During the 1930s and ‘40s, Warren William emerged as a leading man in movies playing ruthless criminals and businessmen, and later debonair detectives. He was the first actor to portray Perry Mason on screen and starred in the movie series The Lone Wolf, about a former jewel thief turned detective. Off-camera, Warren William found solace from the stress of Hollywood by enjoying hobbies of sailing and inventing.

Early Life

Warren William was born Warren William Krech on December 2, 1894, in Aitken, Minnesota, as one of five children. His father was a newspaper publisher. Initially, William considered the vocations of a sea captain, architect, and engineer. He said, “. . . after finding out that to be an engineer, as I really wanted, I’d have to be excellent at mathematics—and I’ve always hated mathematics . . . [My sister Pauline] kept after me to go on the stage, I thought I might as well try it. I’ve always loved tinkering around in a tool shop and I rather fancied myself as an amateur inventor, but I realized this would never turn into a particularly well-paying profession.” William studied at the Academy of Dramatic Artists in New York for 2 years until World War I (1914-18). He served as a sergeant during the war, where he was approached by a New York producer to perform in shows entertaining the armies in France. William remembered the experience as “a bed to sleep in, decent hours, recognition in a great work-ha [sic], playing in airplane hangars, rickety old barns, quaint French municipal theaters, with plenty of ventilation from shell-holes. It was good fun and darned good training.”

During this time in France, he wrote letters to his sister’s friend, Helen Nelson, who he later married in 1922. After the war, they lived in New York, where he continued acting by appearing in Broadway plays that he’d label as “flops and failures.” William appeared on screen for a role in the serial Plunder (1923), starring Pearl White. His wife Helen recalled, “We had fun in those early days when Warren was invading Broadway. We learned to make the best of simple things, to give and to take. Perhaps we were sometimes happier than now, with the responsibilities that money brings.”

Pre-Code Hollywood (1930-34)

Meanwhile, as movies began to incorporate sound, the industry entered an era remembered as Pre-Code Hollywood. In the early 1930s, existing censor codes weren’t enforced as severely, and movies portrayed life with an unflinching frankness. Warren William’s performance in Broadway’s The Vinegar Tree (1930) led to him being cast in his feature movie debut, Honor of the Family (1931), starring Bebe Daniels. Since talking movies were still new, an actor’s voice was critiqued as part of their ability to emote. Picture Play wrote of William’s performance, “His voice is excellent, his enunciation perfect and his presence magnetic.”

He was under contract at Warner Brothers, a studio known during this period for innovative musicals and resilient characters in crime dramas inspired by contemporary events. Warren William’s sophisticated voice and suave manner equipped him to portray charismatic characters. The complex decisions his characters faced were seen in roles such as a street cleaner turned deceitful businessman running his uncle’s match factory in The Match King (1932) co-starring Lilli Damita; a lawyer torn between morals while defending the underworld in The Mouthpiece (1932) co-starring Sidney Fox; a carnival fortune teller who exploits vulnerable people in The Mind Reader (1933) co-starring Constance Cummings; and a married businessman whose affair has dangerous consequences in Upper World (1934), co-starring Ginger Rogers. The aesthetic of Warren William’s movies was summarized by The New Movie Magazine in 1933 as “fast, sparkling entertainment with a story just a trifle off the beaten path.”

In between these box office successes, Warren William showed his versatility in other genres. His supporting role as a lawyer in the Busby Berkely musical Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) supplied the subplot of falling in love with a chorus girl, played by Joan Blondell, which was the third of five movies he made with Blondell. William also starred in Frank Capra’s Academy-nominated Lady for a Day (1933) as a gambler who helps a homeless woman (May Robson) enter society to protect her daughter’s reputation (Glenda Farrell) in the rags-to-riches story. Furthermore, he portrayed Julius Caesar in Cecil B. DeMille’s award-winning epic Cleopatra (1934) starring Claudette Colbert, while also co-starring that same year as the leading man to Colbert in the Academy-nominated Imitation of Life (1934).

The Hays Code

By 1934, the Hays Code, a censorship code led by William Hays (1879-1954) and influenced by organizations such as the Legion of Decency, enforced what subject matter was appropriate for movies. The goal was to make movies suitable for all audiences, but the intense restrictions caused inconveniences for productions. Scripts had to be reviewed before filming, yet script rewrites and reshoots of scenes were common before movies were approved for general exhibition. The Hays Code remained in effect until 1968, when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), now called the Motion Picture Association (MPA), established the movie rating system known today.

Mae West, who Warren William co-starred with in Go West Young Man (1936), was known for writing her own material and remembered the Hays Code in 1976: “It was my suggestion that they read the script before I shoot the scene, so that’s what they did. I’d take [a line] out and put something else in [if the censors opposed]. Sometimes I put extra things in that I knew they were gonna take out, just to make them happy . . .”

Furthermore, the Hays Code reflected the racial prejudices of the era. Shirley Temple, the most successful child star of the 1930s, later referenced in 1988 how the Hays Code re-shaped her movies: “[Bill Bojangles Robinson and I] were the first interracial dancing couple—ever. And I heard that anytime our hands touched, that in the south of our country, those scenes would be cut out in dance numbers.”

However, the Hays Code didn’t affect Warren William as strongly. Lauded as “a master of suavity and a finished farceur,” he continued to play believable characters. While revealing his real-life army experience helped him play a sergeant, he said in 1933, “Every experience in life helps an actor in the portrayal of the character he represents. . . .”

Detective

Warren William transitioned from antihero roles to playing crimefighters. The audience was already familiar with many of these detectives, who were based on literary characters. He starred as Perry Mason in the first screen portrayal of the lawyer created by Erle Stanley Gardner. William’s first Perry Mason movie was The Case of the Howling Dog (1934), which led to four other movies until 1936. By 1936, William’s contract with Warner Brothers ended and he was freelancing across various studios in drama and comedy, while returning to his signature detective roles in between. For instance, William portrayed Philo Vance in The Dragon Murder Case (1934) and The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939). Philo Vance, created by S.S. Van Dine, was previously portrayed on screen by William Powell and Basil Rathbone, of Sherlock Holmes fame. Both actors gave more serious performances, while William’s relaxed interpretation was observed as a “whimsical sleuth.”

Other detective roles included Satan Met a Lady (1936) opposite Bette Davis, inspired by Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, and Arsène Lupin Returns (1938) starring Melvyn Douglas, based on stories by Maurice LeBlanc. Yet, William’s role as a jewel thief turned detective in Columbia Pictures’s Lone Wolf Spy Hunt (1939) began his most memorable characterization of all the literary detectives he portrayed.

The Lone Wolf (1939-43)

Based on the book series by Joseph Louis Vance, The Lone Wolf was the alias of Michael Lanyard, a notorious jewel thief turned detective to prove his innocence in crimes. The series was similar to the Boston Blackie franchise starring Chester Morris, which was filmed at Columbia concurrently. However, The Lone Wolf was well-off with a butler, Jameson (Eric Blore), a former criminal himself who assisted him. The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt (1939) had Michael Lanyard as a widower with a daughter (Virginia Weilder) before being depicted as a single man in his mid-thirties. As Michael Lanyard, his criminal past was dismissed when he told Jameson (Blore), “The Lone Wolf is tucked away in mothballs. I am a gentleman of leisure and an honest one, no matter how much it pains.” (Lone Wolf Meets a Lady, 1940).

Throughout the series, audiences saw the eccentricities of Michael Lanyard, including an interest in ichthyology (Lone Wolf Strikes, 1940) and collecting stamps (Lone Wolf Keeps a Date, 1940). His methodical investigation was highly effective. For example, after being kidnapped, he traced his steps by re-blindfolding himself to listen to his surroundings in order to discover the location he was taken to (Counter Espionage, 1942). Later in the series, he demonstrated his ability to determine how long a body had been dead (One Dangerous Night, 1943).

In between the movie series, William played vastly different roles, such as banker and merchant heir Jesse Lewisohn in the biopic Lillian Russell (1940), starring Alice Faye, and a lumberjack in the period drama Wild Geese Calling (1942), starring Henry Fonda and Joan Bennett. He was also the villainous cowboy in westerns, including Arizona (1940), starring Jean Arthur and William Holden.

The ninth and final Lone Wolf movie Warren William starred in was Passport to Suez (1943). Around this time, trade papers reported that William had an interest in entertaining troops, going back to his early performance days during WWI. In late 1943, he and actress Sigrid Gurie teamed up to perform for troops at Southern California’s Banning and Camp Young. William also appeared in parades to encourage war bond sales and was a volunteer of the Beverly Hills reserve company of the state guard. After a two-year break from movies, his final roles were in three independent movies: Strange Illusion (1945) opposite Sally Eilers; Fear (1946), co-starring Peter Cookson and Anne Gwynne; and The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947), starring George Sanders and Angela Lansbury.

Other pursuits

Radio

Warren William also contributed his talents to radio dramas. Notable appearances include two starring roles in the dramatic anthology Lux Radio Theater: “The Curtain Rises” in 1936 with Ginger Rogers and “My Bill” in 1942 with Kay Francis. He also performed in the thriller anthology Suspense for the 1943 episode “Murder Goes for a Swim,” reprising his role of The Lone Wolf alongside Eric Blore as Jameson. William’s most famous radio work was starring in the 1946 psychological drama series, Strange Wills.

Sailing and Inventing

Off-screen Warren William lived a quiet life in Encino with his wife, Helen. In 1938, he participated in Movieland Tours arranged by Fawcett Publications, where he hosted cocktail parties for tour groups at his home. However, William preferring sailing and experimenting with inventing. He admitted, “I never had any burning desire to be an actor. The beginning of my career was more a matter of something to do when nothing better offered. Perhaps that is the reason I’ve never been able to behave like an actor out of office hours.”

He owned various boats, including a whaleboat, a schooner, and a catboat. In 1934, his schooner, the Pegasus, was reported missing off Catalina Island but returned hours later. That year, he said, “Oh, I’ll never be able to get away long enough for a real trip. It would be nice to sail along the Mexican coast and get some tuna, and to go to the South Seas—but an actor doesn’t dare to take much time off. People forget so easily. It’s one job where a holiday is a drawback, a definite danger. But I like to think that my Pegasus could go anywhere—any minute.”

Meanwhile, William’s ideas on efficiency inspired him to invent. A report in 1935 mentioned that in his carpentry shop he designed a revolving rack for his shoes, socks, and garters. Other innovations over the years included a car chassis that became a movable table; a yacht for his dog; a device that would pump water out of the pool during a fire; a phone at the gate entrance of his home as well as a drawbridge; and a vacuum that picked up leaves.

In 1938, William discussed his hobbies, saying, “Yes, I am a gadgeteer. . . . I wake up by fits and starts to find one of the little gadgets parked on my chest begging to be born.” He explained that these hobbies, usually outdoors, helped him escape the stress of Hollywood: “In Hollywood, we live at high emotion tension. I believe that to save time for leisure is the one way to reduce pressure. . . . I spend all my spare time in the workshop, doing things around the place. I level the orchards. I doctor all the trees. I invent devices.”

When he wasn’t sailing or inventing, William read widely with interests including patent law, philosophy, modern farming, and Mark Twain, as well as Charles Dickens.

Legacy

Warren William died on September 24, 1948, at the age of 53, from multiple myeloma, a disease he battled for a few years, which he contracted during pneumonia. He was survived by his wife Helen, who died on December 31, 1948. In his 67 screen roles, Warren William played entertaining yet complex characters with sympathy that modern movie audiences treasure. Yet, he also demonstrated how to balance a demanding, public career with outside interests for a well-rounded life. His creed was revealed in 1938 when he said, “I believe in giving and giving generously, everything in you, to what is worthwhile.”

Rachel Martinez is an artist and writer whose passion at an early age for classic movies further inspired her in storytelling. She studied film production throughout high school and went on to earn a B.A. in cinematography and a minor in creative writing.

Further Reading

LaSalle, Mick. Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man, New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002.

Luperi, Kim. Reid, Danny. Pre-Code Essentials: Must-See Cinema from Hollywood’s Untamed Era, 1930-1934 (Turner Classic Movies), New York: Running Press Adult, 2025.

Strangeland, John. Warren William: Magnificent Scoundrel of Pre-Code Hollywood, North Carolina: McFarland, 2019.

“The Production Code and the Hays Office.”, Encyclopedia. Accessed: June 7, 2026

World War I began the modern age of warfare during the early 20th century. It was a conflict defined by trench warfare, heavy artillery, aircraft, submarines, and later tanks, all wrapped into one explosive cocktail. Yet, behind the outright carnage of World War I, there was another conflict of spy games between the fledgling intelligence services in Britain, Germany, Russia, and France. The first global war transformed espionage into more organized state bureaus. Intelligence services such as the Deuxième Bureau, MI5/MI6, and Abteilung III b performed spy, cryptography, and counter-intelligence operations throughout World War I.

The First Captured Spy of World War I

Germany started deploying spies shortly after World War I began. Carl Hans Lody is known to be the first captured spy of the war. He was a spy Germany sent to Edinburgh during the summer of 1914 to keep an eye on the Firth of Forth (a Scottish sea inlet). It was there that Britain had one of its most significant Royal Navy bases, which was of considerable interest to the Germans.

Lody posed as an American tourist with a Charles A. Inglis alias when he checked into an Edinburgh hotel during August 1914. He passed on information gathered to a German agent in Stockholm. Fortunately for Britain, Lody was not an especially proficient spy. Lody reported misguided details for landings of large numbers of Russian troops in Scotland based on inaccurate rumors rather than facts. He utilized simple code for some telegrams sent, but plain text for others.

Carl Lody was seemingly poorly trained in the art of espionage. A suspicious MI5 monitored his messages and spying activities closely. MI5 quickly identified that Lody was an enemy spy because it knew the contact address for his intercepted messages to be a cover front for German intelligence. The British even allowed some of his messages that included misleading information to be sent.

Lody later travelled to Dublin, Ireland, where he continued to send uncoded intelligence messages to the Germans during September 1914. MI5 pounced to arrest Lody in October, discovering tickets that revealed his true identity. He stood trial for war treason in London, where he confessed to being a German spy. The court gave Lody the death sentence, and he was duly executed at the Tower of London in November 1914.

The arrest of Carl Hans Lody was a part of a wider MI5 counter-intelligence operation that began during the early months of World War I. Lody was among the first of numerous captured German spies. MI5’s historical records reveal that Britain captured approximately 65 German spies during World War I.

The Conviction of Mata Hari

Mata Hari, otherwise Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, was a famous and exotic Dutch dancer who performed in Paris. She was in Berlin when World War I started, and travelled in and out of France. Mata Hari’s travel patterns and relationships with German officials aroused British suspicions that she might be a spy. British police duly detained and questioned Hari in 1915, but could not find any incriminating evidence to arrest her.

Nevertheless, British suspicion of Hari remained and was duly shared with the French. To test Hari, the Deuxième Bureau (Georges Ladoux of the French Intelligence Service) asked her to become a spy for France. Hari agreed to become a French agent for millions of francs in return. As a French agent, she targeted German officers in Madrid, such as Arnold Kalle. Kalle sent a telegram via a code the Germans knew France had broken, confirming Hari to be Agent H21. Agent H21 was a codename that German intelligence assigned to Hari.

This intercepted message seemingly highlighted that Hari was acting as a German double agent. France duly arrested Hari in February 1917 on charges of espionage. She stood trial as an alleged German spy, with the prosecution claiming she had leaked British tank information to the Germans before the Battle of the Somme. The court judged Hari to be guilty of dangerous spying for the Germans and delivered her death sentence on July 25, 1917. She was duly executed in October 1917.

Considerable doubts remain that Hari was given a fair trial. All Hari admitted was that she had received money (20,000 francs) from a consul in the German intelligence network, but did not necessarily provide any serious intelligence information. Some historians claim that Hari’s sentence appeal was denied because the French government needed a convenient scapegoat for military failings in 1917. Georges Ladoux was also interestingly arrested for spying days after the execution of Mari Hari. However, Ladoux was acquitted of the charges against him after World War I.

Fritz Joubert Duquesne’s Sabotage of British Ships

Carl Hans Lody and Mata Hari were executed for their spy games, but Fritz Joubert Duquesne was one German agent who survived World War I and even returned to service in the Second World War. He was formerly a soldier who fought against the British in the Second Boer War. Duquesne resented the UK because of British crimes against his family during the Boer War.

Although it is not clear whether Duquesne volunteered or was recruited, he became a German sabotage spy during World War I based on the old proverb “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.” To assist the Germans, Duquesne sabotaged British merchant shipping in South America by switching identities and planting explosives disguised as mineral sample boxes on them. Duquesne boasted (and feasibly exaggerated) that he sabotaged up to 22 ships during World War I, such as the SS Tennyson, Pembrokeshire, and Salvador.

Duquesne tried to cash in on such sabotage by falsely claiming losses he had incurred after the Tennyson ship incident. The Americans discovered Duquesne was a German spy when they arrested him for insurance fraud in 1917. They found he possessed a letter from a German consul thanking him for considerable services to Germany’s cause.

Thereafter, Duquesne was set to stand trial in Britain. However, Duquesne avoided trial by faking paralysis for a few years before escaping from the hospital. He returned to active espionage service for Germany during World War II by forming a Nazi spy ring in the USA, which the FBI busted in 1941.

Sidney Reilly and the Lockhart Plot

Sidney Reilly, now known as the Ace of Spies, is one of the more famous MI6 agents from the World War I era. He was a Russian who had served British intelligence before and during World War I. However, not until 1918 did Reilly join MI6 to become a spy for Britain. He allegedly collaborated with Robert Bruce Lockhart in a plot to assassinate Lenin.

Britain initially sent agents like Robert Bruce Lockhart to Russia to convince the Bolsheviks not to make a separate peace deal with the Germans, but such attempts failed. The signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918, which ended Russian participation in World War I, alarmed the British. That treaty gave the Germans one last hope of victory as it enabled them to reinforce forces in France by redeploying divisions in Eastern Europe.

Britain and America duly deployed separate forces to Russia to intervene in an emerging Russian Civil War during 1918. Sidney Reilly revealed in his memoir, “Adventures of a British Master Spy,” that he went to Russia in 1918 to assist with the objective of overthrowing the emerging communist Bolshevik regime, which had betrayed Britain and France during World War I. He confirmed that the original plan was to arrest Lenin and Trotsky by bribing the mercenary Latvian Lettish garrison to initiate an anti-Bolshevik uprising in Moscow. Reilly wrote this about that scheme in his memoirs:

All arrangements were made for a provisional government… The most formidable obstacle in our path was constituted by the Lettish garrison, who, as I have explained, were mercenaries in the pay of the Bolsheviks. I must buy their support. Secondly, I must time the rising when both Lenin and Trotsky should be in Moscow. Lenin and Trotsky were Bolshevism. Once they were removed, the whole foul institution would crumble to dust, but while they lived, there could be no peace in Russia. It was accordingly necessary for our success to arrest Lenin and Trotsky at the first blow.

It has been speculated, without conclusive proof, that this plan to arrest the Bolshevik leaders became a plot to assassinate Lenin. A report to the British War Office from Captain G. A. Hill reveals that Reilly did at least consider assassinating Lenin. A passage from that report states:

About the 22nd of August, Lt Reilly informed me of a conversation he had with Commander Bershin… The gist of it was that it was considered advisable that men like Lenin and Trotsky should be assassinated for the following reasons:

1.) Their marvellous oratorical powers would so act on the psychology of the men who went to arrest them that it was not advisable to risk it.

2.) The assassination of the two leaders would create a panic so that there would be no resistance.

Lt Reilly also told me that he had been very firm in dissuading them from such a course and that in no way would he support it.

This British scheme to overthrow the Bolshevik regime (known as the Lockhart Plot) by arresting or assassinating Lenin failed. A Russian woman, Fanny Kaplan, attempted to assassinate Lenin on August 30, 1918. That assassination attempt was not connected to the Lockhart Plot, but it triggered a Cheka (Soviet secret police and intelligence agency) clampdown in Russia. Sidney Reilly managed to flee from Russia, but the Cheka arrested Robert Lockhart. Cheka records confirm that Lockhart admitted involvement in a plot to assassinate Lenin.

Russian papers reported that Lockhart had led a conspiracy to raise the Letts, kill Bolshevik leaders, and restore the Russian monarchy. However, Lockhart (whom the Cheka released in a hostage exchange) later denied involvement in a plot to assassinate Lenin. A passage in his memoirs says this:

On Tuesday, we read the full tale of our iniquities in the Bolshevik Press, which excelled itself in a fantastic account of a so-called Lockhart Plot. We were accused of having conspired to murder Lenin and Trotsky, to set up a military dictatorship in Moscow, and by blowing up all the railway bridges to reduce the populations of Moscow and St. Petersburg to starvation. The whole plot had been revealed by the loyalty of the Lettish garrison, whom the Allies had sought to suborn by lavish gifts of money. The whole story, which read like a fairy tale, was rounded off with a fantastic account of my arrest.

Thus, Lockhart played down any notable relationship with Reilly. However, a discovered letter from Lockhart’s son revealed that his father might have been lying. One passage from that letter states, “My father has himself made it clear to me that he worked much more closely with Reilly than he had publicly indicated.” The extent of the Lenin assassination plot remains debated today.

The Decryption of the Zimmerman Telegram

For all the daring secret agents of World War I, it was Britain’s Room 40 that pulled off one of the biggest intelligence coups during that conflict. Room 40 was a cryptanalysis department of British Naval Intelligence that spied on Germany by deciphering secret German messages. Britain had obtained copies of a German naval codebook and diplomatic code that enabled Room 40 to decipher more enemy messages.

One of the biggest accomplishments of Room 40 was the interception and decryption of what became known as the Zimmerman Telegram. This telegram, named for its sender, German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann, was an overture to Mexico to form an alliance against the United States. Room 40 intercepted and shared the Zimmerman Telegram with the USA in early 1917. The Zimmerman Telegram stated this:

We intend to begin on the first of February, unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal or alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support, and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you.

This revealed telegram (published in U.S. papers during March 1917), combined with the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, tipped American public opinion firmly against Germany. The USA duly declared war on Germany shortly after, on April 6, 1917. Mexico rejected the German proposals in the telegram. Thus, the Zimmerman Telegram did nothing more than enrage the USA and secure firm American wartime support for France and Britain.

The spy games of World War I had transformed espionage after the dust had settled on the conflict. What was previously a relatively minor pre-war activity, espionage became much more professionalized, better organized, and technologically advanced, with secret services expanding considerably during World War I. Those secret services provided essential tactical and strategic advantages thanks to the daring exploits of spies like Carl Hans Lody, Mata Hari, Sidney Reilly, and Fritz Joubert Duquesne, and cryptanalysis departments.

Matthew Adams is a freelancer who has produced a variety of articles for various publications and websites, such as Swing Golf Magazine, Windows Report, Naval History, Military History Matters, Artilleryman, dotTech, Naval History, Against the Odds, Argunners, History Lists, and Bright Hub. Matthew is also the author of Battles of the Pacific War 1941-1945. Check out the book’s blog at Battles of the Pacific War 1941-1945.

Primary Sources:

Memoirs of a British Agent

Adventures of a British Master Spy

Zimmerman Telegram

The National Archives

Secondary Sources:

BBC: Did Britain Try to Assassinate Lenin?

Warfare History Network

The Guardian

BBC: History’s most famous female spy

MI5: Carl Hans Lody

MI5: World War I

The National

Gov.uk Blog

Biographies.org

War History Online

I have made the decision to pause OH for the foreseeable future, and I will put your subscriptions here on indefinite pause. We have enough on hand to fund another four articles this year. These will be published starting this month and rolling out in the rest of the year.

My heart is no longer in the past, and …

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Mbari art consists of unique and colorful works of art that once defined and dominated the culture of Ndigbo, one of the major ethnic groups in Nigeria. The Ndigbo are located along the Niger River in the Southern region of the country. Specifically, Mbari art is associated with the Owerri subgroup of Igbos, found primarily in present-day Imo and Rivers states.

Mbari artworks are created by a community to commemorate an important event or honor an important personality. “Mbari” itself is a building that houses the art, while the decorations within and around constitute the art—hence the name Mbari art. It functioned like a registry where the people recorded things they found remarkable, noteworthy, or unusual to them. Such a thing could be a human being, an animal, a tree or even a spirit.

Mbari also served as a sacred place that reflected the Igbo worldview, in both physical and spiritual forms. It was communal in nature and used to appease the numerous gods and goddesses worshipped by Ndigbo when it was deemed necessary. As such, Mbari art stands as a testament of the sophistication of Igbo civilization. However, since the colonial era, the fortunes of this truly great and important art has been facing serious challenges and is now at risk of extinction. This article explores Mbari art and discusses why and how it was made, its significance and challenges.

The Religious belief systems in Mbari art

Mbari art stands as a powerful testament to the sophistication and depth of Igbo civilization. Its significance can be understood from several perspectives:

To begin, Mbari presents the Igbo as a deeply religious people. The Igbo worship a pantheon of gods and goddesses, coupled with honoring their ancestors. This spiritual worldview is reflected even in personal names such as Chukwuemeka (God has done Great Things), Uchechukwu (God’s Will), Chukwuka (God is the Greatest), and Chukwuebuka (God is Mighty), all of which express devotion to God.

Mbari itself is fundamentally a propitiatory project, dedicated to appeasing a particular deity. In a predominantly agrarian society—where yam is regarded as the king of crops—misfortunes, especially those related to weather and harvest, were often attributed to spiritual causes. As a result, religious considerations played a central role in determining when an Mbari was constructed, where it was located, and the message it conveyed to the community.

In addition, Mbari portrays the Igbo as a people who value unity, cooperation, and equality. Foundational principles such as Igwebuike and Umunnawuike (both terms roughly translate to “unity is strength”), as well as Ohacracy (a form of participatory democracy), underpin Igbo social organization.

Factors that call for Making Mbari Art

The construction of Mbari is not an everyday occurrence . It is typically precipitated by events considered serious by the community and its leadership. Some of these factors include:

1. Prolonged Drought: The people of Owerri inhabit the rainforest region, where rainfall is generally abundant throughout the year, with the rainy season lasting from April to October. The absence of rainfall for two or three consecutive months is considered highly unusual. Such a situation is interpreted by the community as an ominous sign; often believed to mean one of the deities has been offended. In response, the community would take the initiative to erect an Mbari as a form of appeasement or restoration of balance.

2: Prolonged Famine: A long period of famine can also prompt the need to build an Mbari. In Igboland , farming activities usually start in March, with planting having been completed by the end of April. A period of scarcity typically follows until July when crops are due for harvest. This period is referred to as “unwu”, which means “(famine)”, and is anticipated by the community who make provisions for it. If this scarcity extends to August—or even worse September—it can constitute a cause for concern. By that point, the situation is no longer perceived as normal but as a sign of spiritual imbalance. Addressing it involves identifying the offended deity and determining the appropriate form of appeasement. In many cases, the construction of an Mbari serves both as a response to the crisis and a lasting reminder of the famine.

3: Untimely Death: Untimely death was an issue of serious concern to the people of Igboland. It typically refers to the death of adults in their prime, between twenty and sixty years. This particular age span (between 20 and 60) is associated with the individual’s maximum ability to engage in a wide range of activities including procreation and land cultivation among others. Such deaths often occurred through accidents, including falls from oil palm or raffia palm trees, or accidental shootings during hunting expeditions. However, the concept extended beyond human life. For the Ndigbo, the death of a pregnant she-goat, for instance, was also considered an abnormal occurrence.These incidents were interpreted as signs that a deity had been offended and required appeasement, often through the construction of an Mbari.

4. Pestilences
Outbreaks of diseases such as smallpox, elephantiasis, tuberculosis, and influenza were viewed as both unusual and alarming. These afflictions affected not only humans but also domestic animals. Such pestilences were believed to be manifestations of divine displeasure—sent by gods or goddesses who demanded reverence. In response, the community would often construct an Mbari dedicated to the offended deity as a means of restoring harmony.

5. Poor Harvest
Poor harvests also served as a trigger for the construction of Mbari. This situation arose when farmers experienced disappointing yields despite carrying out all necessary agricultural and ritual practices.Unlike famine caused by insufficient rainfall, this type of poor yield occurred even when environmental conditions appeared favorable. It was likewise interpreted as a sign of spiritual imbalance. In such cases, the community would seek to identify the deity in need of appeasement and erect an Mbari in their honor.

To figure out which deity was offended, the chief priests and elders gather for a meeting. A representative is then permitted to travel to meet the oracle, which is usually far from the town and the journey can take up to two or three days. The chief priest then returns with the message about which deity was offended. Preparations on how to build an Mbari for the offended deity then begin.

Many factors were sufficient to raise concern within the community and prompt the decision to construct an Mbari. However, the process of creating Mbari was far from simple; it followed a well-defined and elaborate procedure.

The Procedure for creating Mbari Art

When any of the aforementioned predicaments were observed, a collective response was set in motion to produce an Mbari. The Mbari and its accompanying art were the community’s collective response to ward off calamity and restore spiritual balance. Several key stages of the process included meetings of the village chiefs and priests, who then determined the community representatives and builders of the art.

First, a meeting of the village council, comprising elders and all able-bodied men in the community, was immediately convened.The chief priest was then sent to consult the nearest oracle for guidance. The oracle revealed several factors including offended deity, the nature of the offence, and the appropriate form of propitiation required to restore harmony.
Since Mbari was both a temple and a sacred artistic project, its construction was regarded as a serious religious obligation. The village council reconvened for the selection of builders, a process overseen by the chief priest. This selection also extended to the families of the builders. Each selected family was required to provide a young boy or girl—traditionally a virgin—who would take part in the construction. This group, known as “Ndimgbe” (the holy ones), bore the spiritual responsibility for the entire community. Selection was considered both an honor and a burden, and it could not be declined.

The Mbari was typically constructed near the shrine of the deity it was meant to honor. The chosen site was marked off with tender palm fronds, symbolizing its sacred status.

Master builders, who possessed both technical skill and spiritual knowledge, led the process alongside the Ndimgbe. Once work began, strict rules governed life within the enclosure. Participants were not allowed to leave until completion of the project and sexual relations were strictly forbidden as pregnancy was viewed as a grave taboo.

Any breach of these rules carried serious consequences, such as the ostracism of pregnant participants. Death within the camp was regarded as a bad omen, often resulting in burial in the evil forest, a spiritually polluted wasteland where people who committed taboo were abandoned.

The entire community contributed food and resources to sustain the Ndimgbe throughout their stay. Life in the camp demanded discipline, restraint, and adherence to tradition. A successful and honorable participation enhanced the reputation of a family, while any misconduct could bring about lasting shame. As a result, families carefully prepared and advised their chosen members before they entered the camp.

Creating Mbari art: Meaning and Culture

The creation of Mbari was a collective endeavor. Every required material was contributed by members of the community, regardless of social or economic status. No individual could claim sole ownership of an Mbari project. The welfare of those secluded within the enclosure was a shared responsibility, extending beyond their immediate families to the entire community. They were supported through prayers, provisions, and moral encouragement.

The completion of an Mbari was marked by a public unveiling, celebrated with a lavish ceremony. This event symbolized not only artistic achievement but also the successful fulfillment of the community’s spiritual obligation to the deity.

Furthermore, the Mbari house embodies the Igbo concept of the life cycle. Time was a cornerstone to the Igbo system of values. There was a time for everything, starting from birth until an individual’s death. Life is seen as a continuous cycle: birth, growth, decline, and eventually death. This philosophy extends beyond human life to all things in existence.

Mbari art reflects this worldview. Each Mbari house was created for a specific purpose and within a particular historical moment. Its message was relevant only to that instance and did not extend beyond it. For this reason, Mbari houses were neither renovated nor preserved. Instead, they were allowed to run their natural course—gradually decaying and returning to the earth. Upon their ruins, a new Mbari would be constructed, carrying a fresh message for a new era.

This cycle reflects the dynamic and forward-looking nature of the Igbo people. The old gives way to the new, making room for renewal and adaptation. In this sense, Mbari represents a philosophy of progressive change within Igbo society.

Mbari also signifies the Igbo commitment to the use of local resources and indigenous knowledge. All materials used in its construction were sourced from the nearest environmental resources. The walls were made from anthill mud readily available within the community, while decorative elements were similarly derived from local materials. Roofing was done with thatch from raffia palms found along riverbanks.

Labour, too, was largely communal, although skilled artists were sometimes invited from neighboring Igbo communities. This reliance on local resources reflects a broader cultural approach to self-sufficiency, especially in times of crisis. A notable example of this can be seen during the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), when Igbo engineers innovatively produced war materials using local resources.

Decline of Mbari Art

The development of Igbo civilization has been significantly shaped by external forces, many of which have contributed to the decline of Mbari art, with one of the most influential being British colonialism. The colonial administration sought to suppress aspects of Igbo culture, believed to meddle with their control over both the people and the land.

Working closely with Christian missionaries, colonial authorities promoted Christianity while discouraging indigenous religious practices. Mbari art, being deeply rooted in traditional worship and dedicated to deities, became a primary target. This combined effort by colonial authorities and missionaries contributed significantly to the decline of Mbari in many parts of Igboland.

In spite of this cultural interventionism, Mbari continued to thrive for some time among the Southern Igbo tribes, particularly in communities such as Owerri, Ihiagwa, Nekede, Obibi Ezena, Ulakwo, Imerienwe, and parts of Ngor Okpala and Ozuzu.

Colonial influence is thought to have gradually altered the economic and social structure of Igbo society. Many people shifted away from agriculture and became employed by the colonial administration, churches, or private enterprises. Urban migration increased as individuals sought new opportunities.

Consequently, traditional measures of wealth—such as yam barns—were replaced by new indicators like formal education and monetary income. The central role of ritual practices in ensuring agricultural success were also diminished. Crops like cassava, which required less ritual attention, began to replace yam as a staple. Thus, as priorities shifted, less attention was given to constructing Mbari as a form of spiritual appeasement.

The Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970) further accelerated the decline of Mbari art. During this period of widespread turmoil, survival became the primary concern, and cultural practices like Mbari construction were largely abandoned. Many existing Mbari houses were destroyed in the course of the war, particularly in the Owerri area, which served as a major center of resistance.

Moreover, many skilled Mbari artists died during this time without passing on their knowledge to younger generations, leading to a significant loss of expertise.

In the post-war period, rapid urban and spatial development dealt a final blow to Mbari art. As communities expanded, Mbari sites were often cleared to make way for modern buildings such as houses, schools, shops, and hotels. Today, many former Mbari locations have disappeared without having been replaced.

Although remnants once existed in places like Ulakwo, Obibi Ezena, Ihiagwa, Nekede, and parts of Ngor Okpala, these have largely vanished over time. What began as a gradual decline has accelerated with modernization. Unless urgent steps are taken, Mbari art risks becoming a relic of the past—remembered only through photographs and verbal historical accounts.

Grace Amadi is a passionate writer who brings the past to life through compelling narratives.

Additional Reading

Agboanike, Kosi. Mbari: Interrogating the Place of Space in African Art. Website. Accessed 5-20-26

Michael Ego, Bernice. Mbari: Meaning and Significance In Igbo Cosmology. Website. Accessed 5-20-26

Herbert M. Cole. Mbari: art and life among the Owerri Igbo. (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1982). Access here.

Read Part I here

The General, who failed as an Emperor

Nikephoros was not interested in waiting for the last defenders of Aleppo to surrender, especially when political developments in the capital were threatening to catch him off guard. On 15 March 963, emperor Romanus II had died, and Bringas’ crowning was impending. The epicenter would rest on the widowed empress Theofano, an innkeeper’s daughter formerly named Anastasia, changing her name before her marriage with Romanus. Ravishing and scheming, a true femme fatale, she had demonstrated early after her marriage that she was not willing to tolerate competition. She manipulated Romanus into locking his five sisters up in a convent, and she savored this victory while she stood watching Patriarch Polyeuktus cutting the hair of the sobering nuns-to-be. Then she made additional-and unopposed-demands to her love-stricken emperor husband that his mother, Helena Lekapene, consort of Constantine VII, be confined to specific chambers in the palace. Whether she had feelings for Romanus or not is irrelevant to the fact that she was highly interested in maintaining her position as empress, choosing to be on the side of Nikephoros Phokas, not Bringas, as the eunuch would be immune to her charms and manipulations.

Nikephoros entered Constantinople victorious following Theofano’s letter inviting him to seize the throne, which he did, after outmaneuvering politically Bringas, who was spared death and was banished instead to his homeland in Paphlagonia where he remained until the end of his life.

Nikephoros’ coronation on 16 August 963 would mark the countdown to his assassination, as albeit a gifted military commander, he had neither the political abilities nor the will to run the Eastern Roman Empire. Secluded, ascetic, introvert, and traumatized by the death of his first wife, Stephano, and their child, he was no match for Theofano’s scheming and charms.

We do not have a clear understanding of what happened to Stephano, but the Byzantine 11th-century historian, John Skylitzes, claims that Nikephoros had a son, Bardas, who had died at a young age after being mortally wounded with a spear, perhaps while playing. After his death, Nikephoros abstained from consuming meat. Skylitzes doubts it was an honest act or an affectation to impress, but given Nikephoros' conceptualization of life and religion, this was most probably an act of true penance, stemming from the Orthodox Church's particular underscoring of a person's evolution by surviving God's trials without giving in to doubt and despair.

Clashes with the Church

And yet, even though he was so devout, his clumsy manners made him prone to conflict with the very institutions that had catalyzed his crowning, such as the church. The first clash occurred on his wedding day to Theofano, with Patriarch Polyeuktus waiting for the right moment to embarrass him publicly. The church leader believed the emperor should have performed penance for his first marriage before arranging a second. For this infraction, Patriarch Polyeuktus banished Nikephoros from the church’s inner sanctum for a year, which, for a devout man like Nikephoros, struck a major blow. Nikephoros would never forget “the bloody nose”, already agitated by the church’s hoarding of riches and property, culminating in the 200 years since Constantine V Copronymus had passed legislations to curtail the church’s gigantic influence and property.

Typically lacking diplomacy and the will to compromise, Nikephoros forbid all donations towards churches, monastery and the clergy along with the founding of new monasteries and other ecclesiastic institutions. Furthermore, by royal decree no clergyman could be crowned bishop without the emperor’s approval. Considering the church’s dominion in the Byzantine society, coupled with Nikephoros’ lack of political savvy to bring about any major changes, those clumsy moves would be part of sawing off the branch he was sitting on.

Dissatisfaction at home

The church, though, was only one of a multifront clash Nikephoros had engaged himself in. He was heavily criticized for maintaining a high number of troops, a fact that would be unnecessary if he wasn’t such a “warmonger”. Indeed, the same people who cheered for his victories were now accusing him of being responsible for stray soldiers who were attacking helpless citizens so much so that they were afraid of going out when the sun went down.

The dissatisfaction was intensified during the winter of 967 as the poor wheat harvest skyrocketed the price of bread. This was not Byzantium’s first poor harvest with several previous emperors taking measures to alleviate the citizens, either by offering money or other tangible means and measures, but Nikephoros chose instead to do nothing, while rumors were circulating that he was giving wheat to his soldiers only. Although those rumors cannot be corroborated, they were-at best-part of a disinformation campaign waged by the enemies of the emperor to turn the mob against him, and they were successful.

The fear and hostility culminated during the Easter Sunday of 967 when a brawl broke out between Armenian soldiers, who were part of the imperial guard, and Thracian seamen resulting in a general clash in which many citizens lost their lives. During the afternoon of the same day, races and festivities had been scheduled in the hippodrome, as in every Easter. The shadow of the morning’s clashes, though, was looming over the hippodrome spectators who feared of another Nika riot kind of suppression.

Belisarius & the Nika Riots

Nikephoros, though, was oblivious to the fears of his own people and was most likely planning to reenact battles, which were included in the spectacles at the hippodromes. When the citizens, though, saw the soldiers on the Arena, they panicked and moved massively towards the exits, trampling and asphyxiating each other. It was gradually perceived that despite everything the soldiers were remaining on the arena and the emperor looked perplexed as to why the panicked crowd were trying to evacuate the hippodrome.

Even though the crowd eventually relaxed, they still held the emperor responsible for the hippodrome deaths, and two months later on the Ascension Day, while Nikephoros was returning to the palace, relatives of the hippodrome victims surrounded him and started attacking and swearing at him, throwing rocks, bricks and even arrows. The angry crowd was going to lynch the emperor, who was saved after the intervention of his imperial guard. As a result, fear and melancholy settled in the heart of Nikephoros who was further detaching from reality and ended up abandoning his bed to sleep on the floor on a panther’s pelt, a return of his ascetic ways.

The death of his father, Bardas Phokas, was most likely the point of no return for Nikephoros’ fragile psychology. This event was coupled with the appearance of an unknown monk, who warned him that he would die on the third month of the coming September. Nikephoros deteriorated; he came to believe that the rumors, the random fights between generals, the events at the hippodrome, and the monk’s message were part of an undeclared war against the him, meant to cripple him psychologically and turn the people against him. Unfortunately, it was something that Nikephoros had brought upon himself when he chose to clash with everybody both within and outside of the empire.

Trouble at home, trouble abroad

The handling of foreign affairs was just as clumsy as the domestic, and while Anatolia had been a region of immense success, other regions like Sicily, South Italy, and the Balkans were either neglected or sabotaged by the emperor’s obstinacy. In Phokas’ reign, Sicily was almost completely held by the Arabs except for the fortified city of Rometta. When the Arabs laid siege to the city, Nikephoros sent reinforcements during the fall of 964, but they were defeated on land and sea during the naval battle of the Straits in 965, near Messina. This forced the empire to relinquish the entire Sicily to the Arabs.

South Italy fared slightly better and it was the primal focus of emperor Otto I of the Holy Roman Empire. Otto I (912-973) — also known as Otto the Great — had the vision of uniting the two empires through the marriage of his son with one of the princesses of the Byzantine court. To this end he sent a diplomatic mission to Constantinople, but a series of misunderstandings coupled with Nikephoros’ suspicion sabotaged the process to such an extent that led a furious Otto to command an attack against the Byzantine Apulia. The attack was unsuccessful and Otto once more made a move to approach the Byzantine court via his envoy Liutprand, the bishop of Cremona. He was received coldly and hostilely, as Nikephoros regarded him a heretic, even more dangerous than the rest of the Franks, due to the fact that he was speaking Greek. Nikephoros believed that Liutprand was an instrument of a barbarian German ruler who had failed to acknowledge that there was only one Roman empire and its capital was Constantinople, and having dared to attack the Byzantine possessions in Italy. Liutprand remained in Constantinople for fourth months enduring patiently insults and abuses, until the two empires were at war again, resulting in no tangible territorial gains.

The worst possible outcome was brought about in the Balkans, with Nikephoros being the incarnation of Murphy’s law. In 967, Bulgarian envoys arrived in Constantinople to collect the annual tribute imposed by a humiliating peace treaty between the Bulgarian Simeon I and Romanos I Lekapenos. The concessions of the treaty included the marriage of the emperor’s granddaughter, Maria Eirini, with Tzar Peter’s son, Petros. The treaty was renewed when Romanos II held the throne, who did not see a reason why this diplomatic status quo should be disturbed, Nikephoros, though, begged to differ. A furious Nikephoros lashed out at the envoys, insulting them and characterizing them as a race of filthy beggars, slaves and sons of dogs, ruled by a leader who dresses in animal pelts. He subsequently ordered their flogging before sending them back to the Bulgarian capital of Preslava and then declared war on the Bulgarian Tzar, capturing a series of fortresses.

Despite the victories, he was reluctant to advance to the mainland, where his troops would certainly meet their doom in the country’s unhospitable northern terrain, choosing to make peace instead, the terms of which included the Tzar’s sons being taken hostage. Geopolitically myopic and impetuous as he was, he proceeded into the unthinkable, inviting the prince of Kiev Sviatoslav to subdue the Bulgars on his behalf, for a hefty price, a deed that he would later lament, but it was already too late. The Rus were far more powerful than the weakened Bulgars, who served as a buffer zone for a small price paid by the Byzantines.

The chain reaction of events were concluded with the death of Tzar Petros, who was succeeded by his insignificant son Boris and Sviatoslav’s mother, the only person who could keep the savage Rus warlord at bay. Indeed, following the death of his mother, Sviatoslav in charge of a large army comprising Rus, Hungarians and Pechenegs crossed the Danube and literally swallowed the Bulgarian kingdom, with Boris and his family being sold as slaves. The only city that resisted them was Philippopolis (the modern city of Plovdiv), but that further infuriated Sviatoslav, who impaled 20,000 citizens once he managed to capture it. After ravaging and raiding every corner of the Bulgarian kingdom, he made camp at the border with the Thema of Thrace, in the beginning of the winter of 969, obviously intending to mount an attack on Constantinople in the spring to come.

The bungling of the Bulgarian situation was the last straw in a series of Nikephoros’ major blunders. It became a death sentence that he himself, albeit unintentionally, had signed.

The Emperor must Die

The stage was set for the actors operating in the shadows to get rid of Nikephoros, who was now loathed by the people, the church and even by ex-comrades in arms, who had been sidelined, like his nephew and once second in command and Domestic of the schools, John Tsimizkes. Tsimizkes was definitely a man who could hold a grudge, ambitious as he was, he had started an affair with the empress Theofano, being her partner in machinations, selected as the hand to strike the final blow.

The first step in the mechanations was for Tsimizkes to be called back to Constantinople, as he was exiled to his family estate, due to his disagreements with the emperor. The task was simple enough for the empress, who convinced Nikephoros that John was “no Bringas” and his rightful position was in Constantinople. Nikephoros reluctantly accepted under the condition that John would remain at his family manor in Chalcedon (on the Asian side of Bosporus) and that he would be allowed entry in Constantinople under special circumstances. It was clearly not what the lovers had hoped for, but still better than nothing and the assassination date was set on 10 December 969.

In the afternoon of the 10th, the conspirators, dressed as women with their swords hidden underneath their long women’s clothes entered the palace from the women entrance and were hidden by Theofano in small chambers until the hour of assassination was at hand. The scheme was nearly foiled when one of them, with a sudden change of heart, notified an imperial advisor of the mortal danger the emperor was in and that the conspirators were already hiding within the palace. Nikephoros, in turn, dispatched one of his most trusted advisors, the eunuch Michael, to check the palace, but it was nothing that Theofano could not handle, as she persuaded Michael to enter the conspirators’ side and report back to the emperor that the rumors were just a false alarm.

There were two more problems. The first one was that Tsimizkes had to cross the Bosporus Strait under adverse weather conditions and the second was that the emperor’s chambers had to be left unlocked. Theofano made sure once more to deceive the emperor, saying that she was going to visit the chambers of the two Bulgarian princesses, who were guests in the palace and that would not take long, therefore she would leave the chambers unlocked. The ever naïve Nikephoros believed her again and went to the library to study theological texts and to pray. After an hour and without his wife having returned, he went back to the bedroom to sleep on the panther’s pelt.

Meanwhile, Tsimizkes was struggling to cross the Bosporus Strait in the middle of a snowstorm. In the end, he managed to reach the palace, climbing to the emperor’s chambers. When the conspirators entered the chambers, they were shocked as the emperor was not to be found, and instead they thought they had been intentionally misled by the emperor’s imperial guards and had walked right into a trap. The eunuch then showed them the exact spot where the emperor was sleeping, on the ground, on the panther’s pelt. By then, Nikephoros had been woken up by the noise and tried to react. What followed next was not just dispatching someone who had failed in his duties. It was a hate crime, a brutal execution, stemming from pure hatred. It was the inhumane treatment of a man who had once been a legend among the Byzantine troops.

One of the conspirators hit Nikephoros with all his force intending to finish him off with one blow. Decreased visibility, though, made him miss and cut the ill-fated emperor diagonally in the face. Nikephoros began praying, but the assassins’ hands were not stayed. The emperor’s guards stormed in, but they were too late and Nikephoros had already been violently murdered by multiple hands. While this was occurring, other Tsimizkes’ supporters roamed the city, shouting: “John! Augustus and King of the Romans”. Troops loyal to Tsimizkes had already captured main points in the city to suppress any potential reactions by Nikephoros’ supporters.

Nikephoros Fokas was a superb military figure, a pious man, a zealot, possessing all those traits which could not be translated into successful political leadership, albeit the glory it was bestowed on him as a military commander. Furthermore, his harsh, ascetic nature and character, the lack of geopolitical depth perception, his blind love for Theofano, and his tendency to alienate those close to him, like Tsimizkes, made him a victim of machinations by his enemies. Due to these qualities, the enemies of Nikephoros had no trouble in turning his own people against him, through cheap tricks of mass manipulation. By far, his worst, almost unforgivable mistake, was the invitation of the Rus, led by Sviatoslav, to the gates of the capital, a burden which now weighed his assassin, nephew and successor John Tsimizkes. Tsimizkes, for his part, would be an excellent warrior emperor as well, giving Theofano a taste of her own poison, but despite his gifted ruling, he would never be able to shake off his own guilt primarily, stemming from the brutal death of his own uncle, no matter how unpopular Nikephoros Phokas was and no matter how intensely his death was longed for.

Alexandros Boufesis has an Msc in International Security Studies (London Metropolitan University) and a PgC in Counter-Terrorism (St Andrews). Alexandros has worked for many years as a Freelance article writer and an investigative journalist covering topics on military history, geopolitics and defense. He is the author of "Operations Odyssey Dawn and Unified Protector 2011
NATO and the Air War over Libya, 2011-2020" (Operations Odyssey Dawn and Unified Protector 2011 | Africa@War | Helion & Company) and "China's Military Modernization, Assessing China's Weapons and Strategic Reach in the early 21st Century China's Military Modernization | Asia@War | Helion & Company.

Primary Sources

The Chronicle of John Skylitzes: A Synopsis of Byzantine History, 811-1057, translated from Greek by John Wortley (New York, 2010), Internet Archive.

Further Reading

Anon, “Who is Nicephoros Phokas?”, Phokas Cave Suites, accessed 14 February 2026

John Carr (2015): “Fighting Emperors of Byzantium” (South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword), Kindle

Juliane Romane (2015): “Byzantium Triumphant, the Military History of the Byzantines 959-1025” (South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword), Kindle

Richard Cavendish (2013): “Nikephorus II Phokas, crowned emperor of Byzantium”, History Today, accessed 14 February 2026

Γιάννης Χρονόπουλος (2023): “Νικηφόρος Β’ Φωκάς, Βυζαντινοί Αυτοκράτορες-Στρατηγοί” (Αθήνα: Historical Quest)

Γιάννης Χρονόπουλος (2009): “Νικηφόρος Φωκάς, ο Λευκός Θάνατος των Σαρακηνών” (Αθήνα: Περισκόπιο)

Nikephoros II Phokas (born 912 in Cappadocia, died 969 CE) was one of Byzantium’s warrior emperors (963-969 CE). He was a prominent military figure, his feats spanning from Crete to Anatolia. He was destined to lead armies, but sadly not to rule an empire. His career trajectory began from his family, the prominent “Phokades” of Cappadocia. From his maternal side, he belonged to the Maleinoi, a powerful Anatolian Greek family.

Nicephorus joined the army at a young age and became commander under Emperor Constantine VII. He climbed the ranks quickly to become “Domestic” of the schools, leading the Byzantine armies into several major victories in reconquesting the empire’s lost provinces in Crete, Anatolia and Syria.

The momentum gained from his military victories ensured the support of the army and the people, while his asceticism and piety granted him the support of the church. In his call to take the throne after the death of Romanos II (the son of Constantine VII “Porphyrogenitus”), the ambitious widow, Empress Theofano, would open her arms and the way to the crown, while scheming with his own nephew and his future successor John I Tzimiskes.

Due to his important and commanding military conquests, he was given the nickname, “The Pale Death of the Saracens.” Nikephoros sat in the throne and took up the mantle of the emperor, but the only mark he would leave in Byzantine politics would be that of his blood resulting from his gruesome assassination by the hands of his own nephew and lover of his wife, the empress Theofano. The very people who supported him and subsequently fell out of his favor became part of the conspiracy, while Nikephoros clashed with Byzantine institutions, including the church, and humiliated foreign leaders initiating a chain reaction that would lead Sviatoslav’s blood thirsty Rus to the gates of Constantinople. In a typical “Game of Thrones” scenario, whereby one wins or dies, Nikephoros II Phokas lost not only his life on a cold December night of 969, but also his legacy, with history registering him as a colossal military figure, but a failure of an emperor, nevertheless.

Nikephoros Phokas’ Military Campaigns and Exploits

Nikephoros was one of the greatest military figures known in the Middle Ages, pious to a fault and imbued with the ideology that the Byzantine empire was the “Kingdom of Heaven’s” incarnation. Being a religious zealot with an intense devotion, combined with unique abilities in military leadership, he was the perfect instrument for the empire to take up impossible tasks and succeed where everybody else had failed, starting from the reconquest of Crete, which had been lost to the empire since 824.

The reclamation of Chandax

The reconquest of Greece was not only a matter of prestige for the Byzantine empire, it was a festering wound, since its conquest by the Arabs of Andalusia, as it was transformed to a pirate haven, a springboard for pirates who plagued maritime commerce in the South Aegean and the coastline of Minor Asia. In fact, the capture of Crete was a geopolitical “collateral damage” when Abu Hafs Umar al-Iqritishi was forced to abandon Cordoba, the epicenter of the Arabic Caliphate of Spain due to his clash with Caliph Abu al-As al-Hakam ibn Hisham ibn Abd al-Rahman of the Umayyad dynasty. The fall of Crete was part of a chain reaction which also saw the fall of Sicily along with several islands in the Aegean Sea.

Abu Hafs’ cunningness would leave his mark on the history of Crete, as he chose a location to the North of the island, near the Minoan Knossos to found the capital of his emirate, Chandax, the modern-day Heraklion, taking its name from the Greek word chandaki (meaning ditch or trench), named after the large defensive moat that surrounded it. The city’s importance would resonate up to its siege by the Ottomans during 1645-1669, when the Venetians defended it feverishly and lost it, losing a great part of their influence as well in the Eastern Mediterranean. Chandax was transformed by Abu Hafs into an impregnable fortress, with the Byzantines mounting six campaigns in 140 years, with all of them failing to subdue the island.

It was Nikephoros Fokas’ time to dominate the battlefield and start building his way to the imperial throne. At the age of 47, Nikephoros was entrusted by emperor Romanus II to deal once and for all with Byzantium’s “Cretan Issue”. The fame of his family preceded Nikephoros. His grandfather (also Nikephoros Fokas) had managed to regain control of Southern Italy during the reign of Basil I “Macedonian”, while his father Bardas Phokas had also been appointed as Domestic of the Schools, winning various victories for the empire.

On 13 July 960, the Arabs felt awe while spotting the Byzantine fleet on the Northern side of Crete, ferrying approximately 50,000 strong, as they did not expect that the young Romanus would be so bold, as to attempt an invasion merely months after his inauguration. While disembarking, the Arabs mounted various assaults using cavalry contingents, which all fell under a “rain” of Byzantine arrows and those that survived were trampled by the extra heavy Byzantine Cataphract cavalry.

Soon, though, the mercenaries employed by the empire, especially the Rus, would prove to be its Achilles’ heel, prone to break formation and start looting interminably and without taking defensive precautions. Indeed, when this happened again, Saracen cavalry, screening the troops and seeing the Rus plunged into plundering, attacked them and annihilated not only them, but also the Byzantine forces coming to their aid. Nikephoros was furious after being informed of the ambush that had also cost the life of one of his most valiant generals, but his resolve to conquer the island did not waver.

The siege of Chandax started at the end of July and it would last for 8 months, as the Byzantines were unable to enforce a complete blockade of the city and the besieged would be seamlessly supplied with food and ammunition, while also sending couriers asking Sicely, Egypt and Andalusia for reinforcements, which would never be sent, as the Arabs were too busy fighting against each other. The besiegers along with Nikephoros’ resolve would be tested by harsh winter conditions and the lack of crucial supplies.

Ever the pious, Nikephoros found spiritual refuge to his confessor and his mentor in meditation, Athanasios, a monk, having reluctantly left his hermitage, to provide spiritual council to the Byzantine general. Finally, in mid-February 961, the Byzantine fleet showed up carrying provisions and Nikephoros renewed his assaults against the besieged city. The first two bore no fruit, but the third one taking place on 7 March 961 managed to break though the lines of the exhausted and valiant city defenders. What followed was a dark page in Byzantine history, one that Nikephoros himself was unable to stop. The troops started butchering indiscriminately all Muslim citizens, including old men, women and children, even babies, later found strangled or impaled.

Only the third day did Nikephoros manage to rein in his army, but even so, those who were spared from the sword met the fate of slavery. Following his victory, which was interpreted by Nikephoros as divine intervention, he built the Castle of Temenos (considered a sacred place). He manned it with Armenian mercenaries and set sail with ships full of plunder back to Constantinople. Following the fate of another supreme military figure of the past, though — that of the legendary general Belisarius — he was overshadowed by emperor Romanus.

After being counselled by the venomous eunuch Bringas (and Romanus most probable successor at the time), Romanus denied Nikephoros a victory parade. Nikephoros was glorified in the Hippodrome instead, following behind, not on, the royal chariot. He was subsequently dispatched to Syria, where he would be less of a threat to both Romanus and Bringas.

Nikephoros in Anatolia

It was time for his star to shine in Anatolia, although the ground was already fertile for victory due to Nikephoros’s younger brother, Leo Phokas, and his attacks on the Arab leader Sayf ad-Dawla (Sword of the Dynasty).

Sayf ad-Dawla had conquered Aleppo in 944 making it the capital of his emirate, which was subsequently expanded to include Syria and Northern Mesopotamia, all this having been achieved at the age of 35. In the summer of 960 Sayf al-Dawla had resumed his campaign against Byzantine Anatolia, leading an army of 30,000 strong, while the empire’s campaign against Crete was ongoing.

The Arab general advanced undeterred towards the castle of the Thema of Charsianon, near Syrian Melitene, conquered the city and subsequently butchered its garrison and sold the citizens to slave markets. Leo Phokas was briefed on the dire situation, realizing that he could never triumph over Sayf in open battle. Instead, he chose to ambush his army in one of the northern passes leading to Aleppo, while the Arab army was returning to its base.

Indeed, Leo had managed to read the situation well and in November 961 he achieved total surprise over the emir, after having patiently waited for his army’s main body to enter the straits. Although Sayf fought valiantly his fate and that of his army were sealed and the emir barely managed to escape the battlefield riding a horse of one of his servants with another 300 horsemen. At least half of his 30,000 strong army were slain, while those captured met the same fate of the citizens of Melitene.

By the end of January 962, Nikephoros and his second in command, John Tsimizkes, arrived in Syria, leading a spectacular Byzantine counteroffensive and finishing off what his brother had started. The Byzantine army was no longer outmanned, and the Arabs had already lost the flower of their warriors in Leo Phokas’ ambush.

In just 3 weeks the two brothers would conquer 55 fortified cities in Cilicia, including Anavarzos, Germanicea (modern day Kahramanmaraş) and Flaviopolis, pausing to celebrate Easter and then resuming the advance towards Alexandretta (modern day İskenderun), which surrendered almost without a fight. Several months later, the Byzantine army laid siege on Aleppo, plundering on the very first day the palace of Sayf and subsequently setting it on fire. It remains unclear whether this was done on purpose to provoke Sayf, but if indeed that was Nikephoros’ purpose it worked and the besieged army led by Sayf himself sallied forth in a futile counter-offensive. Sayf, who had managed to escape again, never recuperated psychologically and five years later on 25 January 967 died at the age of 51, after a stroke had left him half paralyzed.

Aleppo fell on 23 December 963 after the Byzantines stormed in and butchered its defenders along with many Muslim citizens. A handful of Arab soldiers locked themselves up in the city’s acropolis, fortifying it, but the fact did not cause any concern to Nikephoros, who left a garrison waiting patiently for the Arabs’ unavoidable surrender. This occurred in December of 969, resulting in the weakening of the Aleppo emirate, which was now an insignificant Byzantine protectorate. On 29 October 969, Antioch fell as well after 332 years of Islamic reign marking officially the end of Nikephoros’ campaign in Anatolia, rightfully granting him the sobriquet the “Pale death of the Saracens”.

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PART II will be published next week

Alexandros Boufesis has an Msc in International Security Studies (London Metropolitan University) and a PgC in Counter-Terrorism (St Andrews). Alexandros has worked for many years as a Freelance article writer and an investigative journalist covering topics on military history, geopolitics and defense. He is the author of "Operations Odyssey Dawn and Unified Protector 2011
NATO and the Air War over Libya, 2011-2020" (Operations Odyssey Dawn and Unified Protector 2011 | Africa@War | Helion & Company) and "China's Military Modernization: Assessing China's Weapons and Strategic Reach in the early 21st Century China's Military Modernization | Asia@War | Helion & Company

References

Anon, “Who is Nicephoros Phokas?”, Phokas Cave Suites. Accessed 14 February 2026

John Carr (2015): “Fighting Emperors of Byzantium” (South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword).

Juliane Romane (2015): “Byzantium Triumphant, the Military History of the Byzantines 959-1025” (South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword).

Richard Cavendish (2013): Nikephorus II Phokas, crowned emperor of Byzantium”, History Today, Volume 63 Issue 8 August 2013. Accessed 14 February 2026.

Γιάννης Χρονόπουλος (2023): “Νικηφόρος Β’ Φωκάς, Βυζαντινοί Αυτοκράτορες-Στρατηγοί” (Αθήνα: Historical Quest)

Γιάννης Χρονόπουλος (2009): “Νικηφόρος Φωκάς, ο Λευκός Θάνατος των Σαρακηνών” (Αθήνα: Περισκόπιο)

The Chronicle of John Skylitzes: A Synopsis of Byzantine History, 811-1057, translated from Greek by John Wortley (New York, 2010).

It has been done for three years, but the format on how it can meet and greet the world has been in flux for about as long.

In that time, however, I taught it several times at a school, made adjustments, and created a streamlined version called “Essentials.” Where the full documentary workbook teaches everything from Narrative Structure to camera, lighting, interview and in-depth video editing tips, the Essentials workbook is built to create a 2-3 minute history documentary video using found images on the internet.

OH History Documentary Workbooks

Both the Full and the Essentials courses are in presentation format with simple text and a lot of visuals. I prefer to show, not tell, and the plan is to do more of that.

• The Full workbook is 157 pages, and then comes with additional activities, forms (shot log, permissions, etc.), templates (visual script starter, ideation template), and a full production handbook for camera and lighting that you can take to reference when shooting onsite.

• The Essentials workbook is 113 pages, with all seven sections geared to making a shorter documentary with resources at hand, with plenty of examples and visuals. It’s just pared down and simplified. Activities are sold separately.

• Use the Coupon “LaunchSale” for 50% off all products when checking out.

We also have a full practical component that walks through the basics for editing with WeVideo. We chose WeVideo because it’s very simple to use, it’s browser based, and it has features that get you prepared to use more professional editors, like Adobe Premier and DaVinci.

YouTube Presence

Additionally, we have moved the explainer videos for the Practical component to the YouTube channel.

Practical Slide Tutorial Walkthrough:

Tutorial Demos:

We have more plans for YouTube demos that are based in process not lecturing. As said before, I would like what we do going forward to be more based in showing, not telling. I’m much more comfortable in this space, too.

Thank you for your support

While there are a lot of explanations on why it’s taken so long, the short of it is that I needed to evaluate how this curriculum would be shared and supported. In the end, it became a matter of getting it out into the world in book form and people can use it however they would like, and then I and my team can keep producing and creating. Thank you for your encouragement along the way.

Remember, for a short time, you can use the coupon “LaunchSale” when you’re in the cart to get 50% off all products.

Coming up next…

Our article published later this month is by Alexandros Boufesis on the Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros II Fokas. Alexandros has also recently published a piece on the modern-day role of Turkey in the Middle East in Manara Magazine, which is a must read piece given current events.

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By Matthew Adams

In April 1912, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage, with approximately 1,517 (estimates vary slightly) aboard the stricken liner perishing in the Atlantic Ocean. Most people are familiar with the tragic Titanic story, as that ship has become a historical legend with numerous movies, most notably Cameron’s romantic “Titanic” blockbuster, based on it. The demise of the Titanic sometimes overshadows the sinking of its bigger sister, the Britannic, during World War I. RMS Britannic was the biggest of White Star’s Olympic-class ocean liners lost at sea under very different circumstances from the Titanic.

Construction and Design of the Britannic

In the early part of the twentieth century, the ocean liner company White Star was engaged in fierce competition against Cunard and Hamburg America Line in the transatlantic shipping industry. After the RMS Olympic’s maiden voyage in May of 1911, White Star moved forward with the construction of the Britannic in November of that year. The construction of the Britannic between 1911-1914 in the shipyards of Harland and Wolff in Belfast would round out the RMS Olympic-class ships, which included the Titanic.

Although the Britannic was based on the same blueprints as its sister ships, White Star made some design alterations for it from the outset. White Star planned to add a larger À La Carte Restaurant, a Grand Staircase pipe organ, a children’s playroom, a second-class gymnasium, and redesigned parlour suites to the Britannic. Another design change was the addition of private bathrooms for all first-class cabins, which was rare for its time.

Construction of the Britannic’s hull was still underway when the Titanic sank in April 1912. The disastrous loss of the Titanic forced White Star Line to make significant design changes to the Britannic. Most noticeable was the addition of crane-line davits for holding a full complement of lifeboats (48 in total). White Star also added those cranes to make it easier to launch lifeboats on a severely listing ship.

White Star also made less noticeable, but equally significant, design changes to the Britannic’s hull and watertight compartments. Those design changes included the addition of a strengthened double hull along the boiler and engine rooms. White Star also raised some of the watertight bulkheads to B deck within the ship. That meant the Britannic could remain afloat with up to six flooded watertight compartments (two more than the Titanic), but even that was not enough to save it. To make those changes, White Star had to widen the hull of the Britannic.

White Star launched the Britannic for fitting out on February 26, 1914. The ship had a length of 852.5 feet, a breadth of 94 feet, and a gross tonnage of 48,157.90. That made it a marginally larger ship than the Titanic, designed to carry a similar number of passengers (approximately 2,500 in total). With a service speed of 21 knots, it was not the fastest of ocean liners, but it was among the largest in the world.

Germany Sinks the Lusitania

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 sparked the outbreak of World War I, with Germany declaring war on Russia and France. Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914, when the Germans invaded Belgium. Germany had been locked in a naval arms race with Britain in the years before World War I, which inevitably strained relations between the two countries.

World War I had significant ramifications for the transatlantic shipping industry in Britain and Germany. The Atlantic became a battlefield that placed ocean liners in considerable peril. One German ambassador even submitted a formal warning to the American press in April 1915 that U-boats (submarines) might target ocean liners. That warning stated:

Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on the ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.

Yet, some liners continued with transatlantic passenger crossings despite the risks. The most notable was Cunard’s Lusitania, one of the world’s fastest ocean liners at the time. Suspecting that the ship was carrying armaments and munitions, the German U-boat U-20 fired a torpedo at the Lusitania on May 7, 1915. The torpedo had enough impact to sink the Lusitania within 20 minutes, which was not nearly enough time to evacuate the ship. That attack killed approximately 1,198 of those aboard and sparked outrage across the world.

Britannic’s World War I Service

When it became apparent that World War I would not be over by Christmas 1914, Britain needed larger ships for transporting soldiers. The Admiralty requisitioned ocean liners to convert them into troop transport or hospital ships during the Gallipoli Campaign. Consequently, White Star handed the Britannic over to the Admiralty in November 1915 for wartime service as a hospital ship.

Thereafter, the Admiralty refitted the Britannic to convert it to a hospital ship in December by adding medical facilities and patient wards. The conversion also changed the Britannic’s exterior decor by adding clean white paint to the hull with red crosses highlighting that it was a hospital ship. Britannic included four large illuminated red crossings that could light up at night, along with green lamps along the promenade deck. Any direct German attacks against hospital ships deployed for aiding wounded soldiers during World War I would breach international laws.

The Admiralty briefly returned the Britannic to White Star Line after it had completed some wartime service tours carrying wounded soldiers. However, Britain still needed hospital ships in the eastern Mediterranean for campaigns in Macedon and Egypt. Consequently, Britannic was requisitioned again on August 28, 1916.

An Explosion Rocks the Britannic

The Britannic left Southampton on November 12, 1916, for what would turn out to be its final voyage. Its intended destination was Lemnos in the Greek islands, where it could pick up wounded soldiers from the Salonika campaign. First, the Britannic headed to Naples, Italy, for refueling.

The Britannic departed Naples on November 19 with 1,062 people aboard (according to official statement of numbers, but other sources state there were 1,066). The people aboard were primarily the crew and medical staff. There were no wounded soldiers on the Britannic when it left Italy.

Unfortunately for the Britannic, a German U-boat had laid mines in the Kea Channel that the ship navigated into. As the Britannic sailed nonchalantly through the Kea Channel at a speed of 20 knots, it hit one of the mines laid in that stretch of sea on November 21. A violent shudder shook the Britannic as an explosion ripped into the ship’s starboard side. Water began to flood into the Britannic’s watertight compartments.

Captain Bartlett stopped the Britannic’s engines for his crew to assess the damage. The damage report revealed flooding of watertight compartments, which Bartlett duly closed. Although the Britannic could remain afloat with up to six flooded watertight compartments, the mine explosion also damaged the fireman’s tunnel. Consequently, water also flooded into the boiler room.

Five of Britannic’s watertight compartments flooded with water, but the sixth remained undamaged. That might have been enough to save the Britannic had it not been for the open portholes along the ship’s lower decks. As the Britannic slipped underwater, water poured through its open portholes to flood more of its compartments. Consequently, the Britannic was doomed as it filled with seawater that eclipsed its flooding limit.

Captain Bartlett restarted and steered the Britannic toward Kea, which was not far away, in an attempt to beach the ship. He gave orders to lower and ready the lifeboats, but not necessarily evacuate. Nevertheless, some passengers still boarded the lifeboats that officers started to lower into the water as the ship’s tilting increased.

Violet Jessop was among the passengers who boarded the first lowered lifeboats. Jessop was a Titanic survivor, and she needed more good luck to survive the sinking of the Britannic as its spinning propeller blades sucked her lifeboat toward them. Jessop recalled that moment in her memoirs as follows:

“Not a word or a shot was heard, just hundreds of men fleeing into the sea as if from an enemy in pursuit. I turned round to see the reason for this exodus, and, to my horror, saw Britannic’s huge propellers churning and mincing up everything near them - men, boats, and everything were just one ghastly whirl.“

The propellers had already sucked one lifeboat into them. It was a scene of carnage comparable to the sinking of the Titanic. Jessop jumped off her lifeboat into the sea to swim for her life. She was later pulled out of the sea onto a motor launch.

When it became apparent that the Britannic was sinking too quickly, Bartlett gave the orders to halt and evacuate the ship. With the ship stationary, the crew lowered many of the lifeboats into the sea for a thorough evacuation. Bartlett blasted the ship’s whistles when it became clear the Britannic was lost. He stepped into the water and swam to a nearby lifeboat as the Britannic slipped beneath the sea.

Jessop watched on as the Britannic sank. She later recalled,

“She dipped her head a little, then a little lower, and still lower. All the deck machinery fell into the sea like a child’s toys. Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern rearing hundreds of feet into the air until with a final roar, she disappeared into the depths, the noise of her going resounding through the water with undreamt-of violence.“

Then, the survivors awaited rescue. The nearby warships HMS Heroic and HMS Scourge arrived at the scene within an hour of the sinking to pick up survivors. Nearby Greek fishermen also assisted with picking up survivors from the sea.

Aftermath of the Britannic’s Sinking

A statement of numbers document from the Admiralty Historical Section confirms that 1032 people survived the sinking of the Britannic. That document also confirms that 30 were lost (six killed and 24 missing) as a result of the sinking. Thus, the demise of the Britannic was only a relatively minor maritime disaster when compared to the sinking of its Titanic sister ship and Lusitania. The Britannic sinking would have been much worse had it been carrying many wounded soldiers.

After the sinking, there were immediate suspicions that the Germans had sunk the Britannic with a submarine torpedo attack, much the same as the Lusitania. The New York Times reported that two German U-boats simultaneously attacked the Britannic with an exaggerated death toll of 50. The Daily Mirror inaccurately reported that the crew and medical staff worked to rescue patients, but there were none aboard the Britannic.

The official Britannic sinking report concluded that either a mine or a torpedo triggered the explosion. That report also noted that the sinking was more probably due to a mine. However, that was not a definite conclusion, and Jacques Cousteau’s discovery of the wreck of the Britannic in 1975 enabled more historical research. The discovery of mine anchors at the wreckage confirmed German U-73 submarine records that a single mine sank the Britannic.

Britannic’s sinking was another disaster for White Star Line after the loss of the Titanic in 1912. Even though this was not a disaster for which White Star was responsible, the company had still lost another of its most cherished Olympic-Star ocean liners. The good news for White Star Line was that Britain and its allies eventually won the war against Germany. When the dust had settled on World War I, the Treaty of Versailles ceded Hamburg America’s SS Bismarck to White Star as compensation for the Britannic.

Nevertheless, the unlucky sinking of the Britannic left the RMS Olympic the only surviving Olympic-class ship after World War I. Its sinking is sometimes forgotten because it was not a maritime disaster comparable to the Titanic or Lusitania in terms of fatalities. Nor did the demise of the Britannic have quite the same wartime impact as that of the Lusitania, even though it did stir up some more anti-German sentiment in the newspapers. Yet, the world still lost what would have been one of the grandest and most luxurious ocean liners of the interwar period had the Britannic survived the war.

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Matthew Adams is a freelancer who has produced a variety of articles for various publications and websites, such as Swing Golf Magazine, Windows Report, Naval History, Military History Matters, Artilleryman, dotTech, Naval History, Against the Odds, Argunners, History Lists, and Bright Hub. Matthew is also the author of Battles of the Pacific War 1941-1945. Check out the book’s blog at Battles of the Pacific War 1941-1945.

Primary Sources

• The National Archives

• Encyclopedia Titanica Media

Secondary Sources

• Britannic Fact File (Titanic Belfast Museum)

• Sinking of the Britannic Video

• Titanic Connections

• Lives of the First World War

• Atlantic Liners

• Titanic: History’s Most Famous Ship
  

Welcome new subscribers! So, this is the first time since the start of OH in 2014 that I’ve written on the magicians in my dissertation, barring a couple of pieces for kids. We’ve come a long way! NOTE: The website post this week will have a lot more images and sources. I wanted to keep this within email length. -DR

Giovanni Giuseppe (Joseph) Pinetti (1750-1800) was a stage magician in England and Europe in the late eighteenth century. Pinetti styled his performances as demonstrations of “natural philosophy” (now called “science”) when they really continued in a long line of performance magic and entertaining mechanics. In an instance of tragic irony that also captures the spirit of the age, Pinetti’s tricks were revealed in several publications that would eventually force him into exile in Russia. These revelatory books have an analogue with an 1584 publication by Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, which in similar fashion sought to educate readers about the tricks of itinerant magicians and save these performers from false accusations of witchcraft. Pinetti’s situation can tell us a lot about how information about the natural world was communicated during this time, as well as how authority and expertise was viewed by the general public.

Natural philosophy, popular culture, and education in eighteeth-century Europe

Towards the end of the eighteenth century in England, “natural philosophy” — what we think of now as “science” — was very much en vogue with the public. Previously, the practice of “science” had been the domain of those with the time and money to do scientific inquiry, like Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Robert Boyle (1627-1691), or Isaac Newton (1643-1727), and the information was mostly held behind the hallowed walls of the Royal Society. But at this time, knowledge about the natural world was leaking out, and published through pamphlets, books, discussed in coffee houses, and taught in theaters and self-education classes. For example, Cabinets of Curiosities — artifact collections owned by the wealthy and popular in the seventeenth century — were donated and became the foundational exhibits for public museums, like the British Museum in 1759. As the public became exposed to new information about the natural world, their appetite for knowledge grew.

Learning about the natural world moved into the realm of popular culture.(1) Questions about who could be an “authority” were also at the heart of the distribution of information. Those who were wealthy could afford tutors, university, and had the time to devote themselves to their studies. Those from other classes could rise in the ranks, like Robert Hooke, who was an instrument maker for the Royal Society, but he was never considered a “natural philosopher” in the same way as Robert Boyle, a member of the aristocracy.

We can see the importance of these distinctions in how these performers billed themselves, when they used labels like “professor” or “doctor.” These titles of expertise were meant to tap into the public’s expectation about who was an expert, and who could legitimately distribute quality information.

One of these purported experts in natural philosophy in the mid-1780s was “Professor” Giuseppe Pinneti (1750-1800). Pinetti was an Italian stage magician, or “conjurer,” who had been performing on the European Continent in the early 1780s. He billed himself in his advertisements as a “Professor of Mathematics and Physics.” While he might have had some experience as such, Pinetti was foremost a performer, and a talented one, at that. However, using the title of “professor” in a magic show tells us how important the topic of natural philosophy was at this point in time; it had entered popular culture and performers were using its trappings. Further, this shift from “conjuror” to “professor” by these performers also coincided with an Enlightenment focus on educational entertainment.

Educational entertainment was very popular in France. Before their expulsion from France in the 1760s, the Catholic Jesuits had developed a methodology for entertaining education that was widely influential. The maxim of “become all things to all men”(2) directed educators to use what was commonplace and at hand to connect with their students. Books like the Orbis sensualium pictus (“the visible world in pictures”) written by John Amos Comenius, or the use of theatrics by Jesuit educators were widely adopted in many different circumstances. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Émile (1762) even used the example of a conjurer to illustrate the idea of an “opportunity of learning.” In Émile, the “tutor” uses a floating duck trick as performed by a fairground magician as an object example in a class. The tutor leads his student through the process of reverse engineering the trick, thus providing a neat lesson on natural laws and the benefits of being curious.

In 1783, Pinetti arrived in a Paris awash in “edutainment.” He advertised himself as a professor of mathematics and physics, and suggested that his performances were demonstrations of natural philosophy. However, one audience member seemingly took the lessons from Émile to heart: he reverse-engineered all of Pinetti’s tricks, and then he published them in a book. The book, La magie blanche dévoilée, (Natural Magic Revealed), by Parisian lawyer and amateur magician, Henri Decremps, exposed all the mechanisms behind Pinetti’s act. And these weren’t simple tricks like a magnetic duck. Instead, Decremps revealed the mechanics behind the “magical nosegay” — a small tree that bloomed and grew fruit, and he revealed how a popular “bullet catch” was performed. The book, in a country primed for using entertainment to teach, was a smash hit and went into multiple editions.(3)

Pinetti felt the pinch at the box office. He tried to counter by hiring an actor to pretend he was Decremps. The actor, disheveled and appearing drunk, was scolded by Pinetti during his show in order to discredit him. No one really bought it. For his part, Descremps tried his hand at performing, but he was not on the level of Pinetti and he returned to publishing new editions and supplements to his book.

In an attempt to regain some authority, Pinetti wrote his own how-to book, Amusements Physiques, et différentes expériences divertissantes, published in May of 1784. But, it contained small “experiments” for home entertainment, and it did not reveal how he performed his stage magic.

Pinetti’s ticket sales began to dwindle: the questions of how Pinetti performed his tricks were now all answered and the “opportunity of learning” had been accomplished. Who would come to see a magic show when the magic was now gone? Outmatched by Decremps and with dwindling book and theater seat sales, Pinetti left Paris for London in the summer of 1784, a few months after the publication of his own book.

The English magic publishing machine / “This is the Learned Man”

While the English did not have the same emphasis on entertaining education as did the French, they made up for it in sheer volume of printed output. The printing presses in London produced an avalanche of newspapers, pamphlets, and books, on all manner of subjects.

Well-represented in this massive publication output was a long and illustrious line of books about performance magicians and magic tricks. One of the oldest of these was The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) by a country squire, Reginald Scot. A section of Scot’s book was devoted to revealing how simple magic tricks were accomplished.

Scot wrote his revelatory “how-to” section to educate people on how sleight-of-hand tricks were performed. In a tense atmosphere where witches were always around the corner, Scot wanted to help people keep their silver from charlatans, and also educate them so that mostly harmless itinerant magicians wouldn’t be accused of witchcraft. The infamous Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches) had been published in 1486, setting off the witch trials that rocked Europe and North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Discoverie (meaning here “reveal of”) was a rational counterpoint to the witchcraft hysteria that Scot had witnessed in the courtrooms of his county.

Following Discoverie of Witchcraft, a number of “legerdemain” or “sleight-of-hand” how-to’s were published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (see sources at the end for a representative list). Many of these were titled “Hocus Pocus,” which was the nom de guerre of William Vincent, the court jester to James I, but he is not considered the author of any of them. These Hocus Pocus texts spanned the 1630s through the eighteenth century, reprinted by different publishers (copyright was not yet a legal issue).

The Hocus Pocus books were marketed as “sport” or “pastime” books, rather than being educational in a formal sense, or having moral value. Additionally these books poked at the idea of the expert: the inside cover for nearly all of these books had a wood cut of an Elizabethan-dressed man with the words “Hiccius Doctius,” which was a corruption of the Latin for “This is the Learned Man” (hic est doctor), with a mashup of “Hocus Pocus”. As such, these books were marketed as texts that revealed natural explanations for those who seemed to defy natural law, perhaps even meaning to take the “authorities” down a peg. But, like Discoverie, these books seemed to suggest that natural philosophers, or “professors,” did not possess any supernatural information.

In addition to the Hocus Pocus books, audiences could see magic acts throughout the Haymarket theatre district, Piccadilly, and on Cockspur Lane, a short, nearby alley that contained a number of entertaining acts. A new spate of magicians such as Breslaw, Comus, Jonas, and Katterfelto had arrived in the late 1770s and early 1780s, revving up renewed interest in stage magic.

Like Pinetti who styled himself as a “professor,” some of these new magicians, like Dr. Gustavus Katterfelto, also capitalized on the burgeoning interest in natural philosophy: Katterfelto had a “solar microscope” in addition to a number of other “philosophic” specialties, Philip Breslaw had hot air balloons, and Comus (Nicolas-Philipe Ledru), from France, gave demonstrations on electricity and automatons—robots that wrote letters or played instruments independently. The London crowd was enchanted, and hungry for more.

Enter here, then, Pinetti, fleeing Paris where all his tricks had been revealed…in a book.

Pinetti vs. the London magic machine

Exactly two hundred years after Discoverie of Witchcraft was published, Pinetti arrived in London in the autumn of 1784. It could be said that both eras carried similar sentiments: in the earlier, educational books countered the growing fever of witchcraft accusations. But in the eighteenth century, the London publishers were looking for new educational content to feed the growing fever for scientific knowledge.

For the last few months of 1784, “Signor Pinetti, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy,” enjoyed crowds at the Royal Theatre in Haymarket. But, he wasn’t sitting still. He soon produced a translation of, Amusements Physiques, et différentes expériences divertissantes, which was published in December of that year by Thomas Moore under the title Physical Amusements and Diverting Experiments. As mentioned above, the book contained small illusions or “experiments” that could be done by oneself at home, such as changing the color of a rose, or creating an etching on an egg shell. In truth, Pinetti’s book was more at home in England in a culture that promoted magic as a “sport” or “pastime,” rather than as an “opportunity of learning.”

Pinetti likely hoped it could be another money-maker while he was there, but it also could have been an attempt to get ahead of what he knew was coming, namely an English translation of Decremps’s La Magie Blanche Dèvoilèe.

He was right, and in early 1785, two different English translations of Descremps’s book were published. The first came in March of that year, entitled Natural Magic: or Physical Amusements Revealed, with London circus founder, Philip Astley, listed as the author. The second followed a month later in April, titled, The Conjurer Unmasked; Or, La Magie Blanche Dèvoilèe, which was published by Thomas Denton who had a bookshop business in Haymarket, the theater district. Denton’s publication gave the authorship to Henri Decremps. In the other translation, Philip Astley claimed sole authorship for Decremps’s text.

What happened next was a magician battle-by-proxy between the London publishers. Moore accused Astley and Denton of copyright infringement and republishing Pinetti’s book. Astley couldn’t reply that the work was Descremps’ because actually he did pirate the text. But Denton had attributed the work to Descremps, and so he took out a full page advertisement rebutting Moore’s allegations. With that, the matter seemed to have been settled, and Denton and Moore published future editions of their respective translations.

While this publishing scandal played out like a ping pong match in the newspapers, it became a devastating rolling catastrophe for Pinetti. Despite the relative warmth for stage magicians in London, Pinetti eventually pulled up stakes in 1785 for Germany and eastern Europe. However, wherever he went, he was hounded by translations of Descremps’s text in each new location he performed. He eventually moved on to Russia, where it was said that he befriended the Russian Tsar, who became the godfather to his children, and Pinetti — like most magicians in this period of time — turned to hot air ballooning, dying in Russia in 1800.

Conclusion

This tension between education and entertainment (and who could reliably be considered an authority to do either, or both) was a percolating undercurrent throughout the eighteenth century. But this tension shows up dramatically in the story about Pinetti and the revelatory literature around magic books. One the one hand, as in Discoverie of Witchcraft, the reader is informed in order to protect innocent people from accusations of associating with the devil, and on the other hand, the reader is informed in order to protect the populace from someone saying they are an expert in natural philosophy, when they are not. This kind of policing of scientific authority (who could be considered one, and what counts as experimental natural philosophy), would grow and expand in the coming century as more moments like these looked to answer the question, “Who is the Learned Man?”

1. Science as a term for the practice of “scientific inquiry” was not widely used until the 19th century. From Aristotle to the enlightenment era, the term “natural philosophy” was used to describe the systematic practice of examining the natural world. See here for more.

2. Adapted from Paul in 1 Corinthians, 9:22 “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.” See the original by St. Ignatius.

3. Perhaps even more devastating to a populace craving new information, “Professor Pinetti” was exposed as performing magic tricks that were long in the magician’s repertoire: The “magical nosegay” was a redux of the early English magician Isaac Fawke’s blossoming apple tree created by clockmaker Christopher Pinchbeck in 1730. And one of the illusions, a pigeon decapitated by a shadow, is a variation on the oldest illusion we have record of being performed, created by the Egyptian magician Dedi, royal magician to the Pharaoh Khufu (c. 2589–2566 BC).

Dana Rovang, PhD, is the founder and editor of Obscure Histories. Her dissertation was called "Conjuring Science: Performance Magicians, Natural Philosophy and Popular Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain, 1770-1800" (Chicago, 2013). She also works as a writer and producer of visual media, trying to make information useful and interesting in the spirit of Enlightenment magicians.

Selected Primary sources

Descremps, Pinetti, Denton, & Astley, in chronological order

Henri Decremps, La magie blanche dévoilée, ou, Explication des tours surprenans qui font depuis peu l’admiration de la capitale & de la province : avec des réflexions sur la baguette divinatoire, les automates joeurs d’échecs, &c. &c., 4th Edition, (Paris: 1784, 1792, 4th ed.).

Giovanni Giuseppe Pinetti Amusemens physiques, et différentes expériences divertissantes, composées & exécutées tant à Paris que dans les diverses cours de l’Europe (Paris: chez Mourer, 1784, 1785)

Giovanni Giuseppe Pinetti, Physical Amusements and Diverting Experiments(London, T. Moore, 1784).

Philip Astley, Natural magic: or, physical amusements revealed, (London: P. Astley, 1785).

Henri Decremps, The conjuror unmasked; Or La magie blanche dévoilée, (London: T. Denton, 1785).

Henri Descremps, Supplément a La magie blanche dévoilée (Paris: Chez J.F. Desoer, 1792).

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Highlights

Due to the mystical Google algorithms, we have become much easier to discover as of February. Our website hits have increased by literally 7,000% over the past year. I just looked at our analytics to see if there was something to be happy about, and yes, indeed that’s a real number from January 2025 to today:

And that’s not even AI crawlers! That is a different statistic, apparently.

We also increased our subscriber base by half as much again, and while we are still a very small subscription compared to others, we are gaining new free subscribers nearly every week. We are very niche. Yet, in a world of AI “slop,” we continue to produce highly researched but accessible articles based in primary sources and documentation. In my view, this is the way to continue to counteract the prevalence of dodgy AI-authored content—if it’s not based in a subject’s primary materials, you can consider it suspect.

We were able to publish eight histories, three of which were by authors who were new to OH. This number is down from the year before, but there were extenuating circumstances. I am so so proud of our writers and the content that we have put out this year. Please scroll to the bottom of this message for direct links to all the articles.

2025 Obscure Histories

Changes at OH

This year was a year of transition. As you know, this enterprise is run and operated largely by myself, with the help of volunteers like the wonderful Rachel Martinez and Ryan Halloran at Red Star Consulting. We have sought to find ways to raise money through grants and other revenue generators. Unfortunately, I have come to be of the opinion that nonprofits are likely best run by people who are wealthy or retired, or hopefully both.

In the wake of my father’s passing, a host of administrative things came to light that are just matters of course for a normal nonprofit. However, I will say this only once, but the state of Illinois is incredibly hostile to running a nonprofit, and they do not provide help, return calls, or provide explanations, nor do they send polite, respectful letters devoid of paragraphs that use ALL CAPITALIZATION. You’d think I was trying to run some kind of grift. But I’m just one lady apparently without the Kafka-esque skills needed to successfully navigate increasingly oblique requirements. The very fact that the state has me registered as “Qbscure Histories” would be laughable, but it’s deeply troubling and indicative of bigger issues at play.

My husband wants me to “go John Oliver” and keep requesting information and trying to comply in order for these inefficiencies in the state be further revealed, but again, I’m not retired or wealthy, nor do I have an HBO deal with HBO money, and I think those things are required to have the patience to do that sort of thing.

As a result, I have asked the Obscure Histories board to vote on dissolving OH as a nonprofit, and the majority have voted in favor. OH will cease operations as a nonprofit at the end of 2025.

OH is returning to “.com” status

So, this is all to say that it’s been a pretty heartbreaking year, all around. My chicken even suddenly died in September. I think I’ve mostly come around to the other side of it to view it as an opportunity. The good website numbers and increased subscribers are enough to keep fighting for the creation of quality histories against the tide of AI slop. I don’t think there’s much in our business model that needs to change if we keep things simple and based in fundamentals.

However, this means that there are some financial aspects that will affect people who are paying subscribers to this substack. I will be writing to each paying subscriber individually to ask whether they would like to cancel their paid subscription. If you are a paying subscriber, after 12/31/2025 paid subscriptions will no longer be tax deductible. I completely understand if you cancel your subscription, but please be assured that nothing has fundamentally shifted, and all money that comes in from subscriptions still goes to pay our writers. I don’t make any money off this enterprise.

OH, Jr. Curriculum update

I am moving forward with the OH, Jr. History Documentary Video curriculum (the Essentials course). Because it was developed under the nonprofit with donations, I will be making it free and available on YouTube. Look for more on that soon. It has videos, worksheets, activites, and tutorials, and hopefully all the basics that students need to learn how to research and create their own history documentary videos from proper archives, using primary sources. More to come there.

Thank you

Thank you for a great year. For those of you who have been around since we got our start in 2014, thank you for your years of support. And thank you to the new people who joined just this week. Thank you to everyone who reached out after my dad’s passing, and for your support as I let people know about the shifting sands.

Regardless of the changes on paper, our heart and mission have not changed. It’s a darn shame that trying to do something pure and good is pretty impossible anymore, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep trying with the resources we have available.

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Yours in history,

Dana

Throughout the history of Christianity, many of the most prominent voices have been those of men. However, there is a strain of female voices that has risen above the tide, leaving their own reflections, poetry, and writings behind, which has helped to ensure that we know about them. These women were held in high regard for their unique mystical relationship with—and consequently views about—God. This included the idea, perhaps surprisingly, that God can’t be exclusively defined as male, after all. Yet, instead of being viewed as heretics, their voices were revered and they continue to be thought of as women with powerful insight into the ineffability of the divine. Four of these notable female mystics were Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Hadewijch of Antwerp, and Jane Lead.

Saint Hildegard (b. 1098—d. 1179)

Saint Hildegard of Bingen—whom the Roman Catholic Church canonized as a saint and Doctor of the Church in 2012 after centuries of unofficial veneration—is one of Christianity’s most renowned female mystics. A German Benedictine abbess born in 1098, Hildegard recorded her beliefs in writings, art, and music.

While Hildegard was hesitant to pursue her spiritual calling, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux offered her encouragement in 1146, saying, “We rejoice in the grace of God which is in you, and that you may hold that as grace and strive to respond to it with all sentiment of humility and devotion.” The following year, Pope Eugene III endorsed Hildegard’s visions, authorizing her to write and speak in public.

Unlike many other theologians throughout history, Hildegard celebrated women and their bodies. She even described the menstrual cycle—a process often demonized throughout history—as a manifestation of viriditas, God’s life force that permeates, animates, and heals all of creation. In fact, she described visions in which the divine appeared in feminine form as Caritas and Sapientia (meaning Love and Wisdom, respectively, two principles that the Bible explicitly identifies with God).

“Wisdom and Love are one,” said Hildegard, detailing the Holy Spirit as the root of all life, a “supreme and fiery force” that shines throughout all creation and whose essence enlivens the air, fields, sun, moon, stars, and more. She composed artwork of how Caritas presented in her visions—a winged woman in an incandescent red robe, crowned with the face of an old man, caressing a lamb, and treading a venomous monster at her feet.

Julian of Norwich (b. 1342—d. after 1416)

As an anchoress—a woman who withdrew from society to live a life of religious seclusion—Julian spent the final years of her life living in a cell connected to St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, England. There, she recorded her visions in Revelations of Divine Love—a devotional text that became the earliest English book attributed to a female author.

Despite living through the black plague, Julian’s radical optimism found rivalry only in her unfading hope. She couldn’t answer why suffering occurs, but instead of harping on divine judgment, she taught that God is with us in our suffering and that “all shall be well” in the end.

She described the comfort of a divine father, yes, but taught equally of God’s role as mother. Interestingly, she ascribed maternal imagery not only to the Holy Spirit, as is typical, but to Christ, saying, “Our Savior is our true Mother in whom we are endlessly born and out of whom we shall never come.”

According to Julian, one could see God’s motherhood through God’s creation and adoption of human nature, especially through the incarnation of Christ. In fact, Julian’s texts highlight Christ’s abundant blood flow in a manner that some scholars find reminiscent of menstruation and childbirth. As Elisabeth Melattukunnel notes: “Much like a mother, Christ sacrifices his body, and by this sacrifice he gives (everlasting) life to his children.” Julian espoused what many people may consider a sort of universalist theology, asserting that “our Heavenly Mother” gave birth to nature and will eventually restore it.

Julian of Norwich offered religious guidance to others, including Margery Kempe, a fellow mystic who wrote that “the anchoress was expert in such things and could give good advice.” While Julian is not among the Roman Catholic Church’s canonized saints, she hasn’t gone unrecognized. The Catholic Catechism quotes her, popes honor her, and the Episcopal and Evangelical Lutheran churches commemorate her.

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Hadewijch (b. circa 1200—d. circa 1260)

Not much is known about Hadewijch, known to some as Hadewijch of Antwerp and to others as Hadewijch of Brabant. What we do know, however, is that she was a poet and mystic in the 13th century, and likely a beguine living in what has since become Dutch-speaking Belgium. Beguines were medieval European women who led religious lives without taking vows or joining an approved religious order. Most of them lived in devotional communities called beguinages, and unlike nuns, they were free to return to the secular world if they wished.

Hadewijch was a proponent of love mysticism, an ecstatic religious phenomenon that involved living in perfect love and union with the divine. She embraced “Minne”—meaning Love, identified with God in 1 John 4:8—as a name for God, describing Minne as a divine figure that encompasses God, the mystic, and the bond between the two. She taught not only that Minne suffuses and sustains the world, but even went as far as to say “Minne is all” and gives “the all,” thereby equating her to the Absolute.

Per Catholic theologian Rosemary Ruether in her book Goddesses and the Divine Feminine, Minne can be imagined as a goddess figure, characterized in Hadewijch’s visions as follows:

“I saw in the eyes of the Countenance a seat. Upon it sat Love, richly arrayed, in the form of a queen. The crown upon her head was adorned with the high works of the humble.... From Love’s eyes proceeded swords full of fiery flames. From her mouth proceeded lightning. Her countenance was transparent, so that through it one could see all the wonderful works Love has ever done and can do.... She had opened her arms and held embraced in them all the services that anyone has ever done through her. Her right side was full of perfect kisses without farewell.”

Hadewijch had a profound influence on her contemporary John of Ruusbroec, a 14th-century priest now remembered as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Not only did Ruusbroec recommend Hadewijch’s works to others in his order, but his own writings drew direct inspiration from her images of courtly love mysticism.

Jane Lead (b. 1624—d. 1704)

Born in England in 1624, Jane Lead (sometimes spelled “Leade”) led the Philadelphian Society, a Protestant group in London. She taught of universal salvation, the presence of God in all of creation, and of Lady Wisdom (Sophia) as a Divine Mother who governs jointly with the Father. Lead’s texts on Lady Wisdom—of whom she started to experience visions shortly after her husband’s death—are some of the most extensive on the subject among all Christian mystics. They were some of the most explicit—describing Lady Wisdom as an Eternal Goddess, Empress, and Queen of All Worlds—with some of the most vivid visions:

“There came upon me an overshadowing bright Cloud, and in the midst of it the Figure of a Woman, most richly adorned with transparent Gold, her hair hanging down and her Face as the terrible Crystal for brightness, but her Countenance was sweet and mild… Immediately this Voice came, saying, ‘Behold I am God’s Eternal Virgin-Wisdom… I am to unseal the Treasures of God’s deep Wisdom unto thee, and will be as Rebecca was unto Jacob, a true Natural Mother; for out of my Womb thou shalt be brought forth after the manner of a Spirit, Conceived and Born again.’”

According to Lead, Lady Wisdom came bearing a flaming sword—commending it to her followers not as an instrument of wrath, but as a tool to slay whatever inside them didn’t bear the image of God. With a flaming heart, Wisdom also brought radiance to Lead’s darkness, “lighting [Lead’s] Lamp from her Seven Pillars of Fire.”

The tree of life imagery attributed to Wisdom in Proverbs 3:16 and depicted in Revelation 22:2 also made an appearance in Lead’s visions—with Wisdom’s heart sprouting forth a Tree bearing fruit from Twelve Branches. Like Hildegard, Lead described Wisdom as nursing her children at her breasts, “from which the Word of Life so sweetly did flow.”

Lead’s Philadelphian Society attracted so many women that some people referred to it as the “Taffata Meeting.” Lead also had male followers, with one of the most notable being Richard Roach (1661–1730), who became the leader of the Philadelphian Society after Lead’s death. Roach echoed Lead’s belief in a divine feminine presence, saying that Wisdom will reveal herself especially to women, and therefore “excite and animate that Sex whereby she is represented; and endow them with her peculiar graces and gifts, in such degrees, that they shall often out run and exceed the males themselves.”

Summary

Christian history has suppressed many female voices, but that hasn’t stopped mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Hadewijch of Brabant, and Jane Lead from leaving their mark. These women painted an image of the divine—in some cases, as a Goddess—who could manifest not only as three persons, both human and immortal, but as female and male. A common thread connects all of these visions: the idea of a divine mother who gives life to humanity and permeates all of creation, not only holding it but sustaining it with everlasting love and compassion.

These women were not the first to venerate the divine feminine within Christianity—that honor goes to some of the earliest Christians, including those in ancient Syria—nor were they the only ones of their time. However, they carried forth a tradition that has echoed through the centuries and culminated in the feminist theologies of the modern day.

Jenna Michelle is a writer and editor who has contributed to more than ten publications. When she’s not writing, she can often be found diving deep into obscure topics related to health, religion, and spirituality. Check out her LinkedIn to learn more about her work.

Primary Sources

Hadewijch. Hadewijch: The Complete Works. Paulist Press, 1980.

Hildegard. Book of divine works: The complete English translation of Hildegardis bingensis Liber Divinorum Operum. Charlotte, VT: MedievalMS, 2009.

Julian. “Revelations of Divine Love.” Revelations of Divine Love - Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Accessed October 20, 2025.

Lead, Jane. A fountain of gardens. London: Printed, and sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1697.

Lead, Jane. The laws of paradise. Glasgow: J. Thomson, 1903.

Leade, Jane, and John Thomson. The Revelation of Revelations: Reprinted from an original copy, 1884.

Additional Sources

Hillgardner, Holly. Longing and Letting Go. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Kurian, George Thomas, and James D. Smith III. The Encyclopedia of Christian Literature. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 2010.

Newman, Barbara. God and the goddesses: Vision, poetry, and belief in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia, Pa: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Newman, Barbara. Sister of wisdom: St. hildegard’s theology of the feminine. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998.

Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Goddesses and the divine feminine: A western religious history. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 2005.

By Rachel Martinez

Billie Burke is remembered for her bell-like voice and ethereal poise as the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz (1939). Yet, she defied conventions of age and traditional roles while overcoming challenges to become an experienced actress of theater, movies, radio, and TV for over 50 years.

Theater Beginnings

Mary Ethelbert Appleton Burke was born in Washington, D.C., on August 7, 1884. She went by Billie, after her father, William “Billy” Burke (1843-1906), a clown in the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Touring in Europe gave Billie Burke a unique childhood. She remembered having a “highly varied” education, such as learning French by traveling. Burke had 4 half-siblings from her mother, Blache’s (1844-1922), previous marriage. In her 1949 autobiography, With a Feather on My Nose, Burke credited her father for teaching her how to make people laugh, while her mother inspired her love of books. Self-described as shy, she complied with the acting ambitions her mother envisioned. Burke wrote, “My mother [. . .] might have accomplished a great deal on her own if it had not been nearly impossible for women to have careers in those days. [. . .] I suspect she pushed me toward the stage because she saw in it then the only possible opportunity for a woman to distinguish herself.”

Burke’s first play was “The School Girl” (1903), in London, at the age of 19, followed by more successful plays in England. “My Wife” (1908), opposite John Drew, was her Broadway debut, prompting a critic to observe her youthful characterization of “a charming, unaffected, almost childlike manner.” She demonstrated versatility for a tomboy’s transformation in Broadway’s “The Amazons” (1913).

Silent Movie Ingenue and Marriage to Ziegfeld

Billie Burke made her silent movie debut in the title role of Peggy (1916), co-starring William Desmond. The plot involved her character startling the town by driving her own car and wearing overalls, later marrying a young minister (Desmond). Owing to audience popularity, Burke was paid $40,000 ($100,952 today), reportedly the highest salary for an actor then. Next, she starred in the serial Gloria’s Romance (1916) and fourteen more movies by 1921. Peggy (1916) and Arms and the Girl (1917) are Burke’s only silents known to survive.

(Click for photo of Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. circa 1928. Source: Wikicommons Media)

Earlier, on New Year’s Eve in 1913, Billie Burke met Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., Broadway impresario. He was 17 years her senior, and the creator and producer of the Ziegfeld Follies (1907-32), an annual lavish musical revue, and producer of other Broadway shows. Burke understood Ziegfeld’s reputation as a womanizer. She later wrote, “I knew Flo Ziegfeld was a dangerous man. I had known that before I met him, and I felt the impact of his threat and his charm at once. But even if I had known then precisely what tortures and frustrations were in store for me during the next eighteen years because of this man, I should have kept right on falling in love.” Burke married Ziegfeld in April 1914, and their daughter, Patricia, was born in 1916.

Burke decided to prioritize her private life by traveling between Hollywood and their estate in Hastings, New York. She advised in 1919, “[It’s] important for a woman who has ever had a career to keep right on loving her work even though she’s married. And by a career I [. . .] mean a woman who has done any useful thing well [. . .] that has helped the world to be a nice place to live in in any way. . . ” Her return to theater was the Ziegfeld-produced “Intimate Strangers” (1921)in a performance noted with “the grace of the skilled actress and the deft artist as well as the endowments of facial beauty and fluent hands.” Subsequent plays included “Rose Briar” (1922) and “The Happy Husband” (1928). On tour, Burke traveled with her daughter and a staff encompassing 5 maids and 2 cars.

(Click to see the “Annie Dear” (1924) pamphlet. Source: NYPL Digital Collections)

Debt and Grief

However, the stock market crash of 1929 altered Billie Burke’s life. Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. experienced financial hardship and illness. Their daughter remembered, “. . . My father lived on the edge of the stock market in those days with buying on margin. [. . .] We lost everything. Mother, fortunately, had made a lot of money and had bought some bonds, but nothing compared to what [my father] had lost.” As a result, Billie Burke returned to movies and began her sound debut, A Bill of Divorcement (1932), co-starring John Barrymore and Katharine Hepburn.

During filming in July 1932, she was notified Ziegfeld died at the hospital in Hollywood. In her autobiography, she recalled fainting on set. Later, Burke and her daughter retreated to the ranch of family friend Will Rogers (1879-1935), the legendary actor/humorist who performed in the Ziegfeld Follies, and his wife Betty. Billie Burke remembered the “kindness and tactfulness” she received when she returned to work, with gratitude to makeup artist Ern Westmore for drying her tears every morning. Ziegfeld’s debts were written to have been half a million dollars (around $12.5 million today.) This led Burke to move permanently to Hollywood under guidance by Samuel Goldwyn of M.G.M., although she produced Ziegfeld Follies revivals in 1934 and 1936.

(Click to see an image of Burke with her daughter in Photoplay, Sept. 1934.)

Returning to Movies

During the Depression in the 1930s, movies were more lucrative than theater, since the latter had been affected greatly by the economy. Furthermore, Burke felt that New York had too many memories of Ziegfeld.

On screen, Billie Burke portrayed lighthearted society women. She recalled the typecast, “I don’t know exactly how I got started playing flibberty-gibbets in pictures . . . they made pictures in the thirties about sophisticated life and there always seemed to have a place for the silly clinging kind of woman that I played.” The drama Dinner at Eight (1933), is one of her most well-known roles. In it, she portrayed a distracted, wealthy dinner host to affluent guests secretly affected by the Depression, later to become humbled when she learns how the Depression has also touched the lives of her and her husband (Lionel Barrymore). The cast included John Barrymore, Marie Dressler, and Jean Harlow.

Later, Burke co-starred as a British society lady in the first three-strip Technicolor feature movie, the period drama Becky Sharp (1935), starring Miriam Hopkins and Frances Dee. While reception was reported as mostly positive, some critics noted the Technicolor process still needed developing.

Concurrently, Burke’s marriage was dramatized in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, starring William Powell as Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., Louise Rainer as Anna Held, and Myrna Loy as Billie Burke.

Billie Burke’s role in Topper (1937) remains one of her most celebrated. The comedy starred Cary Grant and Constance Bennett as a carefree ghost couple who help banker Cosmo Topper (Roland Young) and his Victorian wife, Clara (Burke), enjoy life together again. Sequels were Topper Takes a Trip (1939) and Topper Returns (1941). In between the Topper movies, Burke and Roland Young starred in The Young in Heart (1938), with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Janet Gaynor, as a family of swindlers who reconsider their lifestyle.

(Click for a photo of Burke with Will Rogers: Modern Screen, July 1935.)

A Successful Screen Career

At that time, age and being a widow determined a woman’s finances and identity. Billie Burke was seen as brave to restart her career in her 50’s, although there were other successful, experienced actresses, including Alice Brady, Zasu Pitts, and May Robson. Burke said in 1937, “. . . I do not think I am too old to begin again. I do not feel that age is crippling to any career—as a matter of fact, I was never better equipped to accomplish the things nearest my heart. Having been in the theater for 30 years, success has lost its glamour. This new splurge of ambition is not for fame, but for satisfaction in work well done. . . It is necessary for me to work to earn a living, but after assuring myself a modest security . . . I would like to help people. . .”

By the end of the 1930s, Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard Of Oz (1939) became her favorite role and remains her most recognized. The Wizard of Oz (1939) was the first fantasy movie in Technicolor, reflected in art direction and effects featured by Photoplay in 1939. Burke said of the “divine part” to the magazine, “There’s child enough in all of us to be thrilled with the settings and the feeling of this picture. It has terrified me a little to think of living up to the children’s idea of what a Good Fairy must be, but I can only hope with all my heart that I won’t disappoint them.”

Among her 82 movies, Billie Burke portrayed society mothers in the 1940s, such as In This Our Life (1942) starring Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland. Simultaneously, musicals about the Ziegfeld Follies were released: Ziegfeld Girl (1941) starring Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, and Lana Turner, and Ziegfeld Follies (1945) with Powell reprising Ziegfeld and a cast containing Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, and Red Skelton. Burke is also remembered as the mother-in-law to Elizabeth Taylor in Father of the Bride (1950) and Father’s Little Dividend (1951) with Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett as Taylor’s parents.

Radio, TV, and more Theater

In addition to her film career, Burke ventured in other mediums of the era. From the 1930s to the 1950s, she performed on radio. Most notably, Burke starred in Fashions in Ration (1943-44), interviewing experts for wartime household tips. The series transitioned to The Billie Burke Show (1944-46), a comedy about the misadventures of a single woman living in a small town with her brother.

(Click to see a photo Phil Warren, Billie Burke, and Barbara Billingsley in the 1947 play “Accidentally Yours.” Source: NYPL Digital Collections)

By the 1950s, Burke made TV appearances, counting her talk show, At Home with Billie Burke (1951-52). She remained active in theater, including “Life with Mother” (1953), her summer stock debut, and “The Solid Gold Cadillac” (1956). Burke said about the power of theater, “The stage has much more impact. You remember even the smallest things for years and years. There is something about seeing live actors that gives you a memorable experience.”

Additionally, in 1959, Burke released another autobiography, With Powder on My Nose, with life tips covering widowhood and other topics.

Legacy

Recognized for her optimism in a life of personal and professional challenges, Billie Burke later explained her philosophy: “You have to work at being happy and you must expect happiness and look for it, and believe that prayers are answered.” Although she kept a warm memory of her marriage to Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., Burke recalled having to “work to make my husband happy” and further said about not remarrying, “I wasn’t sure I wanted to turn around and put another 20 years at the same thing.” Billie Burke retired in 1960 and died on May 14, 1970, at the age of 85. Her daughter, Patricia Ziegfeld Stephenson, died in 2008. In 1936, Burke established The Ziegfeld Club for chorus girls struggling financially. Revived in 2015, it supported women in the performing arts and presented the Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award to female musical theater composers until 2021. Billie Burke continues to be remembered for her performance in The Wizard of Oz (1939), while her life revealed finding joy in new beginnings.

Rachel Martinez is an artist and writer whose passion at an early age for classic movies further inspired her in storytelling. She studied film production throughout high school and went on to earn a B.A. in cinematography and a minor in creative writing.

The SECRET STORE is open for the holidays! Make some (merry) history!

Further Reading

Burke, Billie. Shipp, Cameron. With a Feather On My Nose, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949.

Burke, Billie. Shipp, Cameron. With Powder on My Nose, New York: Coward-McCann Inc,1959.

Hayter-Menzies, Grant. Mrs. Ziegfeld: The Public and Private Lives of Billie Burke. North Carolina: McFarland, 2016.

“Patricia Ziegfeld Stephenson Interview.” PBS, American Masters Digital Archive, Accessed: September 19, 2025.

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/archive/interview/patricia-ziegfeld-stephenson/

Ziegfeld, Richard E., Paulette. The Ziegfeld Touch: The Life and Times of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. New York: Harry N. Abrams Publisher, 1993.

Welcome to new subscribers! This continues from PART I of Belisarius.

by Alexandros Boufesis

The Vandalic Wars

The political circumstances in Northern Africa were fluid, and Justinian was willing to take advantage. In 530, Gelimer usurped his cousin, Hilderic, for the Vandal crown. The Vandal territory was centralized on the other side of the Mediterranean, in the area of Tunisia today, but this marauding group controlled large swaths of the Mediterranean territories, and was responsible for another sack of Rome in 455 CE, following the Visigoth decimation of the city in 410 CE. The rule of the usurper Vandal king, Gelimer, had left many of his people discontent. Additionally, Hilderic had been close to Justinian, and his faction turned to Justinian asking for an intervention to topple Gelimer, restoring Hilderic to the throne.

Justinian capitalized on the grim political reality and chose Belisarius to command the Byzantine expeditionary force in Africa. Despite Belisarius’s poor performance in Callinicum, he was chosen because of his loyalty, his successful put-down of the Nika riots, and his extraordinary strategic skill, shown in the battle of Dara. The Byzantine fleet set sail from Constantinople in June 533 CE, carrying roughly 20,000 men with Belisarius as the commander in chief. The historian Procopius went with Belisarius, giving us a first hand account of the Belisarius’s operation. (Procopius, History of the Vandalic Wars)

Procopius narrated in detail the three month journey across the Mediterranean, and he described a few key events that reveal to us Belisarius’s character. In one, Belisarius was worried the fleet would split apart while crossing as ships were apt to drift apart in windy conditions, and knowing this, he created red banners and ordered lamps to be hung at night on the lead ships, keeping his fleet intact. In another story, Belisarius discovered that his soldiers plundered the nearby farms after they landed, and was incensed. He punished the perpetrators and gave an impassioned speech to his troops, lamenting that they had done tremendous damage to the morale of those living nearby (the “Libyans”), making his job harder:

Now, therefore, the war will be between you and both Vandals and Libyans, and I, at least, say further that it will be against God himself, whose aid no one who does wrong can invoke. But do you cease trespassing wantonly upon the possessions of others, and reject a gain which is full of dangers. For this is that time in which above all others moderation is able to save, but lawlessness leads to death. For if you give heed to these things, you will find God propitious, the Libyan people well-disposed, and the race of the Vandals open to your attack." (Procopius, Vandals, XVI)

It is estimated that the Vandal forces under Gelimer were between 10,000-15,000 strong, to Belisarius’s roughly 20,000. Belisarius finally faced Gelimer and his nephew Gibamundus and brother, Ammatus on September 13, 533. Gelimer had devised a three pronged siege, but Belisarius exhibited extraordinary courage by attacking Gelimer’s high ground position and forcing him to flee. Gibamundus and Ammatus were killed in the fighting. Procopius thought it possible that the enemy’s fear of the Roman army caused the Vandal lines to break and scatter, of which Belisarius took advantage, marching on to Carthage.

When they arrived the next evening, Procopius tells us that the gates of Carthage were open, but fearing a trick, Belisarius encamped outside. Meanwhile, the fleet arrived at the Carthage port, and with the added troops, Belisarius marched into Carthage and occupied it without resistance on September 15, 533 CE.

After his defeat, Gelimer went into hiding, but was not defeated. He paid local farmers to gain their favor, and sent envoys to other territories, including the Visigoths in Spain and the Huns.

Gelimer made his next move in December of 533, calling together a number of different factions to counter the Roman soldiers entrenched in Carthage. However, neither side made much ground, until Belisarius took his infantry in the late afternoon of the day and made for Gelimer’s camp. Belisarius had seen that the Vandal army’s flanks were manned by soldiers, who had already witnessed his astonishing victory at Ad Decimum and were therefore petrified, thus he attacked the center. Procopius tells us that Gelimer leapt onto his horse and fled, and the Vandal line collapsed. Gelimer would be captured after a chase and lengthy blockage, but eventually surrendered and was given an estate in Galatia. Belisarius was given the title of consul ordinarus for the year 535.

The campaign had been won and North Africa, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands came under Byzantine rule. Justinian, noting the military power of Belisarius and the loyalty of his troops, decided to test Belisarius in case the Byzantine general decided to found a new empire in North Africa. To this, Justinian summoned Belisarius to Constantinople. Justinian thought that if Belisarius failed to return back to the capital, it would signify that the general was indeed planning to supplant Justinian. Belisarius did return, and for the time being, the relationship between the Byzantine emperor and his most trusted General was normalized, but not for long.

The Gothic Wars: how palace intrigue shaped reunification

Justinian was not satisfied with the conquest of the North African territories, and reclamation of the former Roman territory of Carthage. Indeed, he soon set his sights on reclaiming Rome itself and reuniting the Roman territories as a restored empire.

As is commonly known, over 100 years prior to Belisarius’s North Africa campaigns, the Germanic Visigoth tribe sacked Rome in 410 CE under King Alaric. The fifth-century saw a rolling series of uprisings and civil wars in and around Rome and Italy between rival factions, in particular the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths. By mid-century, the Kingdom of Italy was consolidated under the Ostrogothic ruler, Theodoric the Great (475-526). Theodoric was also named “regent of the Visigoths,” (r. 511-526) thereby uniting the Gothic tribes. After Theodoric died in 526, the region fell back into infighting and instability. Justinian took note, and after Belisarius returned from his victories in North Africa with his loyalty assured.

Justinian’s Gothic campaign in Italy was ripe with plots, intrigues and insubordination, and it is a case where political machinations had as much to do with Belisarius’s success or failure than his battlefield victories. While the specifics of Belisarius’s eventual conquest of Rome and “restoration” of the Roman Empire in the West are also fraught with attack-and-parry brilliance, it pales in comparison to the palace intrigues that he dealt with while carrying out Justinian’s mandate to reunify of the Empire.

In 535, Belisarius launched his campaign to recapture Rome, and managed to sweep through much of Sicily and Italy almost unopposed. One area of resistance came from Panormus (modern Palermo) and Naples, which were conquered eventually along with Rome by the Byzantine expeditionary force during a prolonged siege from 537-538 CE.

While Rome was an important symbolic conquest, the Gothic capital of Ravenna was yet to be taken. The Siege of Ravenna took place from late 539-540 CE, and saw Belisarius working with his commanders Magnus and Vitalius to orchestrate its fall. According to Procopius, Belisarius ordered Magnus and Vitalius to be stationed with troops on either side of the river Po, which Ravenna used to resupply their grain stores. In a rare fluke, the water level of the river had fallen to a record low, and this allowed Belisarius to take the grain stores, which he distributed among his troops. Belisarius had also blockaded Ravenna’s Adriatic Sea port, and the city began to suffer the effects of lack of resources.

Eventually, the Goths sent envoys to Belisarius to negotiate, even offering him the opportunity to rule, saying, “We therefore propose, if you are willing, to share with you the rule of all Italy, and we shall administer the land in whatever manner seems best. And for thee and the Goths the natural course to follow is that one which is destined to redound to your advantage." As we know of him and his virtues, Belisarius declined repeated offers to rule as king, saying he would never take the title as long as Justinian was alive. Negotiations continued until Ravenna came under the control of the Byzantine forces later in the year.

In the meantime, Justinian’s obsessions led him to send Narses (who had aided in the Nika Riots) to keep tabs on Belisarius, in case the idea of crowning himself “emperor” of the Western Roman Empire crossed his mind. As we know, opposing Justinian was the last thing worrying Belisarius; yet, the machinations, insubordination, and jealousy among some of his commanders consumed the Byzantine expeditionary force. Even Procopius, who lionized Belisarius and glossed over many errors of judgement, had difficulty justifying some of Belisarius’s decisions when it came to those closest to him.

In 542 CE, Justinian fell ill following an outbreak of bubonic plague and the Empress Theodora was left to rule as she pleased. Not surprisingly, she isolated Belisarius by conducting a psychological war with “Comrade-in-machination”, Antonina, Belisarius’s wife. Most definitely, Antonina was Belisarius’s “Kryptonite” so much so that historians, like Procopius, put the blame on her each time Belisarius’s perception was clouded in the battlefield, like Callinicum for example. Indeed, Antonina was unrelenting and ruthless. Procopius tells us in his “Secret History” that she was ruled by her passion for Belisarius’s adopted son, Theodosius, which dictated a myriad of questionable and horrific actions that reverberated across the Empire.

Only when his wife’s lover died of dysentery, did Belisarius actually recuperate from his depression and passivity. Justinian, who had survived the plague, sent him to the east, where the General mounted a disinformation campaign against the Persians, convincing them that the Byzantines possessed a superior force, and eventually turning the Persians away as a result.

Shortly after this, in 544, he returned to Italy, but the Byzantine expeditionary force was now extremely depleted, and Justinian even went so far as to force Belisarius to pay for the campaign’s expenses. And yet, Belisarius scored several victories even with the limited troops at his disposal. Narses would later capitalize on those strategic wins when he assumed the leadership of the campaign, but by then he was reinforced with adequate forces and resources. From what we are told, Belisarius was repeatedly set up to fail by Justinian and the palace manipulators, but he still managed to achieve incredible wins, despite the odds.

In his final battle, the Battle of Melantias, Belisarius was again called to save the Byzantine Empire, Justinian, and Constantinople. In 559 CE, a nomadic tribe called the Kutrigurs reached the Byzantine Capital’s gates, threatening Constantinople not unlike the Visigoths and the sack of Rome. This group hailing from the Steppes had far superior numbers, but Belisarius had superior strategy, pulling off a decisive win and sending the Kutrigurs back. And yet, two years after Belisarius’s flawless victory, he was accused of plotting to overthrow Justinian once again. This back-and-forth, push-pull of jealousy and domination continued until Belisarius’s death on 13 March 565 CE, just eight months before the emperor, whom he honored with all his heart and everlasting loyalty and he received hostility and suspicions in return.

Summary

Belisarius was undoubtedly a military mastermind, but the virtues that made him a successful, respectful, and prudent general were also used against him in palace machinations. His emperor, his wife, the empress, and his subordinates all reached out for that soft spot, to manipulate him and obscure the talents and the heights he was destined to reach. The plots and machinations against him would become embedded in the culture of Byzantium, and the backstabbings and schemes became the trademark “currency” of the empire. It could be argued that this same mentality was passed on to the Slavic culture and thus Byzantium’s influence was “tattooed” on Russian domestic affairs. Seen, for example, in the relationships between Mikhail Kutuzov and Tsar Alexander all the way to Georgy Zhukov and Stalin, this brand of court maneuvering between general and rule shows up again and again, where great figures fade to obscurity and opportunists manipulate the regime’s mechanisms.

Alexandros Boufesis has an Msc in International Security Studies (London Metropolitan University) and a PgC in Counter-Terrorism (St Andrews). Alexandros has worked for many years as a Freelance article writer and an investigative journalist covering topics on military history, geopolitics and defense.

Sources and further reading

I.Hughes (2009): Belisarius: The Last Roman General

J.Haldon (2008): The Byzantine Wars

Procopius, Henry Bronson Dewing (Translator) (2023): The History of the Wars: Complete Works: The Persian War, The Vandalic War & the Gothic War

Procopius, Peter Sarris (Ed.), G. A. Williamson (Translator) (2007):The Secret History

Thanks to a donation from the Rovang family, we are initiating a series of histories in the memory of my father, Philip Rovang, who was trained as a historian, and was a forever-supporter of OH. As a lifelong military man, it’s fitting we start with a history of the legendary general, Belisarius.

Also, if you want to support OH with a “Make History” t-shirt, go to the Obscure Histories “Secret Store.” We love a good double entendre in These Times.

Belisarius: Part I

by Alexandros Boufesis

Origins: Justinian and Belisarius

The sixth century CE found the Eastern Roman Empire — or Byzantium, as it came to be known — at a crossroads. The empire’s political volatility in the interior, combined with ever rising transnational threats, had already set in motion forces that threatened its coherence and existence.

The rise of Justinian the First (or Justinian the Great) signified the start of a new era, when a “Dreamer emperor” accomplished the restoration of the Western Roman Empire (even briefly), which had fallen to the Goths in 410 CE despite the odds and having had to face multiple internal and external opponents.

Justinian’s restored empire could not have been accomplished without Belisarius, one of the greatest generals of the Middle Ages and according to many historians, one of the greatest military figures of all time. Belisarius came to act as the extension of Justinian’s will, word, might and vision, although their relationship was plagued by the emperor’s envy and mistrust, fueled by Empress Theodora’s political machinations.

Belisarius, according to some sources, was born in the town of Germanicia, modern day Sapareva Banya, in southwestern Bulgaria, then Thrace. Other sources, though, report that he was born in Illyria, as was Justinian. Although the exact year of his birth is not known, he was most probably born around 505 CE. His lineage is not known either, but judging from Procopius, who mentions the humble origins of Justinian, Theodora and Belisarius’s wife, Antonina, he doesn’t mention Belisarius having similar origins, which might hint at a more upper-class upbringing, or Procopius was simply not aware. The early years of his military career are similarly obscured, but according to limited information, he was a member of Justinian’s bodyguard. As with other career military men in Byzantium, he would have likely joined between the ages of 16 to 18. By the age of 25 — just like Hannibal and Napoleon — he was already a General; remarkable as the typical age of Generals in Byzantium was 35. It is unknown, as well, whether his rapid advancement in Byzantine ranks was due to any aristocratic roots, his rare military skills, or a combination of both.

Belisarius was highly regarded for his virtues at a time when men of his stature would not hesitate to employ any means necessary in order to gain rank, societal status and wealth. Procopius in his “Secret History” does not hesitate to scorch the Justinian-Theodora-Antonina triad for what he deemed immoral and scheming behavior. However, his only criticism for Belisarius was that he was manipulated by Antonina, who Procopius thought was a devious and manipulative woman.

Belisarius was often caught in the middle of this triangle, the consequences of which threatened the empire’s stability and Justinian’s dream of restoring the Western Roman Empire. Fortunately, though, luck was on his side, and it was this very luck, during Byzantium’s early expansionist moves that “forgave” these missteps, and set the foundations for the consolidation of the thousand-year empire.

The Persian Wars: Foundational Foe

Undoubtedly, amongst the empire’s many enemies, the most menacing threat was the Sassanian, or Persian, Empire. Worthy successor of both the Achaemenid dynasty (the dissolution of which was caused by the campaign of Alexander the Great in 330 BCE) and the Parthians. The Sassanid Persians featured a combination of the deadliest weapons, namely the light mounted archers and the ultra-heavy war horse “Cataphracts”.

Byzantium’s armed forces were also modernized, even before Justinian’s rule, to face contemporary threats. These threats had compelled the transition from a mighty infantry, like that of Rome, to a mobile force, ready to be deployed anywhere, at any time. Indeed, it was this modernization process that saw the advent of the mighty “Biscuit eaters”, (the “Bucelarii,” named after their favorite biscuit), which formed the core of the elite “Comitati” bodyguards. The armed forces of the empire also included mounted archers and mercenary Hunnic horse archers, their allegiance, though, was not always guaranteed.

The Battle of Dara against the Persians was Belisarius’s first display of his strategic genius. In 530 AD, a series of events brought the Sassanid Persians outside the fort of Dara, where Belisarius was stationed. Leading an army of 25,000 men against Persia’s 50,000, Belisarius demonstrated superior tactical skills, including making the most of openings left by his opponent, and wielding his cavalry with deadly precision.

Belisarius’s star was on the rise; yet his military genius was clouded by shortcomings and personal plagues. At the Battle of Callinicum against the Sassanid Persians a year later (531 CE), Belisarius had the numerical advantage, but still lost the battle. This was largely due to his choice of observing from the ground, thus minimizing his visibility and perspective. Moreover, even though he had initially chosen to wait until after Easter was celebrated (which would have given him a day to observe the battlefield in advance), he yielded to his soldiers’ enthusiasm and insistence on fighting as soon as possible. Belisarius was noble and loyal to a fault, but he also had a soft spot for his troops. This soft spot had cost him the Battle of Callinicum and his title of “Magister militum per Orientem” (Supreme Commander of the East). It would later cost him a lot more.

The losses at Callinicum were so heavy that both sides were reluctant to keep fighting. The Sassanid Persians and Byzantines signed a peace treaty — The Treaty of Eternal, or Perpetual, Peace — that would last just eight years. This concluded what is known as the “Iberian War” (526-532 CE).

The Nika Riot

Immediately after this loss, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian also had trouble at home, and Belisarius would have a second chance to prove his worth by putting down the Nika riot in 532 CE. This riot is largely considered to be the most brutal quelling of civic unrest in history, wherein the first Hagia Sophia in Constantinople was also destroyed. (Justinian would rebuild it, constructing the now legendary landmark).

First, a note on Byzantine politics: before Justinian came to the throne, the emperor’s reign was not absolute. Instead, the emperor had to consider numerous constituents, including the army, the political aristocracy, the people of Constantinople, and the large agricultural masses of the provinces. In the core of this decision making “matrix” stood the Charioteers Sports clubs, who carried out chariot races in the Hippodromes of the empire’s major cities of Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch. In the 6^th Century CE, there were two major sports clubs, the Blues and the Greens. These factions had an oversized influence on the empire’s politics, so much so that the Hippodrome in Constantinople was considered the “political barometer” of the empire.

On the eve of the Nika Riot in 532, Justinian had just finished implementing several major fiscal reforms that consolidated his power. These reforms included reducing government spending and imposing tariffs on trade. At the same time, he cut the salaries of army members and political employees. The people were on the verge of open rebellion, as a result. And a common place to express their discontent was at the chariot races in the Hippodrome.

The inciting factor for these riots was a smaller, post-race skirmish the week before between the factions — or demes — of the Blues (Veneti) and the Greens (Prasani). This brawl resulted in the murder of several people, and several people were arrested. The perpetrators were set for execution, but two of the prisoners — a Blue and a Green — escaped when the gallows collapsed. They took refuge in a nearby church, and subsequently became the focus for all of the local anti-Justinian sentiment.

The Blues and Greens clubs put aside their quarrels and joined forces. Indeed, the two demes united, chanting together “Nika,” meaning “win” or “victory.” This new united group spearheaded an all-out rebellion and pushed for the election of a new emperor, Hypatius, who was the nephew of the former emperor Anastasius. Justinian panicked and was ready to leave the capital and abdicate, but his wife, Empress Theodora, counseled him against it with an impassioned speech, giving ample space to Belisarius to quench the riot in blood.

While the rioters were centralized in the Hippodrome, Belisarius and another general, Mundus, took up arms on opposite sides of the crowd. Then, Narses, a eunuch and a major military figure who would be critical in Justinian’s campaign in Italy, had the task of blocking all the building’s exits. The crowd was infiltrated by Justinian’s spies, who started cheering in favor of the emperor, thus driving the rioters to fight against each other. Belisarius and Mundus took advantage of the situation, entered the Hippodrome and began an intervention, which turned into a bloodbath. Contemporaneous sources estimate that between 30,000 - 35,000 people were killed and large parts of Constantinople burned to the ground.

The Nika riots solidified Justinian’s absolute hegemony, and the sports clubs would never again meddle in the empire’s politics. The riots also underlined once again Belisarius’s charisma and his loyalty to Justinian. He was soon tasked with taking up the campaigns against the Vandals in North Africa and the Ostrogoths in Italy.

PART II - BELISARIUS: OF VANDALS AND OSTROGOTHS in the next newsletter.

Alexandros Boufesis has an Msc in International Security Studies (London Metropolitan University) and a PgC in Counter-Terrorism (St Andrews). Alexandros has worked for many years as a Freelance article writer and an investigative journalist covering topics on military history, geopolitics and defense.

Sources and further reading

I.Hughes (2009): Belisarius: The Last Roman General

J.Haldon (2008): The Byzantine Wars

Procopius, Henry Bronson Dewing (Translator) (2023): The History of the Wars: Complete Works: The Persian War, The Vandalic War & the Gothic War

Procopius, Peter Sarris (Ed.), G. A. Williamson (Translator) (2007):The Secret History

Phil Rovang, my father, OH champion, and a founding member of the OH executive board, passed away on June 18, 2025 after suffering a number of health blows in the last several months. He had lived with Parkinson’s for six years, but he had some heart issues, which were further complicated by recent diagnoses of bladder cancer and a lymphoma blood disorder.*

Dad was a man of grace, dignity, and above all, service. Dad trained as a historian and was set to be a high school history teacher before the Vietnam draft happened. He enlisted in the Air Force as a pilot, and served a total of 21 years in the the AF and the Iowa Air Guard. Dad’s service to others never stopped, and we eventually stopped trying to keep track of all of the volunteer initiatives with which he was involved.

OH is a family business. Throughout our childhood, both of my parents stressed the importance of learning about history as a way of making sense of the world. Their approach was foundational: from family trips to battlefields and museums, and visits to sites of historical importance, to just reading about history to learn something new. Dad was primarily interested in U.S. and presidential history, and he always had another new book he wanted to discuss. History wasn’t just a past-time, but an living interface with the world and the people who live in it. It enriches our experience, and helps us to understand what it means to be human.

My dad’s commitment to service and my parents’ overall life-approach to doing for others is why Obscure Histories is a nonprofit now, and why OH doesn’t commodify our content. It’s why we are committed to paying our contributors for their intellectual content because it’s worthy and valuable, not a resource to be stripmined. It’s why OH, Jr. is rooted in education, and providing something that will help learners gain professional skills and maybe even be forces of good in the world.

My parents have always held that it’s important to be of use in the world. Dad was all of that and more. The world will miss him. And to honor him, our work will continue so that his legacy of service lives on.

*Many of Dad’s ailments (Parkinson’s Disease, bladder cancer, blood disorder, etc.) have been shown to have a root cause in exposure to Agent Orange, used during the Vietnam war.

There is a very real discussion going on about the place of LLM’s (Large Language Models) and the use of AI in history and education—by students and educators.

• New York Times (6/16/25), “A.I. is poised to rewrite history, literally.” (gift article)

• New York Times (5/14/25), “The professors are using chatGPT, and the students aren’t happy about it.”

• MIT Technology Review (4/11/23), “How AI is helping historians better understand our past.”

This discussion is not taking place in a vacuum, but is also within an environment of squishy truths, “Big Media” capitulation, and rampant “viral narratives” on Facebook or Tiktok. These all seem to be threatening to swamp commonly held facts that create a cohesive, shared existence.

It’s hard not to be discouraged about “The State Of Things.”

But there are other conversations being had in forums like Reddit and other places that provide a glimmer of hope. And it’s based in the idea that for every conspiracy theory, there’s someone else on a mission to prove it wrong.

In these modern day town squares, today’s Houdini’s and Amazing Randi’s are working to debunk the most recent variations on spiritualists and charlatans.

And in the Reddit forums, and other online comment sections, where writing is really the only method of communication, there is a deep conversation going on right now about what denotes “authentic” written communication vs. synthetically generated content. In these places, “spot the fake” has become a sport.

One only has to look at this very recent post in Reddit where the author bemoans, “It's gotten to the point where I notice chatGPT's linguistic style EVERYWHERE.” The playful replies really give me hope, because it shows that the author is clearly not alone in this observation, and it’s a lot of fun to chime in with your own expertise.

This all brings me to…

The act of making something that uses your brain + creativity can be fun. And bonus points if you can prove someone else wrong in the process. Heh.

Sometimes what you make is good! Sometimes you need to workshop it a bit more. But in the case of what we do here at Obscure Histories, our mission has evolved to champion the act of “making history” as a fun, satisfying, creative, intellectual practice or activity, either in written or visual form. I’m not saying it’s easy! Yes, sometimes hard is fun.

And yes, we have some constraints and limits on what is published. The big one is that all OH histories should be rooted in multiple primary sources, be it documents, photographs, original sources, interviews, etc. They should be based in fact and the analysis should flow from the available evidence.

Outside of my nonprofit board and OH writers, I’m not sure that anyone else knows that all our writers sign agreements before they submit their work. One specific clause is the insistence that writers do not use AI generated content. I always say something to the effect of “I hope you are not offended by the AI Boilerplate, but I have to put it in there, blah blah.” And nearly every one of my writers will comment on this clause. Most are “understanding,” but I can tell they are offended.

And they should be!—because they don’t create history content for OH just to cut corners on research and let someone else do the writing…

No, they write for OH because they love the act of researching and writing about history.

Our writers are “making history” and they love to do it.

OH, Jr. Update

This all being said, you will have noticed that our cadence on original history content has slowed down. But it’s because we have had to shift our resources to finalizing the OH, Jr. inaugural curriculum and infrastructure.

I know, …I know! For three years I have been talking about the History Documentary Curriculum. I know! If I told you it was almost there, you probably shouldn’t believe me.

It turns out that writing the curriculum, testing it, rewriting it, and making the ~500 videos, tutorial vignettes, more presentations, examples, activities, rubrics… and then trying to figure out how to put it online in such a way that it doesn’t completely bewilder the student is hard. It’s made harder because we are 100% bootstrapping this effort (read: all volunteer), and so we do it when we can, because we love what we do, and can’t help ourselves. But it has been super slow.

The good news is that we are literally almost there. It will need to be finalized and tested, hopefully in the next month or so, and then we will start looking to do small batch groups to test the content and stress test the systems. Humungous shout-out to Ryan Halloran at Red Star Consulting who is making all of this work, somehow. (Yay!)

But here’s the thing—this curriculum is the teaching of practical history; it’s teaching the joyful act of making history content. Like our written histories, OH, Jr. students must use “primary sources,” or “original materials” as the basis for their history documentaries. In short, they are taught to locate, evaluate, and use primary source evidence to create their history narratives. But they use this evidence to create compelling, entertaining, and informative visual stories.

As Substack “Historian Supreme” Heather Cox Richards wrote in her June 7th newsletter:

History is the study of how and why societies change. To understand that change, historians use evidence—letters, newspapers, photographs, songs, art, objects, records, and so on—to figure out what levers moved society. In that study, accuracy is crucial. You cannot understand what creates change in a society unless you look carefully at all the evidence. An inaccurate picture will produce a poor understanding of what creates change, and people who absorb that understanding will make poor decisions about their future. [my emphasis]

Like the world-weary chatGPT users who are now recognizing AI produced and written content, our hope is that exposure to quality sources, primary materials, and solid evaluation techniques will help OH, Jr students to move through the world recognizing when a history or an analysis has been based on good, primary evidence, or if it’s too squishy, unsupported, and can’t stand up to scrutiny. And also maybe have some fun along the way.

What the AI Startups don’t seem to get is that we (humans/people) like to make stuff. We don’t want a machine to make stuff for us. AI is a tool, and it can’t replace the sheer pleasure of creating, crafting, and producing something for the simple sake of doing it.

and now for… “MAKE HISTORY,” the FUNDRAISER

If you’ve made it this far, thank you, and you are awesome.

Here’s a new trailer I made for OH, Jr. because this History Documentary Curriculum is just the beginning.

…and secret merchandizing…

Announcing our summer fundraiser! Make History t-shirts! And not everyone can find this on our website because it is a SECRET. Right now, you get a giant SALE on the shirts because you are a subscriber. Limited time sale! Forward it to a friend! They don’t even need to subscribe to get the sale! I hope they do though!

Obscure Histories | Secret Store

After a bit, we will advertise this fundraiser a bit wider, but you can get the SECRET SALE right now. Just click to get to the SECRET STORE. (…and please pass it on…)

Secret Store

Thanks for being awesome, for appreciating history, and for supporting the act of making it, in all it’s various forms.

Yours in history,

Dana

Want to support OH but don’t want a t-shirt? no problem! :)

One-Off Donation

By Matthew Adams

One of the more famous lines from Sun Tzu’s Art of War says, “All warfare is based on deception.” There can be little doubt deception became an important part of Allied military strategy during World War 2 from 1942 onward. The British had implemented effective deception operations to fool the Germans about intended attack points for the Second Battle of El Alamein in October 1942 and Operation Husky in July 1943. Fortitude was a larger deception operation that convinced the Nazis the Allies would primarily attack Pas-de-Calais rather than Normandy for D-Day in June 1944.

The effectiveness of Britain’s wartime trickery inspired the Americans to implement their own deceptions. In June 1944, many thousands of U.S., British, and Canadian troops poured ashore on the beaches of Normandy in France to establish a new front in Western Europe. To assist with the liberation of France and drive toward Germany, the Americans established a unique tactical deception unit for regular deployment that became known as the “Ghost Army.”

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The Ghost Army is Formed

Ralph Ingersoll and William Harris are the men primarily credited with the ideas and proposals for forming the American Ghost Army in 1943. Ingersoll entered wartime service as a private in 1942, first stationed in North Africa. He later moved to London to join the Special Plans Branch, where he was assigned to assist with the Operation Fortitude D-Day deception.

Ingersoll gained much insight into British wartime deception methods from his experiences in North Africa and London. His inclusion in the British deception operations gave Ingersoll an idea for a special unit that could deceive the enemy. He dubbed this special unit “my con artists.” A widely quoted line from an unpublished Ingersoll account says, “My prescription was for a battalion that could imitate a whole corps of either armor or infantry… a super secret battalion of specialists in the art of manipulating our antagonists’ decisions.”

Ingersoll wanted to create a flexible mobile unit that could effectively impersonate a full corps (formation of divisions) on a battlefield whenever required. This deception could assist American combat divisions in a few ways; firstly, a simulated unit could draw fire away from combat soldiers. Secondly, an illusionary unit could hold off the enemy by faking filled gaps in lines until real divisions reached them. Thirdly, the Ghost Army could assist the movement of Allied divisions and potential attack points by deceiving the Germans with fake military build-ups elsewhere.

William Harris was a U.S. lieutenant colonel and Ingersoll’s boss at the Special Plans Branch. Harris and Ingersoll sold the idea of a special deception unit for American forces to the top dogs of the U.S. Army in Europe. Jake Devers, the United States Army commander for the European Theater of Operations in 1943, supported the formation of a proposed deception unit. Devers’ replacement, Dwight Eisenhower, was also enthusiastic about establishing a unit for deception operations at the beginning of 1944.

The U.S. Army activated the Ghost Army unit on January 20, 1944, at a Camp Forrest training ground in Tennessee. Ghost Army was officially called the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. The Americans merged three existing units and a new one to form the Ghost Army under the command of Colonel Harry Reeder. It was a first of its kind, for although the British had performed deceptive operations from 1942 to 1944, the UK army never established a dedicated mobile deception unit for that purpose.

Ghost Army’s Order of Battle

This Ghost Army was not full of battle-hardened front-line troops. The U.S. Army recruited many young artists, designers, and engineers to fill the ranks of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops from high schools across America. These were barely adult men recruited by the U.S. Army to generate illusions of real Allied divisions with combined visual, sound (sonic), and radio deceptions that would deceive the Wehrmacht (German army) throughout Western Europe. The Ghost Army amounted to approximately 1,100 personnel in total.

The 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion was the biggest component of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. This unit was mainly filled with artists and designers who created fake tanks, planes, artillery, and military vehicles primarily for the visual deception of German reconnaissance and scouts. The Ghost Army used inflatable rubber dummy tanks, artillery, planes, jeeps, and trucks to generate the visual illusion of a real army corps. Members of this unit also designed decoy army patches to make their military clothing more convincing for when they play-acted front-line American soldiers in nearby French towns.

The 3132 Signal Service Company was Ghost Army’s sonic deception unit responsible for generating fake military audio effects that sounded like a real army corps. These audio effects were typically pre-recorded sounds of infantry and tank movements. The 3132 deployed M3A1 half-track vehicles mounted with powerful speaker systems that could blast out sound effects audible within about 15 miles.

The Ghost Army relied on the 244th Signal Company for its radio deception. This unit included radio operators who generated fake radio transmissions for the Germans to listen in on. Extreme attention to detail was all the more important for this group as its operators needed to mimic exact Morse code keystrokes for impersonated military units.

Even though the Ghost Army was trying to draw attention to itself on battlefields by simulating a fake division, it needed real protection from enemy troops. The 406th Combat Company was the fighting force of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops that provided a perimeter defense. However, this was only a fighting force of 168 combat soldiers for perimeter guarding. This group also assisted with the visual deception by using its bulldozers to generate artificial tank tracks for the inflatable decoys.

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Arrival in France and Operation Brest

The Ghost Army arrived in England in May 1944 to be stationed at Walton Hall near Stratford Upon Avon for further training before D-Day. There, the Ghost Army practiced assembling and disabling decoy tanks and artillery. Some signal officers of the 23rd visited American field units to gain more insight on field radio hook ups and combat operations. A portion of the deception unit organized formal training exercises throughout the months of May and June 1944. Thereafter, the Americans decided to deploy a portion of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops as an advanced task force in France.

It took about two months for the entire Ghost Army to touch down in France after the Allied invasion of Normandy. However, the first remnants of this deception unit arrived to assist the beach landings with relatively small phony diversions. ELEPHANT was the first official Ghost Army operation carried out from July 1 to 4, albeit with only about 37 percent of the deception unit available. For that operation, the Americans deployed the Ghost Army to cover the movement of the 2nd Armored Division from Cerisy Forest.

The Battle of Brest, in August 1944, was the first operation for which the U.S. Army deployed the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops to provide fully combined visual, sonic, and radio deception support. Brest was a port city on the far west point of France held by the Germans and a target of considerable significance. Given its proximity to the south coast of England, it was critical the Allies retake it. When they attacked, the Allies encountered stronger than anticipated resistance, with a force of about 30,000 German troops (more than expected) tenaciously defending the city under the leadership of Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke.

The U.S. Army deployed the Ghost Army in the Battle of Brest to impersonate the withdrawn 6th Armored Division. The Operation Brest objective was to inflate the apparent size of Allied forces surrounding the city by making it seem like the 6th Armored Division was still there. The Americans hoped that the illusion of more sizable Allied forces would convince the Germans to surrender more easily or at least draw enemy attention to the flanks of the battle.

The Ghost Army created fake tank battalions at the Battle of Brest that attracted German attention. Some members of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops recall large shells landing 400 yards away during the battle. Thus, the Germans fired artillery shells that might have killed actual American combat troops in the direction of the Ghost Army’s position.

A post-battle report from Colonel Searcy lauded the thoroughness and attention to detail of the deception support provided during the battle. However, Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke’s German troops did not surrender easily and held out for weeks longer. The Ghost Army also had some coordination issues with the combat leaders that resulted in the loss of five nearby Allied tanks hit by German artillery fire directed at the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops.

Operation Bettembourg

In September, with the Allied armies advancing beyond Normandy, the Ghost Army was called upon to assist with augmenting the number of troops on the ground in France. George Patton found himself in a spot of bother during September 1944 when he commanded Allied divisions attempting to take the heavily fortified city of Metz along the Franco-German border. During this assault, he realized a dangerously wide 70-mile gap had emerged in his line with nothing more than a lightweight cavalry squadron defending it. In a letter to his wife, Patton wrote, “There is one rather bad spot in my line, but I don’t think the Huns know it… Hiding it now by the grace of God and a lot of guts.”

Patton needed the 6th Armored Division to fill that gap in his line. However, it would take some time for the 6th Armored Division to reach that gap because it was a long way away on the Atlantic coastline of France. The Germans would have likely exploited this vulnerability had they known about it. The solution for this strategic dilemma was to call in the Ghost Army to conceal this vulnerability until a genuine armored division arrived to fill the hole that had emerged in Patton’s line.

The Ghost Army arrived at this gap in Patton’s line expecting to be there for only two to three days. This was the 60-hour limit considered safe for its deception operations. Beyond that time, the deception unit was at serious risk of exposure and annihilation. However, a delayed arrival of the 6th Armored Division left the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops stationed there for almost 10 days. This was an extremely nervous extended stay for the Ghost Army, during which it drew upon its full array of dummy, radio, sonic, and special effect deception methods to generate the illusion of a much larger military force in that gap of Patton’s line.

Fortunately for the Ghost Army (and Patton), this Operation Bettembourg deception worked long enough for the much-needed reinforcements to arrive. The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops pulled out immediately when the required division filled Patton’s line. Patton’s U.S. forces eventually captured Metz in November 1944 as the Allies closed in on Germany.

Operation Viersen

Operation Viersen was the last, perhaps most significant, mission the Ghost Army completed. Allied armies approached the River Rhine in March 1945 to mount an invasion of Germany along the western border of the Third Reich. The River Rhine was the last natural barrier the Allies needed to cross for the invasion of Germany. To assist General Simpson’s U.S. Ninth Army with crossing the Rhine, the Americans deployed the Ghost Army in an area around Viersen to impersonate two divisions, amounting to about 40,000 troops, of that force.

The objective of this Ghost Army operation was to simulate the 79th and 30th divisions in a designated XIII area near the River Rhine with all their deception techniques. This deception prepared evidence that made it look like a river crossing would happen on April 1, which was later than the Ninth Army planned to cross the Rhine on March 24. The U.S. Army hoped an effective deception in the XIII area would draw the Germans away from the real planned river crossing spot near a designated XVI location where the real Ninth Army was amassing under considerable concealment.

The Ghost Army’s Operation Viersen deception worked to the extent that its fake inflatable decoys attracted a barrage of German artillery fire on March 18. Members of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops also noticed considerable Luftwaffe air activity over the XIII area where the Ghost Army was operating. Simpson’s Ninth Army crossed the River Rhine on March 24 with only 31-36 casualties (cited figures vary slightly), encountering minimal resistance from bewildered German troops.

General Simpson expressed his gratitude for the Ghost Army’s remarkable deception effort at the Rhine in a now-declassified letter. A passage from that letter reads, “I desire to commend the officers and men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, Twelfth Army Group, for their fine work and to express my appreciation for a job well done.”

Ghost Army Receives Congressional Gold Medals

The Ghost Army undertook 21 deception operations from the D-Day landings up to the Rhine River crossing in March 1945. Although these operations were much safer than those for combat divisions, the men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops still risked their lives to deceive the Germans. Three members of the Ghost Army were killed during operations.

Members of the Ghost Army were sworn to secrecy about that group’s operations after World War 2. The U.S. Army wanted to keep its deception methods a secret for potential Cold War conflicts. Consequently, little was known about the exploits of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops for four full decades after World War 2.

However, the veil of secrecy was lifted on the Ghost Army in 1996. Thereafter, Rick Beyer’s Ghost Army Legacy Project actively campaigned for greater 23rd Headquarters Special Troops recognition, preferably in the form of medals. Former members of the Ghost Army received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2022 for their daring and efficient deception exploits during World War 2.

This was fitting recognition for a deception unit estimated to have saved thousands of American troops in Western Europe. The phantom Ghost Army tricked and deceived the Wehrmacht from Brest to the River Rhine throughout the Allied thrust toward Germany. A concluding passage from the Ghost Army Congressional Gold Medal Act document says this, “The United States is eternally grateful to the soldiers of the 23d Headquarters, Special Troops and the 3133d Signal Service Company for their proficient use of innovative tactics throughout World War II, which saved lives and made significant contributions to the defeat of the Axis powers.”

Matthew Adams is a freelancer who has produced a variety of articles for various publications and websites, such as Swing Golf Magazine, Windows Report, Naval History, Military History Matters, Artilleryman, dotTech, Naval History, Against the Odds, Argunners, History Lists, and Bright Hub. Matthew is also the author of Battles of the Pacific War 1941-1945. Check out the book’s blog at Battles of the Pacific War 1941-1945.

Primary Sources

• The Ghost Army Maps

• The Ghost Army Photos

• Legacy Project Archives

Secondary Sources

• Sky History

• Ghost Army Legacy Project Operation Viersen

• 99% Invisible: The Ghost Army of WW2

• The National WWII Museum

• The Ghost Army of World War 2

• Ghost Army Legacy Project Operation Brest

• Ghost Army Legacy Project Operation Bettembourg

• The Ghost Army Conning the Third Reich

By Nate Barker

What to do with the wayward sons?

British-born, Frederick Montague DelaFosse was out of luck. His mother had abandoned him in 1867 when he was six. His father, a British army artillery captain, died in the colony of India just as Frederick turned eight. Although he was adopted and raised in England by his well-connected and wealthy uncle, a merchant for the East India Company, Frederick struggled academically. Playing more cricket than completing his papers, Frederick finished at the bottom of his class at the prestigious Wellington College. It was obvious to his uncle that the boy had little prospects. So, on a springtime walk through the streets of London with his uncle, Frederick was informed that he was being sent to Canada to “try your hand at farming in the Canadian backwoods.”

Frederick had joined the growing ranks of young aristocratic men being shipped to outposts of the British empire, in this case, the Commonwealth country of Canada.. Hailing from landed gentry and titled families, they were second or third sons, not apt to inherit land or money. Some had squandered their allowances on gambling, drinking, and other vices, becoming an embarrassment that was to be “sent away”. Some went willingly to discover prosperity that would reflect well on their families back home. All were sent away with the promise of a monthly stipend, or “remittance,” to support their new endeavors. As they settled across the globe, these disenfranchised young men would come to be known as Remittance Men.

From 1815 to 1850, before the heyday of Remittance Men, there had been an explosion of immigration from Britain to modern-day Canada. The Industrial Revolution drastically changed the textile, coal, and iron industries, introducing automation that left manual laborers without work or skills to meet new production demands. Improvements in standards of living and food production led to a population boom, overcrowding already dense cities. As many as 800,000 Britons traveled westward across the Atlantic seeking new lives and fortunes in the burgeoning lands of British North America.

These immigrants became the pioneers of expansion for the British in what would one day be the country of Canada. They started towns, built ranches, opened stores, suppressed native populations (a horrific tragedy that haunts Canada to this day), and helped to form the backbone of a new country. Their willingness to translate the hard work they left into the fortitude to explore and survive, cemented British control of upper North America. By the mid-1800s, with a large British population ensconced, many saw Canada as a place, not where one could survive but thrive.

As the Industrial Revolution marched on, aristocratic families in Britain felt its effects as well. Many new names and families were entering the ranks of the rich and privileged, causing an economic and social pinch. Not as separated from the hoi polloi as they had once been, the aristocracy sought to reign in certain aspects of their estates that would lead to further degradation. One area they were still able to influence, concerned their sometimes wayward and "superfluous" offspring; specifically what to do with them once they had become a financial burden. Cheaper to send away with a monthly remittance rather than keep at home, these young men immigrated to all corners of the British domain.

Later in his life, DelaFosse penned the book English Bloods, a semi-fictionalized account of his banishment to the Canadian wilderness. He recounts his willingness to travel to Canada was partly due to British merchants (knowing they could make a tidy profit selling supplies) who circulated manuals depicting Canada as a place where settlers could find adventure and fortune. DelaFosse wrote:

“My uncle told me he would soon have the business arranged and presented me with various pamphlets dealing with the country. I discovered that Canada possessed boundless resources, and when I read of its wonderful prairies and magnificent forests, of its splendid lakes and rivers, of the fishing and the hunting, of its glorious summers and bright and cheery winters, the sporting heart within me leapt and I was almost reconciled to the abandoning of my summer's cricketing.”

-English Bloods p.10

The hard reality

When these young Remittance Men landed on Canadian shores, they were surprised to find that the brochures did not faithfully represent what they encountered. Eastern Canadian cities were already well established and much like English ones. Landing with no social ties and an air of superiority towards this “uncouth” colony, these young men went from insiders, with families of wealth and influence, to pretentious outsiders. Seen as snobbish and too reliant on their parents’ bank accounts, the earlier wave of British immigrants, who had settled just decades before, shunned them.

Hoping to find fortune in the West, many Remittance Men tried farming and ranching. Some did succeed, but not before many of them had squandered the small sums sent from home on alcohol, gambling, and ill-guided investments. Locals labeled them as tenderfoots, greenhorns, and “dudes,” a word derived from the German word “dudendop” meaning lazy fellow. An 1895 article in the Alberta Tribune said of these young Englishmen, “[they] dress themselves up in the garb of cowboys, [with] spurs the size of small cart-wheel [and] hats cut with a scissor and covered with mud to look old and tough.”

In his travelogue, By Ocean, Prairie, and Peak, the Reverend Alexander Boddy related the following when visiting Winnipeg. “There is a class of men here who are called ‘Remitters’ or ‘Remittancemen.’ They are loafers who go round trying to negotiate loans. They are always expecting a remittance in a few posts from the Old Country.”

Quickly becoming a stereotype and trope, Remittance Men, had gained a reputation that would never fully be shaken. Cartoons and parodies were published in newspapers, and jokes were circulated. One recalls the story of a young Brit thrown in jail for drunkenness. While serving his time he was made to cut firewood for the jailhouse. Later when his father wrote to ask how he was getting along, the young man wrote that he had landed a prestigious job, “cutting cordwood for the government.”

The famous political cartoonist Arthur G. Racey's series “An Englishman in Canada” lampooned Remittance Men as dimwitted, naïve aristocratic caricatures. They also appeared in novels such as L.V. Kelly’s 1913 The Range Men and in popular songs and ballads such as “The Young British Rancher.”

Making a go of it

In 1878, Frederick DelaFosse entered into his new Canadian life with innocent eyes. “The spirit of adventure was strong within me,” he wrote, “and much as I regretted leaving England I did look forward with a vast amount of ardour to entering on life in the wonderful land that lay across the Atlantic.”

He started as a farming pupil in Ontario under the tutelage of a retired British army captain who knew little about the subject. Discouraged, he headed west to Winnipeg; first working on a survey crew, then cutting cordwood, and eventually as a railroad worker. Seven years later, in 1885, he realized he had taken in his “fill of adventure and hardship,” and returned east to Peterborough. Delafosse made Peterborough his permanent home, serving as its chief librarian from 1910 to 1946, and penned his book English Bloods (under the nom de plume Roger Vardon) while living in the city. In 1965 Peterborough honored Delafosse’s legacy by naming a new branch of the library after him.

Not all Remittance Men failed at the dream of adventure and enterprise in the Canadian West. Edward George Everard Ffolkes came from aristocratic bloodlines and was very particular about the spelling of his last name. His father was a wealthy reverend, his brother a baron, and his uncle was a landowner with an 8,000-acre estate. Edward found being a country gentleman in England difficult and like DelaFosse, was no great student; but he had always been good with his hands. He immigrated to Manitoba in 1881 at the age of nineteen and by the spring of 1883, “had built up a profitable farm with an inventory which included two teams of horses, a small herd of dairy cows, a binder, a reaper, and a small grist-cum-sawmill.”

In reality, many Remittance Men did not fit the stereotypes so quickly carved out by their new country. In one account, a pioneer rancher from Alberta described the Remittance Men he knew as a “happy-go-lucky lot, always satisfied with what was done for them.” A wife of an Alberta settler recalled Remittance Men as “very courteous, very appreciative, very considerate.”

Back home in Britain, immigration authorities were working on damage control, trying to lessen the black eye the trope of the Remittance Man had brought. Harvey Philpot, the Canadian guidebook author, warned British parents that, “sending to Canada the son who…has brought discredit upon his family in England, hoping thereby to give him a chance of…eventually becoming respectable [was] never a crueler mistake made.” He went on to describe young men cut adrift from family and friends, “sinking lower and lower,” and “long ago lamented as dead by his friends.”

In the end, Remittance Men met various fates. Some found a new life and vitality in their new homelands while others faded into poverty and obscurity. Few truly found what they and their families were looking for, and many simply returned home in further disgrace.

DelaFosse did find a new life in Canada and his memoir reflects the humility and hardships, not just for Remittance Men like himself, but for all those who came seeking something better than they left behind.

“It was only when we had been a considerable time in the country that we realized what very ordinary beings we were and how much the grit and the determination of those poorer than ourselves were to be admired. I often wonder why, when governments and communities erect monuments to heroes, they forget to erect one to the honour of the Pioneer.”

-English Bloods p.184

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Nate Barker is a creator and freelance writer huddled down in a small niche of Northern New York. Through the years, he has followed his passions and encourages others to do the same. He went to college, and even got a master’s degree, but that was a long time ago. He has come to realize that life, just like history, is grander than the sum of its parts. You can find him at www.thebullybeard.com

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Sources Referenced:

Monica Rico - Nature's Noblemen: transatlantic masculinities and the nineteenth-century American West

L.V. Kelly - The Range Men: pioneer ranchers of Alberta

Rocky Mountain Outlook - A slice of Canadian history – the remittance men

Elim Henry D’Avigdor - Antipodean Notes Collected on a Nine Months' Tour Round the World

Guide book to the Canadian Dominion [microform] : containing full information for the emigrant, the tourist, the sportsman, and the small capitalist : Philpot, Harvey J. (Harvey John) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (1871). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/cihm_11753/page/n7/mode/2up

English bloods : Delafosse, Frederick Montague, 1860-1950 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (1930). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/englishbloods00dela/mode/2up

Gentlemen emigrants : from the British public schools to the Canadian frontier : Dunae, Patrick A. (Patrick Alexander), 1950- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (1981). Internethttps://archive.org/details/gentlemenemigran0000duna/mode/2up

A community activist, a former member of the Black Panthers group, and co-founder of the Brixton Black Women’s group, Olive Morris dedicated her life to leading the fight for social justice in Britain. Though she died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the young age of 26, she played a crucial role in pioneering the British Black Power Movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

Beginning of Olive’s activism

Olive Morris was born in Jamaica in 1952 and moved to London as part of the Windrush Generation at the age of 9. The Windrush Generation is a name given to people who emigrated from the Caribbean to Britain between 1948 and 1973, answering the call to rebuild Britain following the second world war. Though people arriving from the Caribbean were told there would be jobs they could enter on arrival, it wasn’t this easy for them as many businesses did not want to employ black people and many of them experienced racism and discrimination.

Olive’s political life came to the forefront of the nation in November 1969 after the Nigerian diplomat, Clement Gomwalk, was stopped by the police and accused of stealing his own car. Olive intervened in his arrest, attempting to stop the police from attacking the diplomat, along with a small group of other protestors. In her account of the incident, Olive writes that she was beaten up in the police van and subject to racist and sexist abuse in the police station following her arrest. This photo of Olive Morris held by the Black Cultural Archives shows her bruised and swollen following the attack, and the reverse contains her handwritten comments that verify it: “Taken at about 10pm on 15th Nov 69 after the police had beaten me up.”

During her arrest, she was physically abused, threatened with sexual violence, and humiliated by the male police officers who berated her for wearing ‘male’ clothing. Shockingly, Olive was forced to strip in order to prove she was a woman. This became a defining moment in her political life, driving her forward in her activism for the Black liberation movement.

As Longley notes, Olive pushed back “popularised and limiting framings of Black British identity”. Similarly, Ford states that Olive’s “lit cigarette, bare feet, and androgynous clothing communicated a youthful irreverence that transgressed what many perceived as the respectable boundaries of black womanhood”. As a Jamaican-born, London-raised, and queer feminist revolutionary, there were many aspects of Olive’s presentation that did not fit into the confines of socially acceptable identities at the time.

The law used to stop Clement Gomwalk was an example of “Sus Law”, a racist UK law that was used strategically against young black men throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Reminiscent of stop and search powers used by police today, which we know are still used disproportionately against black men, section 4 of the Vagrancy Act 1824 allowed police to stop, arrest, and charge an individual for simply looking suspicious. This law and its use by the police and courts had a detrimental impact on Black communities across London and the UK.

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The incident occurred at a time of intense discrimination of people of colour across the UK, reflected by Enoch Powell’s 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech which was criticised as one of the most overtly racist public addresses in modern British history. Following the incident, Olive was charged with assault on a police officer, threatening behaviour, and possession of dangerous weapons. For this, she was given a three-month prison sentence which was suspended for three years, thrusting Olive to the forefront of the British Black Power Movement.

At the time of her arrest, she was already a member of the British Black Panthers Movement, which she joined in 1968 alongside key figures such as Linton Kwesi Johnson and Althea Johnson. Whilst in the group, with council housing waiting lists becoming increasingly long and housing standards declining by the minute, Olive began squatting alongside her friend, Liz Obi. Olive and Liz, 20 and 18 at the time, were supposedly the first people to begin squatting in private accommodation, going against the norm of squatting solely in publicly owned buildings. Olive is pictured on the cover of the Squatters’ Handbook, an iconic shot that was taken of her climbing onto the roof of a flat she squatted in following a police attempt at illegally evicting her. This was one of three illegal eviction attempts which were resisted by Olive and Liz, playing a part in the flat becoming one of the “longest-running squats in the country” and staying occupied until August 1999.

Independent organisation

In 1974, she became a founding member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group (BBWG) and later founded the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent (OWAAD). This was driven by misogyny in the Black Panthers and a refusal of the group to consider women’s issues, leading her to leave the group and set up an autonomous organisation alongside fellow activists Beverley Bryan and Liz Obi. A pamphlet issued by the Brixton Black Women’s Group, which remained active until 1989, states that they aim to “study and analyse the situation of black women in Britain” because such an analysis has been “long overdue”.

Though leaving school with no formal qualifications, Olive moved away from Brixton in 1975 to pursue a degree in economics and social science at Manchester University. Here, she continued to campaign for causes close to her heart and played an active role in community change. Olive was an active member of the Manchester Black Women’s Cooperative and the Black Women’s Mutual Aid Group. As well as campaigning for the abolition of student fees for overseas students, she also set up a supplementary school that made better educational provision accessible for Black children.

Olive returned to Brixton on her graduation in 1978 and immediately set to work. Alongside the Mary Seacole Craft Group, the BBWG set up the Mary Seacole House in Stockwell Green, later renamed the Black Women’s Centre. They offered a community space for Black women to gather, connect, and take part in arts, crafts, drama, literature, and music. It was also a space for political groups to come together and host services around citizens' rights, welfare, and health.

In coalition with other Black organisations, the BBWG also helped to spearhead the Black People Against State Harassment (BASH) campaign which fought against the widespread and discriminatory use of the Vagrancy Act’s ‘Sus Law’, earlier discussed. In a flyer written with her partner, Mike McColgan, Olive writes about police brutality at the Notting Hill Carnival, remarking:

“The Ad-Hoc Committee was set up after the weekend of the Noting Hill Carnival, when the police not only flexed their para-military muscles at the Carnival itself, but also systematically terrorised and assaulted black youth at a number of tube stations in South London.”

Here, she talks about the ‘Committee against Police Repression’ that she set up following the carnival, feeling fellow left-wing activists such as the Anti-Nazi League were simply “front-bashing” – trying to intimidate people whilst not doing enough to support long-term change and anti-racist work. This flyer shows how her work with other social change activists was always coupled with a critical lens, addressing the intersectional issues of racism, sexism, and classism which other groups did not always do.

As Olive and Mark have highlighted in their flyer above, the BASH campaign believed that the British political left had conflated anti-fascism with anti-racism, which was harmful to the anti-racist work that groups such as the BBWG were trying to effect, calling for Black and Asian self-defence campaigns as resistance to police violence.

The Black Women’s Centre was to be at the centre of further anti-racist organising throughout the country when, in 1981, the Brixton Defence Campaign (BDC) was formed, bringing together the forces of BASH and the BBWG. In the aftermath of the Brixton Uprising, which was an uprising against state brutality and oppression lasting for 3 days, the BDC aimed to “co-ordinate those arrested” and give support to those who “continue to be victimised.” The Brixton Uprising was a culmination of poor housing conditions, state violence, high rates of unemployment, and continued discrimination against Black people across the nation. After the violence and many arrests of protestors, who were largely young, Black men, the BBWG stepped in to support the protestors and advocate for the Black community in Brixton.

Liberation across the world

Olive’s activism wasn’t just confined to the UK, however. She rallied for causes across the world, including for the freedom of activist Angela Davis and liberation movements such as those in South Africa and Mozambique.

In 1977, Olive visited China and was deeply interested in how a once-oppressed group of people uprooted an archaic power system and replaced it with a “people’s government”. In a report written for the BBWG’s newsletter, Speak Out, a sister observes:

“Many of the new techniques and methods of work have been developed by ordinary

Chinese people, peasants and workers, some with only a very basic education. This has

been made possible because, since the struggle began over 50 years ago, the leadership has put great emphasis on the ability of the people to build socialism by their own efforts”.

Olive and the BBWG praised China and the example that it had set for other colonised countries, serving as an aspirational image “of a peasant society which has had a successful revolution”, as well as the support that the country expressed for the struggles of people in places such as Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Interestingly, as a non-hierarchical group, the writings produced by the BBWG were never attributed to any individual author and were always published as a collective voice. Milo Miller’s book, Speak Out: The Brixton Black Women’s Group, is an anthology of the BBWG’s writings aimed at spotlighting their work. In the preface, the editor notes how the work of the group was absent from accounts of many “key political issues, campaigns, and events in 1970s and 1980s Britain” despite them playing a central role. Though their work paved the way for many feminist and leftist campaigns in the decades following, the BBWG’s work has been largely overlooked by academics and the general public alike.

Olive’s death

After a life of activism, Olive sadly passed away in 1979 from Hodgkin's Lymphoma. She began to feel ill during a trip to Spain and, though undergoing treatment for the disease, she died at the age of 26.

Though her life was short, it was incredibly remarkable and Olive has left a lasting imprint on leftist movements across the nation, whether acknowledged or not. In 1986, Lambeth Council named a building in honour of the “powerhouse of the squatter movement”. Lambeth Council also holds a collection of archives from Olive’s short but impactful life called the ‘Remember Olive Collection’. At the time this project began, there were no public records of Olive. Now, thanks to the research from this group, there is a selection of information, photographs and writings from Olive as well as 30 oral history interviews on her life.

Please consider donating to the Lambeth Archives. This important local resource houses the Olive Morris collection. Small archives are doing the heaving lifting to maintain our history, one piece at a time.

Elizabeth Burns is a writer based in the UK.

Bibliography

Primary resources:

“A Sister’s Visit to China.” 1977. Do You Remember Olive Morris. 1977.

Dyrom, Carolyn . n.d. “Squatting in Brixton in the 1970s.” Do You Remember Olive Morris.

General. 2014. “BCA Exhibits.” BCA Exhibits. 2014.

“Police – Do You Remember Olive Morris?” 2020. Do You Remember Olive Morris? 2020.

“Speak out Pamphlet - Black Women’s Group Brixton.” 2024. Google Arts & Culture. Google Arts & Culture. 2024.

Secondary resources:

Brixton Black Women's Group. 2023. Speak Out! Verso Books.Kelley, Robin D G, and Stephen G N Tuck. 2015. The Other Special Relationship : Race, Rights, and Riots in Britain and the United States. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Obi, Liz . n.d. “Remembering Time to Pass the Memories On.” Accessed November 25, 2024.

Olive Morris | Activist | Blue Plaques.” 2024. English Heritage. 2024.

“Olive Morris and the British Black Panthers.” 2024. Layersoflondon.org. 2024.

Prescod, Colin. 2016. “Black People against State Harassment (BASH) Campaign – a Report.” Race & Class 58 (1): 94–100.

“Talk: Olive Morris House - Gone but Not Forgotten.” 2022. Lambeth Council. September 8, 2022.

Tsang, Amie. “Overlooked No More: How Olive Morris Fought for Black Women’s Rights in Britain,” New York Times. October 30, 2019.

Further reading

Fisher, T. 2012. What’s Left of Blackness: Feminisms, Transracial Solidarities, and the Politics of Belonging in Britain. Springer.

Longley, Oumou. 2021. “Olive and Me in the Archive: A Black British Woman in an Archival Space.” Feminist Review 129 (1): 123–37.