger of of that idea of a canon and a great tradition and the you know that that line of of what would now be called dead white european males yeah handing out great works is kind of the last hurrah for that tradition yeah i think that's fair to say and obviously you take something like the bbc began in 1922 the bbc is not an antidote to the canon it absolutely enshrines the canon produces endless iterations of it but is now in 2022 being left behind by the fragmentation of of global culture the other thing i suppose i would say is so much of what we talked about is about is about the russian revolution the reaction to the russian revolution and the rise of communism the idea of a struggle a titanic struggle between communism and capitalism that runs right through politics from the early 1920s to the end of the 1980s

and then disappears pretty much. Well, of course, the other thing that's changed, and again, I think this idea that the modernity of 1922 does kind of end, is that in this, we've done two episodes, haven't talked about China, haven't talked about India, haven't really talked about China. Haven't talked about India. Yeah. Really talked about Japan.

Haven't talked about Africa. Yeah. You know, there are, we now live, we can talk about 1922 from an almost exclusively American and European perspective. And that may reflect, you know, the blinkered, our blinkered perspective. But I don't think it does entirely. I think it reflects the fact that this was still a world that was ordered by the European powers and by America. And you do have Japan kind of emerging in the distance. But that's no longer the case. We now live in a multipolar world that would have been unimaginable to people in 1922. Yeah. I suppose, Tom, 100 years from now,

will 1922 seem important? Maybe it won't, because the focus will have changed so much. Yeah, I suppose, Tom, a hundred years from now, will 1922 seem important? Maybe it won't, because the focus will have changed so much. The British Empire will seem such a relic. Joyce and Elliot will no longer seem like huge cultural titanic figures in the way that they do now. Well, I'm not sure they even do now. I mean, I think that particularly Elliot is regarded with high suspicion.

Do you think so? Yes, as a kind of reactionary, conservative and even joyce is he hasn't been cancelled surely he hasn't been cancelled but but you know he's a he's a dead white european male he is it's true so um however i think what will be remembered and rightly what will be rehabilitated is that landmark performance that you talked about at the beginning of the podcast. The one star review. See, I thought we had two stars. No, I'm afraid.

I'm afraid. You know what? I'm going to post that review on Twitter. I think that review. I'm going to post that review on Twitter so that people can see that I'm not lying. I think your newspaper copy has just faded or something. I'm sure there were two stars. Well, I'll post it and listeners can judge for themselves.

Let's hope. And you know where else I'll post it? I will post it on the Discord chat. Oh, very good. For Restless History Club members. Yes. And I might also post some other things that Rebecca sent. Oh, what?

No, yes. Well, your playbill and your poster and all kinds of things. Do I look good in it? You look fabulous. So I'm going to post that exclusively on the discord so if you want to see this history club i mean i'm worried that's actually a disincentive but actually on the incentive front just one great reminder you will get if you join the rest is history club bonus episodes rest is history pod.com you get bonus episodes you get

a live stream you get ad free episodes access to the archive you get all these kind of goodies and if enough people join of course we never need to promote it again on the podcast. And everybody will breathe an enormous sigh of relief. And we're doing our next live episode, we're doing on reputations, aren't we? Yes, on historical reputations. We haven't quite fixed the date for that, but it will be next week or so. And that will be on reputations, how they evolve, how they change, who goes up, who goes down. Yeah.

Well, a lot of the people we've talked about on these episodes. Yes, exactly. I mean, Churchill is a classic example. Anyway, we shall deal with this in due course. So thank you so much for listening. Have a very happy 2022. Let's hope it works out rather better for us all than 1922 did. All right.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.