The Rest Is History - 492. The War on Beards: From Peter the Great to John Lennon (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

“I like an Englishman to look like an Englishman, and beards are foreign and breed vermin. Also depend upon it, they will lead to filthy habits.” Europe has had a love-hate relationship with facial hair since the Late Middle Ages. In the eleventh century, beards were celebrated as an expression of fertility caused by men’s “hot breath”. Yet by the turn of the twentieth century, a clean shaven man represented the youth and vigour celebrated in corporate culture. But how did the Reformation impact opinions on beards? Why did Peter the Great instate a tax on beards in Russia? How did the Crimean War lead to the popularity of the Victorian beard? And why did The Beatles end up bearded? Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss the evolution of the modern beard. With a cast of hairy and hairless characters including the bearded witches of Macbeth, Winston Churchill, Jeremy Corbyn, George Best, W. G. Grace, Charles Darwin, and Lord Kitchener… _______ *The Rest Is History LIVE in the U.S.A.* If you live in the States, we've got some great news: Tom and Dominic will be performing throughout America in November, with shows in San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Boston and New York. *The Rest Is History LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall* Tom and Dominic, accompanied by a live orchestra, take a deep dive into the lives and times of two of history’s greatest composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Tickets on sale now at TheRestIsHistory.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor 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. I like an Englishman to look like an Englishman and beards are foreign and breed vermin. Also, depend upon it, they will lead to filthy habits. That was Lord Raglan, who was in command of the British forces in the Crimean War. Famous, wasn't he, Dominic?

He'd fought in Napoleonic Wars, and even though the French were allies in the Crimean war, he kept shouting, attack the French. Yes, he did. Now the question is, did he actually say this or is it completely made up by George MacDonald Fraser and inserted in Flashman at the Charge, Flashman, the bully from Tom Brown's school days, whose memoirs are the subject of George Macdonald Fraser's brilliantly entertaining novels. Well, that's a good question, Tom. Hello, everybody. I think even if it is made up, I'm sure he thought it. So that quotation was actually recommended by Sam Brett Jr., who's just been reading Flash from the Charge.

And when he heard we were doing a podcast about beards, he said, oh, Lord Raglan had some very sound views about beards. You should mention them in the episode. And so here we are. And so here we are, yes. This was meant to be the second half of a single quirky one-off. Yes. And it's dead.

Yeah. Draws on to the crack of doom. this is the story tom of modern beards last time we had classical ancient beards early medieval beards do we have some do we have some high medieval beards we do we move on to early modern we do and actually i have to say uh we've had to record this multiple times and in in fact, I was laughing so much that I destroyed my microphone. So in the last episode, you were making the points

about shaving and godliness. Basically, a clean face means you're kind of the priestly cast, I guess. You're closer to the supernatural, to the divine, right? And a full beard means you're very much of this world.

Smiting order of man. So the question in my mind was, why don't more people shave? If it's a godly look, why don't people want to look in a highly religious age? Why don't people want to look clean shaven? And there are obvious technical reasons, which you didn't really talk about so much last time. So if you'd wanted to shave what are you shaving with so the razors that people use which could be made of sort of i don't know bronze i guess copper they are like little knives or indeed miniature axes that people use by and large you'd have to either you have a slave or a servant who shaves you, or you have to visit a barber, as you said.

So in medieval England, if you visit a barber, a barber is also a surgeon or a dentist. Is it like in Roman times? Just like in Roman times. Exactly. There's massive continuity there. And barbering is a very serious business. So the Worshipful Company of Barbers was set up in London in 1308. And I mean, this will astound you, Tom. Worshipful Company of Barbers was set up in London in 1308.

And I mean, this will astound you, Tom. Guess what the guy who's the first head of the organization was called? What his surname was? Well, I know because you've written it down. Richard Le Barber. Richard Le Barber, yeah. I mean, was that nominative determinism or did he take on that name after deciding to become a barber? I suspect he took on that name, which is disappointing. You'd like to think he'd been born barber. Unless his father, I mean, it was in the

family. Possibly it was in the family. You'd think it would be the kind of thing that would be in the family, wouldn't you? So it got its royal charter from Edward IV in 1462. And part of that was actually a crackdown on unlicensed barbers who are kind of cutting people's hair in an incompetent way, giving them slicing their throat yeah giving them very deep cuts while shaving and it actually is a serious business because as we will see in an age before antibiotics a barbering mishap can kill you and it does kill people or if you run into barbers whose wives makes pies out of you i mean that would also be bad in seville for example no in fleet street odd. Of course. I was being dimwitted. So there are risks everywhere.

Yes. There are also all the medical arguments. And the medical arguments, by and large, are very much in favour of beards. So as we talked about last time, since the Greeks, people had believed that beards were vital. They were connected to the production of semen. And both of these things reflected the vital heat of a man. So there's a wonderful book. Are you familiar with this book, Tom? Facial Hair and the Performance of Early Modern Masculinity? No, but I can imagine exactly what it's like.

Yes, by Dr. Eleanor Rycroft. She says, facial hair functioned as evidence of the male capacity to produce semen, because puberty would produce the necessary testicular heat for a boy to become a man and also for smoke to rise in the body and push hair out through your face so the smoke pushes you know the heat makes the hair come out of your face when you're sort of 13 she compares it to menstruation in a girl exactly so and it does sound a bit mad to us but the very very tip-top medical authorities of the day believe this so are you familiar with hildegard of bingen of course yes one of the great figures of medieval

female holiness there you go so she was in the rhineland in the 12th century she's a composer she is the top german to go to about natural history if you like natural history and you like germans you're laughing and she says a lot of this is about your breath. So a very fertile man has very hot breath. But that's clearly true. The moisture of your breath is so hot and so drenched in testosterone, effectively, that the area around your mouth will be very moist and a beard can grow more freely there.

Fair to point out that she is an abbess. Yeah. She's not an authority. To be honest, she's woman-splaining. Yeah. That's what she's doing. She is indeed. She is indeed.

And we never approve of that on this podcast. And actually, thinking about the Middle Ages more generally, fashion is obviously set by the most powerful. And as in martial periods in the middle ages more generally fashion is obviously set by the most powerful and as in martial periods in the roman empire that we talked about last time so the kind of the crisis periods when there's all the action on the frontiers and you've got all these bulk and strong men with their beards in late medieval europe powerful men have beards by and large so edward iii we talked about great hero of the podcast he has a beard henry iv who we gave high marks to in england he also has a beard henry the eighth

henry the fifth well henry the fifth is the outlier but you remember he's compared to a priest isn't yes by french ambassadors and i'm thinking presumably this is a reflection his religiosity. Yes, it must be. And then if you look abroad in the following century, Charles V, the great monarch of the age, Philip II of Spain, famously bearded. Now, some of this might be,

I don't want to offend our former guest, Edward Habsburg, but this might be the Habsburg jaw issue that they want to conceal their enormous jaws but wouldn't a beard merely accentuate it i'm not sure that it would i think if you're self-conscious about jimmy hill i mean jimmy hill wore a beard didn't he to cover up his enormous chin but it just drew attention to it i think no because i i'm not sure that's right i think in the 80s jimmy hill had a clean clean chin and it was still very obvious let's not not get into that. This is for the rest is football to discuss. The rest is chins. So anyway, as we enter the 16th century, we approach one of the golden ages of the beard.

And the historian Christopher Oldstone Moore, who specializes in the history of beards, he says there are four great beard moments in history, Tom. So the second century AD, that's Hadrian, I'm guessing. So that's Hadrian. The high middle ages, Edward III, I guess, roughly. Yeah. The Renaissance and the reign of Queen Victoria. He doesn't include the Reformation.

Well, we'll get onto the Reformation. The Reformation. I mean, I know you can kind of, you're often bundled two up. I think the Reformation is massive for beards. Well, I think the Reformation complicates things, as we will see. So there's another historian. You see, I've really done some digging here. There's a historian called William Fisher, who has written an article called The Renaissance Beard. And he has studied hundreds of portraits across the Tudor and Stuart period.

And he says in those portraits, men with beards outnumber those without by 10 to 1. Is that across both Catholic and Protestant Europe? He's writing about England. But when I think about other portraits, I think England is more clean-shaven, actually, than elsewhere. I disagree. I think beards come in with the Reformation. They're massive.

No, I think that's wrong. So you think of all those clean-shaven figures, Woolsey or Thomas More or whatever. And then with the Reformation, you suddenly get a load of beards. And I know this because I remember when I was writing about Dominion, reading about Edward VI, and he's a very sober and serious little boy, except that when the Protestant ambassadors from Germany arrive, they have enormous beards, and he gets fits of giggles about it, and then expresses his disapproval of very long beards and he gets fits of giggles about it and then expresses his disapproval of very long beards but obviously within a few years yeah beards are mainstreaming in protestant england i'm not sure this is right if you think 90 of people have beards and 10 don't if you look at some of the big

figures of this age across religious affiliations so thomas moore thomas cromwell thomas crammer and then go into the 17th century. The single most best known person in the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell. These are people of different religious affiliations. They're all clean shaven, which puts them in their minority. And I think in each case, their clean shavenness is about saying, I'm a sober, serious, hardworking, pious person. I agree.

I think, I mean, I think Puritanism takes a different course, but in the rush of the Edwardian Reformation, after Henry VIII is dead, and they can go full-in Protestant. These are the people who would give the name Protestant to Protestantism, these German ambassadors, these princes. They come to Londonon they have these very very long beards and edward vi responds with ribaldry right but then within a few years it's absolutely the fashion so cranmer grows a beard he does grow a beard and they all start growing beards in edward vi right but i think in the long run clean shavenness becomes identified with radical protestantism in the long run across the course of the 16th century but it's radical protest Protestantism because everybody's by that point is Protestant.

So it's a way of, I mean, everyone has such long beards that actually shaving it off then becomes another marker of the Puritan. It does indeed. Well, do you know what Puritans thought about beards? Puritans said basically a beard is like walking around with excrements on your face. They believed, they were very much into Hildegard of Bingen's heat theory. So they said, basically, your body heat is pushing hair out of your face like soot from a chimney. And it's like you're walking around with a sooty face.

And effectively, it's a waste product. And you are walking around because of your frivolity and your dandyism. You've smeared excrement all over your face and you're walking around with it. That's what a Puritan thinks. But I think that you have a clean-shaven ascetic look in the early part of the 16th century. Then it's full-on beards in the mid-16th century because this is the expression of Protestantism. You're doubling down on this. But then you have, towards the end of the Elizabethan period, going into the Stuart

period, it's a diminishment of beards because you have the Puritans who are worried about excrement on their face and all that. But if you think about the Drake Shakespeare beard, that's kind of narrowing down. And then you have the Van Dyck beard, don't you? But these things coexist. These things coexist. So by the Elizabethan era, different beards have different connotations. So if you're a soldier- Semiotics of beards so a soldier will have a spade beard which I think is a ridiculous beard to have what does that mean what's a spade beard it's kind of

square and cut off oh yes yes yes like Luther had I guess did Luther have that yeah when he was you remember when he's a knight he's disguising himself as a knight right and he grows spade beard he gets painted yeah so a courtier a van dyke beard would very much be the beard of a courtier and if that makes sense because of course to maintain a van dyke beard yeah it's difficult yeah it's difficult it's expensive and then there was um my favorite beard which is the swallowtail double pronged you've put down that belongs to a character yeah i think a character by having that beard it's a bit like being somebody now and wearing a flat cap, riding a unicycle or something. It's sort of identifying yourself as eccentric. Now,

you mentioned Shakespeare. Shakespeare is brilliant on beards. So most scholars say, when you read Shakespeare's plays, it's very obvious that it is taken for granted that almost every single male character will have a beard. There's a very famous exchange in Much Ado About Nothing. Beatrice is talking about, she's just sort of being difficult about husbands and how it's saying she'll never marry. And she's talking to Leonardo and she says, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face.

I'd rather lie in the woolen. And Leonardo says as a joke, you may lie on a husband that hath no beard. Beatrice, what should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard beatrice what should i do with him dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentle woman he that hath a beard is more than a youth and he that hath no beard is less than a man and he that is more than a youth is not for me and he that is less than a man i am not for him you know the assumption is to be a man means to have a beard but the joke is that she will be

being played by a beardless boy. Of course. Yes, exactly. So the beardless boy, of course, in Shakespeare and Jacobean drama generally, that phrase recurs. You know, to be a beardless boy is to be the object of mockery. And then to beard somebody, you know how you're bearding somebody in their den, is to pull or pluck their beard. So Hamlet, we know Hamlet had a beard because he explicitly says at one point, am I a coward?

Who calls me villain? Breaks my pate across, plucks off my beard and blows it in my face. And that's more than just a figure of speech. The really awful example of that, of someone having his beard pulled is Gloucester, isn't it? Yes, of course. In King Lear, when Regan pulls on his beard and he cries out by the kind gods, tis most ignobly done to pluck me by the beard. That's right.

But of course, I mean, that's not the worst thing that's going to be plucked because his eyes are going to be plucked out. And Shakespeare does also give us bearded women who are often overlooked. So the witches in Macbeth, Banquo says to them, you should be women and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so. In other words, the fact that they have beards proves that the world has turned upside down, something weird and supernatural. Macbeth has obviously not been reading Pliny, who was obsessed by women with beards. He had a whole

chapter on them. Really? As in bearded women who would appear in P.T. Barnum's Circus? No. Well, kind of. I mean, so there's one, one this woman from argos who is in bed with her husband and he goes to sleep and it's all great then they wake up and she's she's grown a beard and a penis wow that's a shock you know he's surprised it's fair that's happened overnight yeah sure he hasn't just been to bed with a man no they've been married for years right it's not like that story that we had um the bloke in uh one of wasn't it one of custer's men or something who had accidentally married oh yes yes the washerwoman he tried to bury the washerwoman very quickly after she died isn't that it no these these are miraculous transformations right

women suddenly sprouting beards unexpectedly and it seems to be quite a thing i mean plenty's very into it so to return to the 17th century clearly the 17th century ends with beards in. And it seems to be quite a thing. I mean, Pliny's very into it. So to return to the 17th century, clearly the 17th century ends with beards very much in decline. So looking into it, historians are really interested in this because actually there's very little source material on it. Pepys doesn't write in his diary, I see beards are on the way out. I did this Saturday, shave off my beard to the barbers. Obviously the evidence we're using, portraits and things. And obviously, this is the age of the scientific revolution and the coming of the Enlightenment. To quote Eleanor Rycroft again, she says,

By the 18th century, men were almost entirely clean-shaven. Here it was the lack of facial hair that defined the ideal man. The face of the enlightened gentleman was smooth, his face youthful, and his countenance clear, suggesting a mind that was also open. And there's somebody who's done some work, another tremendous book called Concerning Beards by the historian Alan Withey. And he sort of delves into this. And he says, the 18th century, the Georgian period is an age of urbanity, civility. Englanders are polite and commercial people, self-consciously sophisticated.

Artifice is very popular. It's very in. Hence the wig, wearing artificial hair. So like ancient Egypt. Right. But facial hair is the opposite of that. It is seen as rough and earthy and primitive. It's the look of the laborer yeah

it's not polite it's not polite it's not metropolitan and he's brilliant actually alan withy on barber shops and he says you know the new barber shops of the 18th century they're part of this new kind of public space so you would go to be shaved and you would go maybe twice a week and you would you know know, it's like a coffee house. There would be newspapers and you would exchange gossip and obviously the recommendations of barbershops, you know, the barbershops in St. James's or in Piccadilly or in Bath are very different from the ones in the back streets of Wolverhampton or whatever. I entirely get that. But you remember the episode we did on the suit yeah that this is the period where it's

unostentatious expenditure yes and i wonder whether simply removing the beard kind of it suits a sober age as well yes then you can't do things with your facial hair yeah you can't have varieties of mustache you can't be like the dandyism of the ragu classes yeah there is something sober about it sober absolutely there is. He also points out that this is an age of a shaving revolution, Tom. Is it? A shaving revolution. Oh, well, of course, Sheffield Steel. Sheffield Steel. So now for the first time you have men shaving themselves in private. Now this had not really happened before. So

in the 18th century, there are steel razors made in sheffield they will have wooden or ivory handles and from sheffield they are exported to europe and to the american colonists and they go hand in hand with new soaps made of tallow shaving brushes made from badger hair or boar hair so actually i made a quip a couple of minutes ago about barber shops in st james's or piccadilly if you you go there now, there are these kind of long-established men's shaving shops. Trumpers. Yeah, exactly. Trumpers or whatever they're called. Harris, these kind of places.

They are effectively selling 18th century shaving equipment, slightly updated. The badger hair brush, all of that kind of thing. Which you always get in Westerns, don't you? Yeah. So it's an absolute trope. You do, actually. You know, the guy who's been out in the West

or he's been in jail or something, then he comes out and gets the lather. That's right. The soap lathered onto his face and scrapes it off and he's as good as new. It's interesting. There are the first shaving manuals in the 18th century. So the most famous one is one by a Frenchman,

Jean-Jacques Perrette, and it's called Pogonotomy, or the Art of Shaving Oneself. But I had a look at it. I found a PDF online. So if you read a shaving website now, the emphasis is all about how to get the closest possible shave, the perfect shave. The emphasis in the 18th century is not, it's basically how not to kill yourself. So how to not cut yourself. And the reason, of course, is that we said that we would get into this. So Thoreau, the American transcendentalist writer, his brother, John, died in 1841 from lockjaw, not long after cutting himself.

Why? Because he was holding his mouth open. I mean, why would you get lockjaw? I don't know. Infected. Infected in some peculiar American way. I don't understand. Anyway, he wrote On Walden Pond or whatever it's called.

I've never read it. He's thinking about transcendental. Yeah, it's transcendental. It's like thinking about nature. The Americans love this kind of business. Anyway, he did this because his brother had killed himself shaving. Lord Carnarvon, much more tragic. Yes, he nicked the mosquito bite.

Yes, bitten by a mosquito, nicks it's shaving, gets sepsis, and he might just pull through from the sepsis when he gets pneumonia and the combination of the two kills him. And it is said that the mosquito bite was in exactly the same spot as a mosquito bite on the face of Tutankhamen. Well, there's a definite link there, isn't there? This was promoted by the Daily Mail. Oh, it's undoubtedly true. First royal employer.

Yeah. Just on the topic of 18th century shaving and the excitement of, for the first time in history, you can shave yourself. I'm reminded of one of my favourite passages in Boswell's Life of Johnson, which I had not fully appreciated until this moment, thanks to you, where Johnson is talking about how there is no man who shaves himself in the same way. That every man has his own technique, his own method. He might start at a certain angle, start at a certain place. And I'd always thought of that. Whenever I shave, I always remember that. But it has a whole new resonance if you are the first generation of people who are actually doing that. There's no pattern, right? There's no rule. But Tom, when you're shaving, do you think to yourself, how does William Dalrymple shave?

How does Alistair Campbell shave? How do the other Goldhanger podcast presenters shave? Is that what's going through your mind? No, I always think, how would Dr. Johnson shave? Chaotically, I think. In a haphazard... That's how he'd shave. He would be a poorly shaved man. No question. Yes, his wig would be askew and he'd have loads of little plasters over his face where he'd nicked himself. So before we get to the break, one more 18th century thing. But it's outside West, we've gone outside Western Europe. So this is a stunning rebuke to everybody who says who says we're eurocentric we're going about 20 miles outside western europe yeah we tweak the beard those who say that so we're in

russia under peter the great so peter the great born in 1672 in a society where beards are they're not just the norm they're dare i say sacral, sacral. Well, because they're Orthodox. Yes. And so, you know, those beards come in a line of descent from the original church. Yes. Robert K. Massey, in his biography of Peter the Great, says the beard was the ornament given by God, worn by the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus himself. Ivan the Terrible had a tremendous beard. He said, to shave the beard is a sin that the blood of all the martyrs cannot cleanse. It is to deface the image of a man created by God. Lots of patriarchs kind of back that up and they would say, you know, a man without a beard can't be blessed. A man without a beard is spitting in the face of God. I'm reading in your notes, this idiot, Patriarch Adrian in the late 17th century,

who said, God did not create men beardless, only cats and dogs. He's obviously never met a bearded collie. No. It's the first dog we had. Really? Well, like a schnauzer. A schnauzer has a beard. Yeah, but it's not called a bearded schnauzer. No, it's not. A bearded collie is obviously bearded. And I can vouch that Ben had a massive beard.

Patriarch Adrian. Patriarch, I mean, he's absolutely idiotic. He knew nothing of it. No. He knew nothing of it. I don't know what he's talking about. Anyway, clean shaving has seeped into Russia by the time of Peter the Great's birth. Because there's this place inco called the German suburb.

And patriarchs and Orthodox priests would say terrible scenes in the German suburb. People are talking in German, they're eating salads, they're taking stuff, and they're shaving their faces. And this is abhorrent. And all right-thinking Russians say this is absolutely disgraceful behaviour. Anyway, as you will know, Tom, Peter the Great goes off on his great European tour, doesn't he? Amsterdam, John Evelyn's house, Deptford, you name it. And he

comes back in 1698. And one of the very first things he does, I mean, within hours of returning to Moscow, he calls in his boyars, his kind of nobles, and he physically shaves them himself. So he grabs their faces and roughly shaves them one by one. And they're all quite shocked by this. But this is how he means to go on. Then he starts to have visitors for dinner and he gets his jester to forcibly shave them. And then eventually he says, listen, I'm not messing around here. If you want to have a beard, you have to pay a tax. And people would have to pay a tax and people would have to pay this tax it was a graduated tax based on how much money you had once you paid it you were given a medallion with a picture of a beard on it and the words tax paid and if you were walking

around with a beard without this medallion you'll have an illegal beard something for rachel reeves to ponder perhaps fill in Fill in that fiscal black hole. Can I just ask, is this because he is keen to Europeanize, to westernize his people? He wants to break the power of the conservative orthodox authorities. He also insists, of course, that people dress in a European way, in a Western way. I mean, he's all about westernization. And a lot of Russians are very shocked. So although Peter the Great is an autocrat, an enlightened despot, an absolute monarch, so there's no arguing with him, a lot of people think, if I die beardless, I'm going to be in terrible trouble.

And there's a wonderful quote in the Robert K. Massey book. An English traveler was talking to this guy who was like a shipwright or something who had no beard. He said, oh, you know, you've got no beard. You've obviously signed up to Peter the Great's thing. And he said, I do have a beard, actually. He kind of reached into his pocket and he got out this pouch or something. And he said, I never go out without it because I could die and I will need it.

I will need to have it on me to show them that I've still got my beard. It would be a useful disguise, wouldn't it? It would be, but would you have to take glue as well with you? Because your beard would have lost its integrity time. I suppose. You couldn't just reattach it. Yes. We'll be getting on to beards that you can attach when we talk about the Beatles in the

second half. Great. Well, listen, let's take a break here. And when we come back, we'll be looking at the Crimean war. Yeah. Kind of Darwin's beard, that kind of thing. Big Victorian beards. And we'll be looking at the Beatles and War, kind of Darwin's beard, that kind of thing, big Victorian beards, and we'll be looking at the Beatles and hippies and hipsters.

Yeah. So much to look forward to. 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. Hello welcome back to The Rest is History. And we're looking at the history of the beard. And Dominic, we left part one looking at beards in the age of Peter the Great. And we're going to leap forwards, but remain in Russia. Or more specifically in the Crimea, where Britain and France go to war with Russia. And this is a seismic event, isn't it, in the history of the beard? It's absolutely massive. So at this point, mid-19th century, there is a within russia itself so peter the great had wanted everyone to be

clean shaved but by the mid-19th century people are wearing beards and of course the last russian czars have beards so alexander the third and nicholas the second both have beards now this is often seen as a reflection of their slavophile tendencies in other words they are casting off the legacy of Peter the Great, and they're saying, no, no, no, we're not westernized. We are Russians. We are Slavs. We have a unique soul, and we have our tremendous beards. But actually, they are also reflecting Western fashion,

and that Western fashion has changed because of events in Russia, ironically, because of the Crimean War. Because as you said, from 1853 to 1856, the British and the French are fighting the Russians in the Crimea. This is a horrendous conflict. It's the first modern war, really. It's got shells, it's got railways, telegraph, photographs, all of that stuff. Now, at the beginning, so Lord Raglan,

we had that lovely quote from him of dubious provenance, beards are foreign and breed vermin. But whether or not British troops wanted to grow beards, they have to grow them because they are in the field for months in horrendous conditions. They have no soap. It is so cold that the water is frozen so they couldn't really shave or wash, even if they wanted to. And as a of course they're being photographed and those photographs come back home and the beards come to be seen as badges of military status of kind of manliness and prestige and so is that what inspires the great victorian beard that's what historians alan withy talks about this so darwin yeah tennyson i think you could

argue i suppose you would have to do a study of portraits from the 1850s, the previous decade, to see if beards were coming back, which I imagine they almost certainly were beforehand. But I guess this accelerates, amplifies the process. And I'm not just saying this because he's a cricketer, but WG Grace is massive in this, isn't he? Because he, to explain for people who don't know who he is, he is the first mass appeal sportsman who's, first of all, he's drawn and then he's photographed. And his beard is the icon of his prowess as a sportsman. And so beards then come to be associated with the virility of someone who's an elite sportsman.

Yeah, I think that's fair. I think we think of Victorian beards as backward. But of course, if you're looking forwards from the late 1850s onwards, the beard is modern. The beard is a rejection of the previous period of clean shavenness. And a beard is seen as, what is it? I guess it's patriarchal. It's individualistic.

It's individualistic and it's cutting edge. Because the other thing about WG Grace is that he is the first real celebrity who lends his name and his image to advertisers. So he advertised Coleman mustard and the fact that he is instantly recognizable because he has this incredibly distinctive beard is obviously a crucial part of that because it's very, very easy to reproduce. I think consumerism, advertising and photography are really important in the growth of the beard so there's a good american example it's not quite a beard but it's similar there's a guy in the american civil war so we're talking about a decade later called major general ambrose burnside a union general and burnside if you google him you will see he has the most extraordinary whiskers.

So sort of sideburns that then turn into a moustache and kind of meet in the middle. It's Burnside who gave his name to those sideburns. The sideburn was named after him. And of course, that's because images of him are being spread across the United States in a way that they weren't, you know, they wouldn't have been 10 or 20 years earlier because of the development of photography and so on. So the beard has become very fashionable. It's seen as incarnating the new martial values of the 1850s, 1860s. But people are also, of course, looking for other justifications because this is also a heyday of medicine and science. You mentioned Darwin.

So Darwin probably thinks, I mean, I've never read Darwin about his own beard, but I imagine he would have thought a beard was healthy. Otherwise he wouldn't have had one. Well, we talked about him at the start of the first show. He's unclear what the evolutionary purpose of beards is, but essentially, I mean, he thinks that they are advertisements of virility that appeal to women and therefore natural selection chooses men with men who can grow beards yeah and actually if you look at scientific textbooks and tracts and things from this period so alexander

roland the human hair popularly and physiologically considered he writes in that i do most strenuously contend that the beard is a positive good. It affords naturally what we are forced to supply artificially, i.e. warmth and protection to the throat. And then there's St. James's Magazine from 1861, so that's right in the point between the Crimean War and the American Civil War. A long beard contributes greatly to health. It preserves the teeth a long time from

rotting and strengthens the gums. So this is apparently based on a 16th century physician called Valerianus. I don't believe a beard does strengthen your gums. If there are any specialists in gums, let us know. Dominic, just on that topic, I mean, this is kind of almost taking us back to ancient Greece, isn't it? A beard is medically something that a man should have. And that was an age where a very strong sense of the separation of the rival spheres of men and women. Do you think, because paralleling the growth of the Victorian beard is a kind of emphasis on the domestic role of women, the angel in the house.

Do you think that's part of it? I do. And lots of gender historians think it is. Lots of gender historians say that at points when women's roles are changing, expanding, when women are maybe threatening men in various ways, men will feel the need to assert their masculinity in more visible and conspicuous ways. Interesting. Generally by facial hair, that that would be a good explanation. But the thing about the medical stuff is that once you've thrown your lot in with doctors and scientists, of course, when they change your mind. They can come up with any old nonsense.

Right, exactly. Once they've changed their minds, you're in real trouble. So by the end of the 19th century, the turn of the 20th, the consensus has changed. People think beards might not be very hygienic. Christopher Oldston Moore and his stuff think beards might not be very hygienic christopher oldston more on his stuff about beards he says the discoveries of louis pasteur are crucial in this so pasteur germ theory microbes all of that business and people who were kind of pasteurites or whatever

would say your beard is a breeding ground for disease a french scientist caused a sensation in 1907 i mean this is the most french experiment that's ever taken place they didn't experiment and he said the lips i quote the lips of a woman kissed by a mustachioed man were polluted with tuberculosis and diphtheria bacteria as well as food particles and a hair from a spider's leg. And what was the point of that? So basically, this woman, they got men to kiss women. Yeah.

Very French. Some men with moustaches, some men without. And the moustache showed men afterwards when they tested the women's lips, covered with filth, spiders. Oh, I see. Bits of French food. They hadn't deliberately polluted this guy's moustache with spider's legs. No, he was just French. He just had it? Yeah. Okay. Oh, yes, I see. Bits of French food. They hadn't deliberately polluted this guy's moustache with spider's legs and things. No, he was just French.

He just had it? Yeah. Okay. Oh, yes, I see. So nobody wants that. No woman wants to be kissed and be left with all this detritus. That spider's leg. No, not at all.

But also, I think there's a cultural shift. So thinking about, obviously, we've talked about the Edwardian period a fair amount in our Roads of the Great War series and so on. Well, first of all, it's an age when socially there is a turn towards greater kind of corporate. Historians talk about this move to a kind of corporate uniformity. More people working in offices, more clerks, more white collar than before. You want a kind of uniform workforce.

And the idea of everybody turning up with that random long beard is anathema to the Edwardians. They want everyone sitting in rows looking the same. But at the same time, there's a great emphasis in the Edwardian period on youth and vigor and on looking dynamic. And of course, casting off the shackles of the previous generation. So actually, when you look at some of the characters we've talked about in various episodes, 1890s, 1900s, Oscar Wilde, Herbert Asquith, the young Winston Churchill, they're all clean shaven.

Even more reactionary figures. So great pals of the rest is history like Kaiser Wilhelm II. Good moustache though. Moustache, but not bearded. And I think the fact that Franz Ferdinand of of all people, is not bearded tells its own story, Tom. It's most sensible if people take their fashion cues from the Archduke. But there's also a technical explanation, which is shaving. So shaving has changed.

So there's a guy called King Camp Gillette. And in 1895, he's sitting around in Chicago, I think it is, and he thinks there must be a better way to shave than this. And he basically dreams up the idea of the disposable razor blade. And it took him the best part of a decade to start producing it, to work out what the design would be and whatnot. He does that in 1903, I think. And by the end of the 1900s, he's producing them in London and Paris.

But then it's turbocharged by the First World War. Because in the First World War, first of all, officers want their men to look the same, to have a kind of uniformity. You can't have people with like swallowtail beards. No, especially not in the trenches with all that mud. It's lice that is the thing. You want to basically eliminate anything where germs and lice will grow. So, for example, when the US joined the war in 1917, troops were told, you must travel with the shaving kits that you provide yourself.

And Gillette made packs specially for the trenches. And was it the best a man can get? I think it almost certainly was, Tom. I can't believe Gillette aren't sponsoring this, actually. Well, they know where we are. When the war is over, these are dark days for beards, actually. Because think about the interwar years. Nobody has a beard in the interwar years nobody has a beard in the

interwar years lenin lenin lenin bandite beard and george v ironically two people george berners shaw is he still around he's got an amazing beard yeah but he's just a leftover from the previous yeah he is water rally he's left over yeah even stalin doesn't have a beard to stalin who'd been raised in the seminary he has a mustache hitler has a mustache unthinkable that either of those men would have a beard. Stanley Baldwin, no beard. Neville Chamberlain, no beard. Franklin Roosevelt, no beard. And actually- Trotsky. Trotsky, beard, but that ends up with an ice pick in his head. This is what happens. I think communists are likelier to have beards.

They are. And they give beards a bad name. So here's the interesting thing, that if you look at the popular culture,'s just look at the british popular culture of the interwar years very quickly beards are identified with freakishness so is that your synonym for people with left-wing so to give one of my favorite examples in the just williams stories of which will compton which are a brilliant window into the mentality in middle england in williams village when somebody with a beard moves in next door, he's a league of nations enthusiast or a vegetarian or something. When George Orwell in the 1930s is describing the weirdos who give socialism a bad name, that quote,

that dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal wearers and bearded fruit juice drinkers. And then in one of my favorite books lucky jim published 1954 i think or 1953 i can't remember which dixon the hero sort of failed historian he espies his love rival who's called bertrand who is a terrible man bertrand is wearing a lemon yellow sports coat all three buttons of which were fastened which is very poor and displaying a large beard which came down further on one side than the other. And Dixon guessed straight away that this must be Bertrand, who has already been described to him as A, a pacifist,

B, somebody who likes painting, and so therefore automatically just a terrible man. We're no longer into notions of purity and royalty and all the stuff that we were looking at in ancient times and medieval times. And we're not really even into health by now. It's about fashion. But it has a political meaning, I think. Of course, because all fashions do. But for men, what you do with your facial hair, it's something that you can change very, very easily. So you can experiment. I guess that on the level of nationwide fashions, if one generation has beards, then the obvious thing to do is to shave them off in the next generation. And so hostile attitudes to beards

in the fifties, isn't that when? Yeah, fifties. Must be setting things up for the sixties, which is one of the great ages of the popular beard. Well, it is and isn't, Tom, I would say, about the 60s and pears. Well, it's fashionable, isn't it? But of course, I mean, I know that Sandbrook's people would not be wearing beards. Is that the technical term? Movers and shakers like John Lennon, they are. Well, here's the interesting thing. You have the development of youth culture, let's say the mid-50s onwards and hair for example is always a huge part of that and whether you have a kind of crew cut or a kind of elvis style haircut or you have a beatles mop

or hippie hair or whatever or punk all of those kinds of things and yet actually through the great majority of all these trends there was an assumption you'll always be clean shaven. You might be stubbly because you haven't bothered to shave, but you won't be bearded or really mustachioed. Now, there is a slight exception for that, which is the Beatles. But more generally, the Summer of Love and Inter68. If you look at photos, the great majority of men are not bearded.

Oh, are they not? That's interesting. They're long haired, but they're not bearded. I was having a look because I was thinking about exactly this thing. So the Beatles started flirting with mustaches and beards at the end of 1966, then the beginning of 1967. Then they all really have them in, I think, May 67, when they publicly launch Sergeant Pepper. And to get a sense of how outlandish that is, if you just look at the World Cup final of 1966, A, you look at the England team, they've got very short hair and they're all clean shaven. They're not even stubbly. They're all clean shaven. And then you look at the crowd. There are virtually no beards. There are very

few moustaches, actually. They're all clean shaven. And with the Beatles, is it the Maharishi that changes it? No, they've grown them before they've gone to Rishikesh. They go to Rishikesh a year later. They haven't grown the beard by then, have they? I think one or two of them may have grown beards by then or flirted with beards. But then they go to Rishikesh. To Rishikesh. And they all have huge beards. Now there is an argument amongst 60s historians that people start to grow beards when they're also wearing kind of lacy shirts and big coats and they've got flowery scarves. And the beard is a way of getting away with all this yes

you're masculizing yeah it's a reminder of your masculinity there's also a sense obviously that having the beards is a deliberately ironic nod back to victorian empire which is why it matches sergeant pepper and of course you could only do that once the empire had gone so maybe it's no coincidence it happens a few years after the empire has finally gone, because people can start joking about it. And having the beard or the Lord Kitchener style moustache or whatever is a way of doing that. I would associate the British empire with moustaches rather than beards, I think. That's maybe because you're thinking about later, don't you think? Yeah. It's Lord Kitchener who has the archetypal moustache, but he doesn't have a beard.

Yeah, I guess you're right. Lord Kitchener is the archetypal moustache. You see, I'm wondering whether it's an Indian thing. It's a kind of yogi. Yeah. Because George Harrison keeps his beard. He does indeed. Yes. Longer, I think, than the other three Beatles. And he's the one who's really into transcendental meditation. Yeah. And Paul is the one who has it least long, I think. He has it on his thigh. Yeah. It's a good beard, but you know his heart's's not in it he's not a natural wearer of a beard i think it's fair to say the

funny thing is that i mentioned this earlier on this is also the heyday of mayor lord it's mustaches so beatles and other pop music magazines would advertise um facial hair that you could buy and stick onto your face so they would literally advertise it for 19 shillings so realistic they're almost undetectable and could be used time and time again says the advertising copy you would have to send them tom a little cutting of your hair so they could match it for color and then they would send you sideburns a mustache or a beard in that shade nice so we're thinking about for our next rest of history tour. Yeah. If we want to surprise people when we come on stage. So what about hipsters?

Is that fashion? Yeah, I think that's pure fashion. I tried to find some statistics. It's really hard to find these statistics, but just looking at photographs generally and things. What's striking to me is that, although the Beatles, you said the 60s is the golden age of the beard,

there are very few bearded people in the 60s and 70s. If you think about public figures. Yeah, you're right. Fascinating. How many of them actually do have beards? I think beards, even in the 70s and the post Beatles heyday, are still ultimately seen as a little bit eccentric, a little bit bohemian. George Best has a beard. George Best has a beard, but that's part of George Best's decline, isn't it? That Best has become a bit dissipated, a bit eccentric. He puts himself above the team.

He's spending all night with bottles of vodka and Miss World instead of thinking about tomorrow's match against Burnley. Practising free kicks and things. Exactly. In political cartoons in the 70s, beards are still, I hate to say it, Tom, but they're the badge of the freak. So the only people that have beards in... They're liberals, aren't they? Well, three kinds of people have beards in British political cartoons in the 70s. Members of the Liberal Party, members of the freak. So the only people that have beards in... They're liberals, aren't they? Well, three kinds of people have beards

in British political cartoons of the 70s. Members of the Liberal Party, members of the IRA, and schoolteachers. Sometimes all three. Yes, I guess so. And actually,

who's got the most famous beard in Britain today, would you say? Prince Harry. I think Prince Harry, maybe... For me, it's Jeremy Corbyn. Yeah.

I mean, Jeremy Corbyn, when he became leader of the Labour Party, people commented all the time about his beard. The Economist called it a counter-cultural badge of defiance against smooth-talking, smooth-faced capitalists. But you could say the same about Prince Harry. You could. Yeah, you could. So in 2017, there was a survey of newspaper comment pieces

about Jeremy Corbyn, and this survey found that 69% of them mentioned his beard. That's absolutely brilliant. Do you know what, Tom? I had a look myself. I've written six articles about Jeremy Corbyn that explicitly mentioned his beard. And how many, what proportion is that?

I'm confident that I haven't overdone it, but I'd thrown it in a few times. It's generally, it's never meant kindly, to be honest. So this wasn't a policy that was dictated to you by the Daily Mail's editorial board? I never. You must mention Jeremy Corbyn's beard. The very thought of that is so shocking to me. And if anybody's listening from that organisation, they'll be shocked too, because they all know that that's absolutely not how

newspapers work, Tom. Right. Okay. I just wondered whether there was an editorial policy. Absolutely not. But we should end by talking about, we should give our own views about whether or not men should have beards. So I drew up a list of three typical men without beards and three typical men with that might help you make up your mind, Tom.

So Alexander the Great, no beard. Yeah. Henry V didn't have a beard. Yeah. And Nelson didn't have a beard. Yeah. And Nelson didn't have a beard. But then men with beards, the aforementioned Jeremy Corbyn has a beard. Prince Harry now has a beard. And the Yorkshire Ripper had a beard. So does that focus your mind at all?

I mean, you could alternatively say that Caligula didn't have a beard. Yeah, that's true. Hitler didn't have a beard. He had a moustache. Come on. Grant Shapps, who greenlit the Stonehenge Tunnel. Pol Pot. He didn't have a beard. He had a moustache. Come on. Grant Shapps, who greenlit the Stonehenge Tunnel. Pol Pot. He didn't have a beard.

Pol Pot was clean shaven. Yeah, Pol Pot. So, you know, they're all monsters from history. And then people who do have, I mean, God has a beard. Yeah. Sir Francis Drake. They're very similar. People that use God and Sir Francis Drake.

The priestess of Athena who grew a beard whenever peril threatened. You know, I don't want to come to any firm and vast conclusions. Well, actually, do you know the person who really captures the complexity of this? It's Theo, our producer. Yes. Because we can never anticipate whether Theo will be bearded or not. Well, he had a Persian beard, as we said, on Friday. Yeah.

We're recording this on a Monday and it's completely gone. Yeah. It's very unsettling, isn't it? It is unsettling, yeah. It's very unsettling, isn't it? It is unsettling. Yeah. It's very unsettling. You've never been tempted to grow a beard?

No. Because I think, I tell you what I think you would look like if you had a beard. You would look like a rascally ship's captain possibly involved in slaving

in the Viking era. Oh, in the Viking era? Yeah. Oh, brilliant. I'm well on for that. Monks and stuff you'd be trading in monks yeah you wouldn't look like a monk you'd look like somebody who who you weren't a full-blown warrior right but you dealt you know you would you would take the loot that

had been stolen by warriors from a monastery yeah you'd have a cackle an evil cackle yeah corrupt i think you would be corrupt and you'd probably be run through by the hero who would have been enslaved and would escape while you were trying to sell him. Alexander Skarsgård. He would kill you. He would run you through. And what sort of beard would you have? I think you would look like Roy Strong if you had a beard. Worst things to be.

Do you not think you'd go for a kind of pointed Van Dyke? I would go for it. I probably would go for a Van Dyke. Yeah. I'd try and go for Francis Drake, I think. Walter Raleigh. I've got the beard more of a medieval blacksmith. Yeah. Well, a ship's captain. Yeah. I'd try and go for Francis Drake, I think. Walter Raleigh. I've got the beard more of a medieval blacksmith. Yeah.

Well, a ship's captain. Yeah. Well, that's kind. This has been revelatory. Top historical analysis. Very good. Yes. So the good news is there's been a lot to hear about men.

And I think, Tom, it's time that we had an episode about a woman, don't you? Yes. In fact, two. Two women in succession. Let's just go for it. Absolutely. Actually, three. So we could do Lee Miller, the great American photographer in the second world war.

Brilliant. And then we could do Evita. Great. Ava Perron. Why not? That'd be great. And then after that, perhaps we could do, I don't know, Boudicca. Brilliant.

Let's do it. Let's do it. So if you want to hear those episodes early, you can do so by joining the, I'm not going to say how early because I don't want to overpromise, but you'll hear them before other people do, generally. But not Lee Miller, because Lee Miller might be coming on Thursday. You join the Rest Is History Club at therestishistory.com. And to be honest, not only do you get episodes early, you don't get the ads, but also you get the very high quality repart RT that we've been showcasing in this episode.

Isn't that true, Tom? Yeah, you absolutely do. So lots more beer chat to come in bonus episodes, no doubt, in the next few decades of The Rest Is History. And on that bombshell, Tom, I'm off for a shave. Bye bye. Bye bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman.

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