Early Modern Notes

What I’ve been reading online lately…

Charles Tilly, May 20, 1929 – April 29, 2008
  personal memories of Charles Tilly

Old Bailey opens its unseen files
  nice feature on the project in The Observer

Observer Food Monthly April 2008
  a special anniversary edtion: loadsa Nigel Slater recipes

the moment cat lost…
  uh-oh

Hitler diaries scandal: ‘We’d printed the scoop of the century, then it turned to dust’
  on the 25th anniversary of the Hitler Diaries, the inside story

The Pirate Problem
  dan cohen on historians' reactions to digital history

The anthropologist Dame Mary Douglas, perhaps best known for her book Purity and Danger, has died at the age of 86.

Guardian obituary
Wikipedia page
Fan page
Biog
Interview with Alan Macfarlane
Anatomy of Disgust
More links at Savage Minds

Alan Freeman has died.

Clifford Geertz has died.

I can still remember the excitement I felt coming to anthropology as a history undergraduate already interested in early modern social/cultural history. I knew almost nothing about social and cultural anthropology (mind you, let’s face it, I still don’t know very much) and I started on a voyage of discovery with an assortment of anthropologists linked mainly by the fact that they were available on the not-so-well-stocked library shelves: Geertz, Victor Turner, Max Gluck, Barbara Douglas, Pierre Bourdieu and others.

Some links from Savage Minds.

Desmond Dekker has died of a heart attack at the age of 64.

Israelites (YouTube)

Tributes
BBC
Guardian
The Times
LA Times
Rolling Stone
Mark Lamarr

Wikipedia page
Lyrics archive

Mo died this morning. She was only 55. My thoughts and sympathy go out to her family.

Mo, we’ll miss you. We need more politicians like you.

Links

Tributes
The popular appeal
Guardian newsblog
The day I met Mo Mowlam

BBC obit
Times obit
Guardian obit

Photo retrospective
Life in pictures
In pictures
In quotes

PS: Note to the news broadcasters: you know when she got a standing ovation at the Labour Party conference… in the middle of Tony’s speech? Please, please, show that again.

Robin Cook has died, aged just 59. He had collapsed while hillwalking in Scotland and was helicoptered to hospital, but efforts at resuscitation failed.

This is terrible news.

BBC obituary

The Irish comedian has died.

(Does that mean anything to anyone outside Britain or under the age of about 35?)

Yet more bad news.

Fred Dibnah has died of cancer, at the age of 66.

For readers in Britain: get your video set or stay in tonight (6 November).

**John Peel Tribute on BBC2 at 10pm**

John Peel has died suddenly of a heart attack while on holiday in Peru, aged just 65. I can’t quite stop crying as I type this. As my friend said in an email today, ‘finally I get that whole nation mourns death of public figure thing’.

I didn’t quite grow up with Peelie as many of my friends did (but I was a late developer in many ways). But his voice, his self-deprecating humour, and the music he played, became part of my life in my twenties. He was my cool, beloved surrogate Dad. And I will miss him so much. I’ll be thinking of his family tonight.

And dammit, I don’t really have anything on my hard drive to play for him. I think I will have to go and download this.

Are teenage dreams so hard to beat
Everytime she walks down the street
Another girl in the neighbourhood
Wish she was mine, she looks so good

I wanna hold her wanna hold her tight
Get teenage kicks right through the night

I’m gonna call her on the telephone
Have her over cos i’m all alone
I need exitement oh i need it bad
And its the best, i’ve ever had

I wanna hold her wanna hold her tight
Get teenage kicks right through the night

I wanna hold her wanna hold her tight
Get teenage kicks right through the night

(The Undertones, ‘Teenage Kicks’)

Farewell, Peelie.

.
Well, I do have this to listen to, which I think is in the right spirit. (Except that I’ll cry again, dammit, when Kirsty McColl is playing.)

Conrad Russell, early modern historian, Lib Dem peer and son of the philosopher Bertrand Russell, has died at the age of 67. The Guardian report focuses on his political career; no doubt there will be more substantial obituaries to come. I’ll add any I see.

Guardian obituary
Telegraph obituary (registration required)

Shorter reports
BBC
Further Guardian report
Newsday.com
Scotsman

If you don’t already know, I have a page at EMR about Representations of early modernity, which includes links on academic historians and their work. And it has to be said that an awful lot of those resources are obituaries…