The Rest Is History - 69. England v Ukraine

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

On the eve of a huge sporting encounter in Rome between the English and Ukrainian football teams, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook explore the history binding the two nations. Crimea, The Light Brigade and Florence Nightingale all make the starting line-up. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jack Davenport 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. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History. Historians make notoriously bad predictors of the future. So when, in our last football-themed podcast, Tom Holland and I predicted that England would crash out humiliatingly to the Germans in the second round of Euro 2020, we knew, of course, that we would be proved comprehensively wrong. And so we were. Tom, great scenes.

England beating Germany in a major tournament for the first time, well, first time for 20 years, but the first time in the knockouts since 1966. Great scenes indeed, which I witnessed live, but I think you didn't. That's right. As you said, in the episode we recorded on Anglo-German relations preceding that match, you said that you had to go to your son's...

Was that a sports day? No, it was a play. It was a play. It was a play. Yes, at the moment... I just basically have a succession of school-themed events. So sports day was about 10 days ago, and I missed something else because of Sports Day.

And this was Mermaids against Pirates. Pirates versus Mermaids. It was the big clash that everybody was talking about, and I'm happy to report that it ended in a score draw with honours even. So I went, obviously, in a very sort of anxious way. And as I was sort of sitting there, deliberately not, you know, the clock had just ticked past five o'clock,

so the kickoff had begun, had happened, and I was deliberately not catching anybody's eye, looking at any of the other dads or anything like this, because I was recording the match and determined to get back to watch it. And to my relief, the very admirable music teacher Mr Price gave an announcement and he said do not check your phones do not communicate anything about

the match because some of us are recording it what a wise man yeah it was it was very impressive that to me is the mark of a great schoolmaster which it clearly is and so you managed to see it not knowing the result so I got home I didn't look out the window of the car i ran into the house the back way so i wouldn't go past our neighbor's front window where they could see they were still watching the final scenes and i didn't want to see the expression on their faces and then we watched the whole thing yeah it's brilliant it was brilliant i know this is a tragic insight into my tortured psyche. No, not at all. I can't imagine anything worse than having to miss out on that. Yeah, exactly. Well, pretending to take an interest in your son's play.

I'm sure you did take an interest in the play. I did take an interest in the play. I mean, yeah. Well, I... Not to boast or anything. He's going to boast? I'm going to boast. I was rather stressed. I needed England to win in full time.

Because? Because at seven o'clock, I had to go and interview Francis Fukuyama. The end of history. The end of history. And I'd already put him off an hour. That was the best thing to do. Francis Fukuyama, a Greek football,

a big admirer of the Euros. So we started talking. I was rather intimidated to be talking to this, you know, this great luminary. So I didn't, at the beginning, explain why I'd pushed it back an hour and why I had a big smirk on my face. St. George's Cross painted on your face. Yes. So I didn't explain that.

And then by the end, things had sufficiently warmed up that I gave the reason. And of course, his whole thesis is that the end of history means that... England has won. Well, essentially, the violent passions and rivalries that previously had convulsed European history are now at an end. Francis, you're quite wrong. No, but he's all in favour of international sporting competitions because he thinks that that preserves the end of history because we're channelling our passions and our enthusiasms into abusing each other on terraces rather than kind of bombing Hamburg. That's absolutely balderdash though. I mean, the football war in Central America. Are you calling Francis Fukuyama what he said, balderdash and also the breakup of the breakup of yugoslavia was preceded by

you know the sort of signs of it were on the football field the um future croat captain zvonimir boban fighting riot police in about 1990 um was he's often used as a as a harbinger of of the of the bloodshed to come i i didn't i didn't tell him that you should have done you should have done you missed your chance he He's Francis Fukuyama. Yeah, but you're Tom Holland. Have some faith in yourself, man.

Have faith in yourself. Who am I to lecture Francis Fukuyama on sport? Anyway, this is all by the by. The reason that we're back here with, with a special is that England are meeting Ukraine in Rome. And so we did an episode on Anglo-German relations, which obviously there's quite a lot to

talk about anglo-ukrainian relations a bit more of a challenge isn't it there's more than you'd think i mean ukraine is let's start off by saying ukraine is an unbelievably interesting country i mean uh kiev and rus as it began and part of the very dramatic attack by the mong so it's got viking stuff which i'm sure we're going to come backed by the Mongols. So it's got Viking stuff, which I'm sure we're going to come back to, sort of Viking involvement. Then it's totally destroyed, isn't it, by the Mongols. Becomes part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,

which I always think we should do a podcast about because it's just such a strange state. Carved up between the Austrian and Russian empires. I mean, there's so much to talk about with Ukraine, actually. I mean, admittedly, we haven't quite got mentioned the English elements, but we'll come to that. Okay. Well, I'm going to say something provocative,

which is that if Ukraine beat England, football will be going home. A ludicrous view, and I'd like to hear you justify it. Okay. I will do that. So the word football, compound word, foot and ball. Thanks for that. What are the origins of these words? What's the etymological ancestry?

Well, English is an Indo-European language. And where is the homeland of the Indo-Europeans? Is it the steppes of Ukraine? It is. Yeah, southern Russia and the ste the homeland of the indo-europeans is it the steps of ukraine it is yeah southern russia and the steps of ukraine so above uh the caspian and the black sea i mean that's the almost overwhelming consensus right it's it's obviously there are people who think maybe the europeans came from anatolia or from atlantis or ind India or but but generally that's the consensus opinion so that means that um that basically so the word foot yeah the the original the the kind of you know we don't know what the proto-Indo-European word was but linguists have kind of basically worked out that it was something along the lines of pods or ped so you get you get you know that you get that in latin and greek in transcript you get

pa in french um and the germanic strand the p turned to an f but the best one is ball and it was in old english it was bial yeah in proto-germanic, apparently it was balus. And in Proto-Indo-European, it was bial, which apparently meant blow. Say that last one again. Bial. That's how they spoke on the steps of 4,000 BC. Okay. And that meant blow, inflate, swell. So it's a kind of, you know, like a blown up ball.

Okay. But Tom, this is a claim you could make about almost anything, right? I mean, you could claim dishwashers were Ukrainian because the word for dish comes from the Indo-European. If I was doing a podcast about Anglo-Ukrainian attitudes to dishwashers, that's exactly the argument I would make. But since this is prompted by a football football match i'm focusing on football so okay football will be going home yeah well the word i mean not the not the practice the word

yes the word i agree it's a bit of a stretch but i thought you'd be more impressed by that than no i am impressed i i mean i tell you who would have been impressed by that the late jr tolkien he was a great man yeah of course for the roots of words he would have loved that so you've you've ticked that box if he's listening which he isn't um well if he were listening he'd really enjoy it anyway classy podcast um do you have i believe i i'm confident you have something more substantive to offer about surely there must have been anglo-saxons involved in the ukraine almost certainly yes there were so so we talked about um the viking origins of kiev yeah um and the russ which mean

rowers were basically swedes who came down the great rivers um vladimir the great yes uh and they established um kiev as a kind of um stronghold controlling the trade routes. And it became a kind of a piratical empire. And Vladimir of Kiev converts to Christianity, the Christianity that you get in Constantinople, because he didn't want to become Muslim because he couldn't drink. He thought that the cathedrals of the Latin Christians were not as impressive as Hagia Sophia. Don't they go down and they see the hagia sophia and they're absolutely astounded yeah they

say they say you know i had not thought that anything so beautiful could be seen he thinks it's a vision of heaven and so that persuades him to sign up to the byzantine form of christianity and so the the um the kievan ruse are absorbed into the world world of Byzantium and they have a slightly kind of ambivalent status because the Vikings are perpetually coming down and attacking Constantinople. But as they get converted to Christianity, so they become kind of neutral, that they can be relied upon. Then this is the famous Varangian Guard. After 1066, large numbers of displaced Anglo-Saxon aristocrats, nobility, seem to have migrated to Constantinople and to have joined the Varangian Guard. And there are various reports, various kind of sagas, so on, saying that they arrive when Constantinople is under siege, presumably by the Turks. They play a heroic role in this.

And as a reward, the emperor the emperor says you know what can we give you and some of them say we would like to form a new england and there's a wonderful paper by the historian caitlin green who who writes fabulous stuff about all kinds of intriguing early medieval you know byzantine coins that pop up in j and so on. She's written this fantastic piece about saying, was there truth to this? Did the Byzantine emperor grant a New England to the Anglo-Saxon Varangians? And she argues that it was granted to them on Crimea.

And she said, you know, there are various kind of um chronicles sagas throughout the middle ages that make reference to this um in the edward saga which is 14th century icelandic saga but drawing on apparently on 12th century material to the towns that were in the land and to those which they built they gave the names of the towns in england they called them both london and york and by the names of other great in England. They called them both London and York and by the names of other great towns in England. So there was a New York in Crimea.

There was a New York and New England in Crimea, apparently. And as evidence for this, Caitlin cites various Italian charts from the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries, which mention a Londina, which is presumably London. And a place called Sissaco, which is presumably london yeah and a place called sasako which is saxon so saxon town nice which you know so the evidence there is amazing you know it's it's tantalizing yeah but i think certainly strong enough for a podcast on anglo-ukrainian well if vladimir if vladimir putin is listening to this he will be raging I mean he will have

cancelled his subscription because he would say Ukraine and Crimea are not the same if Ukrainian listeners are listening they will be writing well they will be ordering your books in triumph and saying but we're looking at this from the medieval perspective Dominic and Vladimir is baptized Vladimir the first Ukrainian to be Christian, is baptised in Crimea. Right. I did not know. That's interesting. So Crimea is part of the Ukrainian world then, without any question. Yes, absolutely. But that's also why it's so significant for Vladimir Putin and Russia, is that it's seen as the birthplace of Russian Christianity as well.

Right. So when the Russians annexed Crimea, there were kinds of extraordinary photos of priests with their long beards, casting holy water onto jets and blessing the, the Russian forces as they were moving into a next Crimea. So it's, Crimea is a kind of holy place. I mean, it's the Canterbury.

Yeah. Or a bit like Kosovo for the Serbs. So it's this sort of, you know, this sort of place that's become slightly detached from the, you know, it's not part of the main sort of territory. Kosovo is a battle, right? Yeah, Kosovo is baptismal, that it's the wellspring of

the Christianity of both Ukrainians and the Russians, gives it a peculiar resonance. Because it gives it, you know, it's like Canterbury or Rome or even Jerusalem. It has that kind of holiness to it. And so when Potemkin

captures Crimea for Catherine the Great. From the Turks, from the Ottomans, isn't it? He says to her, you know, we have captured the birthplace of Russian Christianity. And this is what joins us to Constantinople. And he name references Pompey the Great. He name references Alexander. He says this joins us to the classical traditions and the Christian traditions of our Russia, Russia as the third Rome. So it's sacred. It has this kind of holiness both to the Ukrainians and to the Russians.

But of course, to most English speaking or certainly most British listeners, Crimea has a significance. The Crimean War. I mean, people don't really think about the Crimean War now, but there was a time when the Crimean War loomed so large, thanks to Tennyson and his poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Valley of Death and all that sort of stuff. The first modern war, some people might say, the Crimean War. Do you think? Yes. So the Crimean War is fought by a Turkish Anglo-French alliance. Such a strange war. Yes against the Russians and it's kind of centered around Sevastopol isn't it? Yeah it's 1853 to 1856. The sort of the trigger for the war is who administers the holy places in Ottoman-occupied Israel and Palestine.

So that's another example of how this stuff really matters. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Who owns the holy places. Yes. It's also about French and Russian sort of national virility. They both, you know, the Russians are expanding. The Ottoman Empire is sort of breaking up. The French want to and the British want to and the british want to preserve the ottoman empire they want to stop the russians getting the straits the the sort of constantinople

and the gateway to the black sea and the mediterranean um and this sort of blows up into this incredibly vicious war but also the war with railways with telegraphs with photography with florence nighting War correspondence, isn't it? The Times sends a correspondent, and it's the first one where you get reports from the front. And it's the first kind of major European war that Britain has fought, and indeed the French, since the Napoleonic Wars. And there are various kind of generals out there,

British generals who keep getting muddled up. Yeah, they're... Let's's a let's attack the french it's completely the russians it's a bit of a shambles isn't it the crimean war so most famously and actually we talked about we've talked about him a few times so it seems mad not to mention flashman the great crimean war book i think is flashman at the charge in which flashman is in this they're thick of all the action so and all these characters lord cardigan and all these characters, Lord Cardigan, and all these people who absolutely despise Flashman are charging towards Russian guns and being massacred and so on.

So from the footballing point of view, there are two key engagements, two key approaches to attacking your enemy that the Crimean War exemplifies. So you have the Charge of the Light Brigade, which is full on, you know, let's open with Grealish, attack. That's Kevin Keegan's England, 2000.

Which goes disastrously wrong. And then you've got the Thin Red Line. And Scottish listeners, I hope will forgive me, the Thin Red Line is actually, it's a Scottish regiment. It's the Sutherland Highlanders. But from the point of view of this podcast let's say british english whatever um and that's where um a russian cavalry force is

approaching they are kind of stranded it's colin campbell who commands them lines them up not in four because they don't have enough to do that that's the standard approach he lines them up in so they're kind of they're too deep And this is the thin red line bonnet of phrase. So that implies defence holding out. So I guess Gareth Southgate is a kind of thin red line man. He is, he's... Rather than a,

there are your guns, my lord, attack! Yeah, exactly. So the Charge of the Light Brigade, just talk us through that, because it's such a great story. So the Charge of the Light Brigade is in utter shambles now. I haven't come prepared for this, Tom, so I'm just trying to remember it. The Russians' guns are at the top of a valley, aren't they?

At the bottom of a valley, I think. At the bottom of the valley, but at one end of the valley anyway. They're at some end of the valley. So this is at Balaclava, hence the nice woolen mask. And now, as I remember, the Russians are withdrawing, clava um hence you know the uh the nice woolen mask um and uh now so i remember the russians are withdrawing and the the commander says you know go and basically get the guns before they withdraw and but somehow in the course of this being relayed to the light brigade they end up pointing at the wrong guns that's right isn't it this is their real guns so the chain of command

there are three lords all of whom are useless yeah so there's lord raglan that's right who fought in the napoleonic wars and he's the one who keeps saying go and attack the french it's like the fact that the french are his allies and he's about kind of 90 and incredibly doddery yeah then there's the lord lucan ancestor of the lord lucan who will he doesn't he doesn't vanish he doesn't he doesn't disappear and he I think is the brother-in-law of Lord Cardigan now Lord Cardigan is a ridiculous man who commands the light brigade uh but they detest each other yes and then there's a guy called Nolan he's the intermediary isn't he he carries the message yeah and because none of them are speaking to each other it it it doesn't it doesn't provide for great communication.

And so basically there's a kind of, there's a snarl up. Cardigan says, which guns do you mean? Nolan gestures. And then I think gets shot, gets killed. He speaks firstly, doesn't he? Doesn't he say, there are your guns, my lord, or something? Yes. Go and get them or whatever. whatever pointing vaguely into the distance and the one rule of of war is that if you have cavalry and particularly light cavalry you don't use it to charge artillery head on

so cardigan thinks this is mad but because he's been given the order and because he is um he's just insanely arrogant and stiff-necked. He's just a Victorian British general, right? He just does what he does. Inventor of the cardigan, of course. He's the inventor of the cardigan. I think that's why he wears it over his shoulder, doesn't he? Like the kind of jacket.

I didn't know that. I think so. That's a great fact. And so they charge down. They get absolutely devastated. And then the survivors kind of trot back. But you know what? There's now a revisionist history of this.

As with all disastrous British battles, a bit like the Somme or Passchendaele or whatever, there are military historians now who say, well, actually, you know. It was quite good, was it? Yeah, we got the results we wanted or whatever. I mean, I don't believe that. Yeah, that's very football manager.

Yeah. All right, we lost 7-0. But, you know. We've learned lessons. We go again on Tuesday. Provides a platform. Yeah. There's lots to build on.

But, I mean, it's also very, I mean, I guess this is something that football, sport perhaps has inherited. We love a kind of a bloody disaster. Of course we do. Yeah. There's a book, isn't there? Heroic Failure in the British.

Yeah. So Gazza bursting into tears. Exactly. As we get knocked out. Yeah. I mean, it lives on in British folklore. That's why it feels slightly un-English to be making sort of unruffled progress through

a tournament as we have been doing for the last few games. And so in a sense, Tennyson's poem on the Charge of the Light Brigade kind of absolutely establishes the template for that. There is a kind of football chant quality to it. Well, I think post-colonial historians are sort of not people i normally quote um with enormous overwhelming admiration but they would say a lot of this stuff is motivated by guilt they think or sort of bad conscience that the sort of british create this cult of martyrdom you know and oh we're so outnumbered with the underdogs and we performed heroically and were

beaten to sort of you know to sort of cope with the fact that actually they're just mowing people down with gatling guns. Except on this occasion, it's because we're grotesquely incompetent. Yeah. And I think actually this is the other thing. So there's a lot of fan misbehaviour. There's a lot of discontent with the management,

which is very football, and there's fan misbehaviour. So in England, the war is quite unpopular. I think particularly with the Tories and with Tory voters and there's all these scenes where people are pelting there are snowball riots where the fans as it were are pelting. I think they were pelting like recruiting officers or something

with snowballs. And the government, well, the Earl of Aberdeen who was the Prime Minister falls and then Palmerston takes over and of course Palmerston's a great man for attacking foreigners. Sending gunboats. Yeah, sending gunboats. There are legacies of the Crimean War in lots of towns still. And when we finally, at the end of the war,

we captured Sevastopol, there's loads of old Russian guns, cannons, and they were all brought home and they were sent all around the country. I mean, there were some in, you know, there were some like Hartlepool. Every town wanted one, particularly towns that had strongly supported the the war so there's one in abingdon and there's there's loads in canada actually there's about 20 still in canada these

sebastopol guns um which was sort of you know hurrah hurrah we've captured these old russian cannons and then some of them are melted down in the second world war um to you know build spitfires or something so there were sort of weird you know relics of um the crimean war in sort of market towns all over england oh we're just getting a message from our producer victoria cross medals are still made out of melted down sebastopol guns that is controversial i believe i think the people have analyzed vict Victoria Cross medals and said, are they really great? Honestly, Dominic, just stop ruining our facts. Yeah, stop it with your historical truths. Well, I mean, and also, of course, the other legacy is nursing.

Florence Nightingale. And Mary Seacole. Yes. Who, in a way, has become a kind of icon to the extent that she's replaced Florence Nightingale, even though she wasn't a nurse. I think she basically just ran a hotel. Every school child in Britain now learns about Mary Seacole, don't they?

I mean, isn't that the sort of... But usually this is prefaced with the words, she's written out of history and nobody reads about her now. Well, I think it's kind of... It's an interesting example of the way in which we continue to mythologise people from British imperial history, even in the 21st century. Mary Seacole is an entirely mythologized person in exactly the way that, I guess, the Earl of Cardingdon was. Cardingdon?

Yeah, Cardigan. Tom, you know, I thought this podcast would take about 10 minutes on Anglo-Ukrainian relations. And partly because we haven't really talked massively about Anglo-Ukrainian relations. We've now got to the end of the first half. Well, there are going to be, it is going to be a game of two halves. Shall I end it by reading a chunk of Tennyson? I think that would be absolutely brilliant. So we'll go out on Tennyson and you can imagine, let's hope that this doesn't

prefigure what happens in Rome. Forward the light brigade, was there a man dismayed? Not though the soldier knew someone had blundered. There's not to make reply, there's not to reason why, there's but to do and die.

Into the valley of death rode the 600. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix Road the 600. episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to a Rest Is History special on Anglo-Ukrainian relations. As Dominic said before the break, I thought we might struggle to fill out 20 minutes on this. But basically, I've said everything that I know. I now have nothing more to add. Dominic is very confidently saying he's got stuff for another 20 minutes worth.

So give it. I never, ever thought I would hear you say those words, Tom. Are you all right? You've said everything you know. I don't know anything else about Anglo-Ukrainian relations. You don't know about Huzovka? No. Huzovka is such a great story okay so does he have anything to do with the don bass um yes and he's also not a person he's a place okay that shows how much i know okay so the don bass i did a school geography project on it wow on donetsk and uh and and the sort of coal and iron the one of the most industrial areas of europe and now of course at the center of this so that was in the 70s this war the russian

ukrainian kind of undeclared war that going on in donetsk and luhansk so i did geography projects on chicago and on the donbass i've never been to either, but I feel I know them. Do you know what I did? It was my geography project. I did one on open-cast mining. Of course you did. So depressing. I mean, I should have done... Why didn't I get to do Chicago?

It's so enjoyable. I can still draw the map of the airport going out into the lake. Anyway, sorry, we're... So I keep waiting for the podcast on open-cast mining, but I don't think it's going to happen. All right, so mining brings us to the donbass so people remember they had um the euro maidan revolution in um

ukraine at the beginning of the 2010s and uh the russians annexed crimea and then there was this fighting in the east and during all this fighting a thing went up on the internet and it said it's time for donetsk the city at the center of this this, to be – the solution is for it to be reunited with the United Kingdom. It should be neither Russian nor Ukrainian but British. And you might think that's ridiculous. But Donetsk did begin as a British foundation. So late 1860s, the Russian Empire is very rapidly developing. And they need to bring in talent to basically industrialize it and they they do a deal with a company called the millwall

ironworks and shipbuilding company so you could hardly find a more english company and the millwall ironworks send over a man called john hughes who unfortunately for this podcast is welsh um so yeah but he's come from it's come from millwall tom he's come from a millwall company And the Millwall Ironworks send over a man called John Hughes, who unfortunately for this podcast is Welsh. So, yeah, but he's come from, it's come from Millwall, Tom. He's come from a Millwall company. So I think he counts. I'm sure our Welsh listeners will find us bundling Wales into England. I'm not bundling Wales into England.

I'm elevating Wales above England. I think that's what I'm doing. So John Hughes goes over. He's from Merthyr Tydfil. He goes down to what's now Ukraine, and he picks his spot, and he says, this is the place, iron and coal and stuff. And he starts bringing over. The Russians don't have the skilled engineers and stuff, so he brings over hundreds of largely Welsh skilled laborers

and engineers and miners and so on, to set up his factories. And they do. And by the end of the century, there's about 30,000 people living there, a lot of them Welsh or English. There's an Anglican church, there's an English-speaking school. So this is what's going to become Donetsk and at the time it's called Hughesovka so it's named after John Hughes and it's basically a sort of British and mixed British Ukrainian and Russian community in Ukraine and it's one of the sort of big industrial becoming one of the already one of the big industrial powerhouses of central and eastern Europe and basically continues as that until the Russian Revolution

when all the Brits are kicked out. So, and it's extraordinary that some of them have gone from rags to riches to rags again. So they've come from, you know, nothing in South Wales. They've worked their way up. They go to, they've gone out to the Russian Empire

and they've made a lot of money and they live in, you know, with servants and things. And then the Russians kick them out and they come back to Wales with nothing. So that's an extraordinary story. And, of course, it doesn't stay as Kuzovka. It is renamed Stalino and then ends up becoming Donetsk. Is there any move to rename it, give it back its original name? I don't think so.

I think basically the Russians... Constantinople. The Russians. Yeah, the Russians and the Ukrainians are fighting very sort of fiercely over it. So making it British again, I mean, making it British again would be a kind of answer, wouldn't it?

Would. You could give it an MP, could be a county, I suppose. Great, wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah, the Donbass. And they've probably got some great footballers and then they could play for England.

Yeah, I mean, Shakhtar Donetsk was often in the Champions League. They imported a lot of Brazilian players. I don't think they relied on local talent particularly. They're a very fetching kind of orangey strip. I think they do very well in the Premier League. I'd like to see them in the Premier League. But there's also another sort of quite weird Welsh connection. So Ukraine has this absolutely ghastly 20th century history. I mean, I read something the other day when I was thinking about this,

that some American scholar who's basically said there is no example anywhere in the world of a country that has sort of suffered more chaotic and miserable time than Ukraine after the First World War. So after the First World War, I think at one point there were seven different armies fighting for control of Ukraine. So there's white Russians, there's the Bolsheviks, there's some anarchists, there's the Poles, there's, I think, two different groups of Ukrainian nationalists. So it's just an absolute nightmare.

And that continues because Ukraine has the famine in the early 1930s. So that's under Stalin. Under Stalin. Then the Nazis attack. Some of them help the Nazis. Some of them fight against the Nazis. The Red Army counterattacks. Then there's more stuff with the Poles going on.

It's just an utter, utter, utter nightmare. And the historian Timothy Snyder has this book, Bloodlands, and Ukraine is absolutely the centre of this. This sort of literally blood-soaked territory where people are being thrown into mass graves and all this stuff. But amid all this,

one of the massive events in Ukrainian identity is the Holodmor, the famine of the early 1930s. And it's a british journalist who exposes this a man called gareth jones another welshman uh there's a film about him wasn't there yeah i think by common consent of quite a poor film actually um james norton played him he's uh you know he's from barry in in south wales he works for The Times. He goes to Russia and to Ukraine. Now, here's an amazing connection.

His mother had worked in Hughes-Ovka as the tutor of John Hughes' son. Only connect. Isn't that bizarre? It is bizarre. And then he doesn't have a massive interest in Russia. He studies French, Gareth Jones, I think at Cambridge, and then goes to work for the Times and ends up being sent back to this place

where his mother had worked as a tutor. But purely coincidentally. Purely coincidentally. And he discovers that the famine is happening and he writes reports about it in the Times. And then probably one of the most famous journalistic scandals of the 20th century, a man called Walter Durante, who worked for the New York

Times, who was also British-born but had become American. Durante is kind of in with Stalin. He writes these appalling, appalling stories in the New York Times saying that Gareth Jones is lying and that there is no famine. And actually Durante knew that Jones was telling the truth,

but through journalistic competition and through wanting to keep in with Stalin, he just lied about it. The New York Times, eh? Well, you know my opinion of the New York Times, Tom, is, I mean, there are very few newspapers I hold in lower regard than the New York Times. So there's part of me that is very satisfied

by telling this story. But poor old Jones comes to a very sticky end. He goes off to Mongolia after being in Ukraine. He's banned from Russia from the Soviet Union. I'm not surprised. He goes off to Mongolia and he's murdered, I think probably by the NKVD, by

Stalin's secret police. So it's a very unfortunate ending. But, you know, if things get a bit testy on the pitch on Saturday night, the England players should remind the Ukrainians that Britain has a history of looking out for Ukraine and sticking up for it when others were lying. And the Crimea. The Crimea is New England. Yeah. I mean, that would go down very badly

because the Crimea will be a sore spot for the Ukrainian players, I imagine. So I don't think... I think just generally, I think just keep off the topic of history. You're safest. Do you think... Actually, as a rule of thumb.

Yeah. You know, Harry Maguire is meant to be a great history buff because when he was arrested... So Harry Maguire, for those people who don't know, is the sort of enormously... Huge-headed... Huge-headed England centre-back.

Very underrated player, in my view. Anyway, Harry Maguire was arrested in Greece. He was, wasn't he? Greece, of course, has its own connections with Ukraine because there were Greek settlements, weren't there? Yeah. In Crimea and so on. So Harry Maguire was arrested in Greece

and apparently the Greek police claimed he'd been misbehaving or he'd been, well, I'm probably introducing him now. I don't think he had been misbehaving. I think he'd been some fracker in a nightclub or similar and had then been a fracker with the police. And the police claimed that Harry Maguire had shouted, I won't say exactly, he shouted, F the Greek police. F Greek civilization.

And when I heard that, I thought, I don't genuinely believe that the captain of Manchester United shouted about Greek civilization at three o'clock in the morning as he was being bundled into the back of a police van. You know, does Harry Maguire have strong views about Aristotle? Athenian imperialism. Yeah,

exactly. I've always been a Persian man. Circus Caesar's frame. Damn you for invading Sicily. Yeah. Never forget. Well, always been a persian man turksies was framed damn you for invading sicily yeah never forget well so i mean i i think it's unlikely that he did you see this huge skull that got discovered of harry mcguire or of some other person adam rutherford wittily said harry mcguire looked like this yeah incredible skull that was found in China. There's something that I find very satisfying

about watching English sporting teams is when they look like people from the First World War or Second World War from newsreels and stuff. And Harry Maguire has that slightly frowning, slightly pained, anxious expression. Yeah, about someone about to go over the top. Or somebody going abroad. I was thinking of the English people when they were filmed going abroad sort of people like the miners from

derbyshire in the 1950s who famously went on a look to italy on a coach tour with um they packed the inside of the coach with tins of baked beans because they were suspicious of the italian food i think harry mcguire is absolutely a man of that ilk whereas um jack greelish i think looks like someone out of Dickens. Do you? I can definitely see Jack Grealish in the First World War. He does, but I think... The Joker of the Trench, all that sort of...

He's the artful dodger. You know, doing his hair, brill-creamed hair in the trench, going off to the... Cheery... Yeah. Cheery... Yeah.

Very popular with the local girls in the bombed-out French town that they pass through. And Harry Kane looks like a Habsburg prince. Yes, he does. Yes, he absolutely does. That's a very good call. So he could have ruled.

So I'd say Harry Maguire is First World War. Yeah. That Grealish is Victorian. Harry Kane is 16th century. Well, I see Harry Kane as the kind of man who could have ruled Western Ukraine, Galicia. He could have visited Lviv on sort of imperial archduke visits, don't you think? Yeah, I think we're spiralling off here.

I think we'll be losing our listeners. So, Dominic, suppose England win. Yes. And I think we should say we think they're going to lose because it worked last time didn't it yeah it did work

so we think they're going to lose I think it'll be very frustrating and we'll lose one now very disappointing but if we if we win

then there'd be opportunities for a further one particularly if it's Denmark England Anglo-Danish relations or Anglo-Rich yeah that's a that's a great team i mean that's basically a podcast series um rather than a podcast anglo-anglo-check relations

well there's one obvious will be another will be another another stretch i think um no no no we've got well i mean apart from um uh chamberlain there's john d going to prague okay so great stuff yeah great scenes we just need to see... What would be a problem for us is, I think, a Czech-Ukrainian semifinal. Because I think Czech-Ukrainian relations

would be beyond even your mighty talents, Tom. Well, we'll see. We'll see. Let's hope England win. But as I say, we think they're going to lose. May the best...

Good luck to the Ukrainians. I hope they play well. I hope they... You know, to be honest Good luck to the Ukrainians. I hope they play well. To be honest, I think the Ukrainian victory would bring Ukrainians greater joy than us. They need it more. They've had a dreadful bad 10 years. They've had a dreadful century.

So if England lose, I will bear that in mind. That's a very nice note. Thanks very much for listening. Bye-bye. Okay, 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.