It has recently been announced that Margot Adler, a prominent figure in the American Pagan community, passed away earlier today at the age of sixty-eight. I did not know her personally, although was well aware of her through the reputation that she had attained by authoring Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers and Other Pagans in America Today. Named after the prominent Wiccan ritual, which itself took its name from an alleged witches' rite in the ancient Hellenic world, Drawing Down the Moon was a truly seminal and excellent piece of work, constituting a major cornerstone in the development of Pagan studies as a field of scholarly enquiry. First published in 1979 and subsequently witnessing re-publication in revised form in 1986, 1996, and 2006, Drawing Down the Moon documented the growth and diversity of contemporary Paganism in the United States, and remains essential reading for anyone dipping their toes into Pagan studies today.
My thoughts go out to Adler's friends and family at this difficult time.
Ethan Doyle White's personal blog - devoted to interdisciplinary scholarship on religion, magic, and the preternatural.
Monday, 28 July 2014
Friday, 11 July 2014
The highs and lows of being a scholarly book reviewer...
Book reviewing has played a significant role in my academic trajectory so far. Over the past few years, I have published reviews of various tomes, both academic and non-academic, in such peer-reviewed journals as The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies, Correspondences: An Online Journal for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism, Papers from the Institute of Archaeology, Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture, and the Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review (I keep a list updated here). Book reviews appearing in such journals play an important role in the world of academia, allowing time-strapped scholars to gain a quick, critical overview of a publication that they themselves simply don't have the time to read. It also has many benefits for the reviewer themselves; not only do they gain copies of works that might otherwise be out of their price range (and let's face it, academia is hardly a path to prosperity), but it enables them to deepen their knowledge of a subject and develop skills in critical analysis that should aid them when they come to authoring their own papers and books. I would also argue that it can benefit a book's author too, as they can gain constructive criticism from their knowledgeable peers, thus enabling them to recognise any flaws that their work might suffer from and hopefully avoid them in future. At the same time, they can gain praise and acknowledgement for all their hard work, which is an emotional boost if nothing else. And then, of course, there are the benefits to the publisher, who are provided with extra publicity for their publication (and remember: all publicity is good publicity), which I would hope can encourage sales, either by individuals or, more likely, by university libraries.
Of course, this all means that the good book reviewer must do two distinct things. First, they must offer a thorough overview of the work in question, outlining its structure and its main arguments and/or findings. This is primarily for other scholars, who probably won't have the time to read every publication that is relevant to their field of research. Second, the reviewer must critique the work, focusing in particular on any perceived flaws that are present in its evidence and argument, as well as in other areas such as its readability and quality of prose. This is for both the wider scholarly community and the book's author themselves. When I do my reviewing, I always make a point of trying to highlight what I see as both good and bad aspects of every book. I never want to author a review that is wholly negative or solely positive; I'll either look for the silver lining in a grey sky or point out how a lovely sunny day could possibly be improved. Connected to this, I'll try to see a positive aspect to something that might otherwise be seen as a flaw; for instance, I might have criticisms of a book for not meeting the standards of academic scholarship, but then I'll try and turn that around by pointing out that this particular work would be good for a non-academic audience!
However, one of the more difficult aspects of book reviewing is receiving responses from the book's original authors. This has now happened to me twice, in each instance from authors who do not work within the confines of academia. This can be a really awkward and uncomfortable situation, particularly if the authors are not happy with my review. I have been fortunate in that one of those who contacted me was doing so in order to offer their thanks for what was a rather glowing review of their work; they also informed me that they fully accepted my few constructive criticisms. However, in the second instance, the response that I received was a little colder; this author did not accept the criticisms that I had expressed of their work, and sent me an email to inform me of this fact. As a writer myself, I can certainly appreciate that we invest a lot of time and emotional attachment in our work, and thus it can be disheartening to learn of others' criticisms of it, particularly if we do not think that those criticisms are valid. However, it put me in a somewhat uncomfortable position; I've gone to the effort of reviewing the book (in a few cases having paid for the work myself in order to help a fledgling scholarly journal out), and have always sought to be honest and fair-minded, and thus don't particularly want to be drawn into a protracted argument or debate on the issue. Furthermore, when I signed up to review the work, I never expected to be put face-to-face (or email-to-email) with the author themselves; that wasn't part of the deal. But is it fair for an author to actively challenge, or even contact, the book reviewer ? In the wider sphere of academia, there seems to be an unspoken rule that it is largely deemed bad practice to do so, although should this apply to those operating within the realms of independent scholarship too ? I don't have answers to these questions, but I felt the personal need to air them nonetheless.
Book reviewing is part and parcel of academic life. Although I have encountered scholars who find it tedious and of little value, I have also met just as many who deem it an important opportunity, whether you are on the lower rungs of the academic ladder (like myself) or have worked yourself up into the higher echelons. For any aspiring academics and/or established independent scholars out there who might be reading this, I would certainly recommend the act of book reviewing to both improve their own literary and critical thinking skills as well as to contribute to the wider world of scholarship.
Of course, this all means that the good book reviewer must do two distinct things. First, they must offer a thorough overview of the work in question, outlining its structure and its main arguments and/or findings. This is primarily for other scholars, who probably won't have the time to read every publication that is relevant to their field of research. Second, the reviewer must critique the work, focusing in particular on any perceived flaws that are present in its evidence and argument, as well as in other areas such as its readability and quality of prose. This is for both the wider scholarly community and the book's author themselves. When I do my reviewing, I always make a point of trying to highlight what I see as both good and bad aspects of every book. I never want to author a review that is wholly negative or solely positive; I'll either look for the silver lining in a grey sky or point out how a lovely sunny day could possibly be improved. Connected to this, I'll try to see a positive aspect to something that might otherwise be seen as a flaw; for instance, I might have criticisms of a book for not meeting the standards of academic scholarship, but then I'll try and turn that around by pointing out that this particular work would be good for a non-academic audience!
However, one of the more difficult aspects of book reviewing is receiving responses from the book's original authors. This has now happened to me twice, in each instance from authors who do not work within the confines of academia. This can be a really awkward and uncomfortable situation, particularly if the authors are not happy with my review. I have been fortunate in that one of those who contacted me was doing so in order to offer their thanks for what was a rather glowing review of their work; they also informed me that they fully accepted my few constructive criticisms. However, in the second instance, the response that I received was a little colder; this author did not accept the criticisms that I had expressed of their work, and sent me an email to inform me of this fact. As a writer myself, I can certainly appreciate that we invest a lot of time and emotional attachment in our work, and thus it can be disheartening to learn of others' criticisms of it, particularly if we do not think that those criticisms are valid. However, it put me in a somewhat uncomfortable position; I've gone to the effort of reviewing the book (in a few cases having paid for the work myself in order to help a fledgling scholarly journal out), and have always sought to be honest and fair-minded, and thus don't particularly want to be drawn into a protracted argument or debate on the issue. Furthermore, when I signed up to review the work, I never expected to be put face-to-face (or email-to-email) with the author themselves; that wasn't part of the deal. But is it fair for an author to actively challenge, or even contact, the book reviewer ? In the wider sphere of academia, there seems to be an unspoken rule that it is largely deemed bad practice to do so, although should this apply to those operating within the realms of independent scholarship too ? I don't have answers to these questions, but I felt the personal need to air them nonetheless.
Book reviewing is part and parcel of academic life. Although I have encountered scholars who find it tedious and of little value, I have also met just as many who deem it an important opportunity, whether you are on the lower rungs of the academic ladder (like myself) or have worked yourself up into the higher echelons. For any aspiring academics and/or established independent scholars out there who might be reading this, I would certainly recommend the act of book reviewing to both improve their own literary and critical thinking skills as well as to contribute to the wider world of scholarship.
Monday, 7 July 2014
An Interview with Prof. Ronald Hutton
This week
here at Albion Calling I have the very great honour of presenting an
interview with a man whose work has inspired both myself and many,
many others; Professor
Ronald Hutton of the
University of Bristol in southwest England. One of Britain's foremost
historians, his prodigious scholarly output has ranged from the
tumultuous events of seventeenth-century England to the pre-Christian
belief systems of the British Isles, and from Western understandings
of Siberian "shamanisms" to the early history of the new
religious movement commonly known as Wicca. The author of at least
fifteen books and many other papers and book chapters, he has also
found the time to present a number of documentaries and a recent
television series on Britain's lesser-known museums, as well as
serving a term as a Commissioner of English Heritage. In previous
interviews conducted with Necropolis Now (here
and here)
he has discussed his research and relationship with the contemporary
Pagan movement but here offers us a fascinating overview into his
wider life and career.
EDW: At times in pieces that you have written, especially one of the essays in Witches, Druids and King Arthur, you have referred briefly to your upbringing and its influence on your later work. Would you be prepared to enlarge on that subject here?
EDW: At times in pieces that you have written, especially one of the essays in Witches, Druids and King Arthur, you have referred briefly to your upbringing and its influence on your later work. Would you be prepared to enlarge on that subject here?
RH:
Yes. I was brought up by my mother, after my father died when I was a
small child. She was a delightful and admirable person, of whom I was
very fond, but also rather unworldly, and in increasingly fragile
health. As a result, I spent most of my formative years trying to
support and preserve her, a struggle which I finally lost as she died
when I was a student. One of her most significant influences on me
was that she was herself a Pagan,
of a recognisable Victorian and Edwardian kind. She was deeply
influenced by the Greek and Roman classics, regarded the Olympian
deities as the natural divinities of the world, had a sense of a
single archaic mother goddess as standing behind them, and felt an
immanent divinity in nature. She never practised any acts of worship
or other rites, and her attitudes were entirely literary; and indeed
there was a large nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature
to support them. My affection for them, and for her, gave me a
sympathy for Pagans of the mid and late twentieth century kind, such
as Wiccans, when I
encountered them from my teens onward. It also, of course, left me
with a knowledge and affection for the Victorian and Edwardian
literature which had inspired her. More generally, my relationship
with my mother gave me a great liking for women and a preference for
their company. It also left me without any of three great formative
influences which defined the attitudes of my friends: Christianity,
patriarchy and parent-child conflict. As a result I lack a lot of the
instinctual assumptions and responses manifested by most of my
generation, which has both advantages and disadvantages for a
writer.
EDW:
Having obtained a BA and MA in History from Cambridge
University’s Pembroke
College and then a DPhil in the subject from Oxford
University’s St
John’s College, you went on to an Oxford fellowship at Magdalen
College and then permanent employment at the University
of Bristol in 1981, starting off as a Lecturer and subsequently
working your way up to a Readership and finally a Professorship. Was
the academy something that you had wanted to be a part of from youth,
or was this desire only a later emergence? What, in particular, were
the formative influences that led you in this particular direction?
RH:
I always wanted to get to university, because that was the gateway to
a well-paid job, for somebody with no family contacts in any
occupation. Cambridge was the best for somebody growing up, as I did,
in the east of England. My father’s death and my mother’s ill
health meant that money was tight, and so I had to work my way up
through the state school system, step by step, eventually winning a
scholarship to Cambridge when I was seventeen. I did not, however,
imagine that an academic career would be a viable one for me, as
posts in it were so few at that time and dependent on absolutely
stellar university examination results. So I prepared for other
professions, such as the Home Civil Service or journalism, until my
actual undergraduate examination scores, to my surprise, began to put
me within reach of the academic ladder. This really seemed an
impossible dream come true: to be able to make a living out of what I
genuinely best enjoyed doing, and had expected would remain a hobby.
I have been very lucky.
EDW:
Growing up, you juggled the twin interests of history and
archaeology,
being a member of your local archaeological society, taking part in
excavations at Pilsdon
Pen, Ascott-under-Wychwood chambered tomb, and Hen
Domen castle, and subsequently attending
Glyn Daniel's
archaeological lectures at Cambridge. Those familiar with your two
books on the subject of pre-Christian belief systems in Britain, The
Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy
(Blackwell, 1991) and Pagan
Britain (Yale
University Press, 2013), will be well aware that you still retain a
very keen interest in developments within British archaeology, and
are comfortable enough with the subject to publish works of an
interdisciplinary character. What
are your feelings regarding the relationship and co-operation between
the two disciplines, with particular regard for the study of
prehistoric and protohistoric religions?
![]() |
Hutton's two books on ancient pre-Christian belief systems in Britain and the Atlantic Archipelago; copyright Blackwell and Yale University Press respectively. |
RH:
I don’t think that anything that I have written has been genuinely
interdisciplinary – I am very much a historian who uses
archaeological data – and I do not know of any colleague who
balances equally between archaeology and history in her or his work.
There should in theory be at least a perfect complementarity between
them, as history is essentially concerned with textual evidence and
archaeology with material evidence. This means that prehistory is
wholly dependent on archaeological material, and that in later
historic periods the archaeology can be interpreted mostly in
accordance with the written evidence. It is in the earlier historic
periods that the material and the textual data need in theory to be
brought together as a single body of evidence, but this is more
awkward than may appear. The two disciplines have totally different
personnel and cultural, practical and philosophical underpinnings:
history is unequivocally an art and a craft, but archaeology is
pulled between claims that it is also an art and counter-assertions
that it is actually a social,
or even a hard,
science. The skills needed for each are different. In practice,
historians rarely use archaeological evidence unless the material
excavated is a text, while archaeologists in the past interpreted
their finds too much in accordance with the assertions of ancient and
medieval writers, and lately some have swung too much in the other
direction, towards denying the relevance of written testimony at all.
It is an uneasy relationship.
EDW:
Your early academic publications – The
Royalist War Effort
(Routledge, 1982),
The
Restoration
(Clarendon, 1985),
Charles
the Second
(Clarendon, 1989),
and The
British Republic
(Palgrave Macmillan,
1990) – were devoted to Britain in the seventeenth century, looking
at the Civil War, Cromwell's Commonwealth, and the subsequent
Restoration of the monarchy. More recently you have published on the
subject with Debates
in Stuart History
(Palgrave Macmillan,
2004) and A
Brief History of Britain 1485–1660
(Robinson, 2011).
What inspired this particular interest, and why did you pursue it
through your MA and DPhil? Is it something that you intend to return
to in future?
RH:
The English
Civil War and the following English
Revolution were very prominent in national memory in the years
1966-1973, when I was a teenager; perhaps because those were a period
of intense cultural change, when basic questions of national identity
were up for review as they had been (more violently) in the earlier
period. There were lots of pop histories and novels, and two
memorable films, produced about this bit of history during those
years, and the first and largest historical re-enactment society in
Britain, the
Sealed Knot, was founded to celebrate it. I consumed them all
once my interest had been activated by a school project and by
realising how much the war and revolution ran through the stories of
the historic monuments which I systematically visited during
vacations. It became an abiding passion, and had I not become a
historian I would probably have written a series of (not very good)
historical novels about the Civil War period in my spare time.
Instead I wrote my doctoral thesis and first book about it; which was
exactly the right choice as it was a focus of intense interest among
professional historians at that time, and so an excellent launch-pad
for a career. I followed up this beginning with three more books, but
was increasingly aware that I had always been interested in other
areas of history as well, in which I might be more of a pioneer now
that my career was securely established, and so I went into them
instead. I still write about early modern Britain, as you have noted,
and intend to return there in the next book after my current one,
which will probably be a study of Oliver
Cromwell. I have also stayed loyal to the Sealed Knot, and am now
its Vice President for life, having worked my way up to that level
from the ranks.
EDW:
From your studies on seventeenth-century history, you went on to
focus on British folk festivals, resulting in the publication of The
Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700
(Oxford University Press, 1994) and
The
Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain
(Oxford University
Press, 1996), the latter of which has probably become one of the most
important and oft-cited publications in British folkloristics,
period. What
was it that led to this avenue of your research and how did you feel
about the intersection between history and folkloristics that it
entailed?
RH:
An interest in folk culture, and especially in those aspects of it
which allegedly descended from pre-Christian times, was one feature
of the counter-culture which flourished in Britain around 1970, and
of which I was a part: the folk club was often the local centre of
that counter-culture. Such an interest united easily with my
affection for ancient paganism, and when I was in my mid-teens I
drafted the plan and filled in much of the material for a book on
seasonal festivals, which almost twenty years later became The
Stations of the Sun (as a teenager I also drafted a book on
Neolithic tomb-shrines which provided some of the material for the
one on ancient British paganism which I published in 1991). In the
intervening period, scholarly folklorists almost completely changed
their attitudes to the subject, from assuming that virtually all folk
customs derived from pagan rites to realising that very few did; and
my work reflected that shift and gave me more interesting work to do
as a historian, in trying to work out how customs had actually
developed and mutated. Folklore is, however, a different discipline
from history, having more in common with the social sciences, and is
in any case hardly represented in the British academic system. I
don’t really think, therefore, that my work actually represented
‘an intersection between history and folkloristics’ so much as a
historian using data partly generated by folklore studies.
EDW:
Although often eclipsed by your research and publications in other
areas, your work on the shamanism(s) of Siberia is something that I
have found to be particularly interesting, and given that it is your
only work that isn't Britain-centred, it stands out as a somewhat
unusual part of your oeuvre. Your book Shamans:
Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination
(Hambledon and London, 2001) is an
excellent introduction to the subject, and I am aware that you have
previously published a popular guide on the subject, The
Shamans of Siberia (Isle
of Avalon Press, 1993). What is it about this particular part of the
world and its magico-religious beliefs that fascinates you, and how
did you go about researching a spirituality that is all the way on
the other side of the Eurasian continent, in an incredibly culturally
and linguistically diverse region?
![]() |
Hutton's Shamans. Copyright Hambledon and London. |
RH:
The
two publications that you mention are very different in kind. The
‘popular guide’ was a lecture that I gave at Glastonbury
to raise money for an institution there, the leaders of which then
asked to publish and sell it locally in order to raise more. It was
never intended to attract serious scholarly attention; but the later
book was, and remains an essential component of my evolving body of
work. My willingness to write on the subject was propelled by two
developments in the years around 1990. One was the growing interest
in shamanism as a major aspect of British alternative forms of
spirituality. The other, and more important, was Carlo
Ginzburg’s promotion of a universal
archaic shamanism as a key influence on early modern images of
witchcraft. Both drew ultimately on a model of shamanism
developed by Mircea
Eliade in the mid twentieth century, which I found both inspiring
and limiting, as I did the works which had embraced it. I believed
that a tighter definition was needed to make sense of differing
regional patterns in European folk beliefs concerning the
supernatural, based on Siberia which was the region that had produced
the term and concept of the shaman.
For a British scholar I was unusually well equipped to suggest one, in that my mother had come from a Russian family, and her mother told me much about the Tsarist Russia of her own youth. This made Siberia quite familiar to me as Russia’s huge back garden, and my own travels in the USSR in the 1980s enabled me to study the relics of Siberian shamanism in museums and talk to old people who had experienced shamanic rites. My work on the subject therefore became a vital component of my slow accumulation of data and expertise for a major study of the folkloric roots of European witchcraft beliefs, which is currently coming to fruition. I can usually identify a moment when I decide to write a particular book, and that on shamanism, eventually published in 2001, was conceived in a rural pub, at Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, over a lunch of bread, cheese and farmhouse cider in August 1990. I was rereading Eliade, and suddenly realised that I could do something distinctive with the subject.
For a British scholar I was unusually well equipped to suggest one, in that my mother had come from a Russian family, and her mother told me much about the Tsarist Russia of her own youth. This made Siberia quite familiar to me as Russia’s huge back garden, and my own travels in the USSR in the 1980s enabled me to study the relics of Siberian shamanism in museums and talk to old people who had experienced shamanic rites. My work on the subject therefore became a vital component of my slow accumulation of data and expertise for a major study of the folkloric roots of European witchcraft beliefs, which is currently coming to fruition. I can usually identify a moment when I decide to write a particular book, and that on shamanism, eventually published in 2001, was conceived in a rural pub, at Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, over a lunch of bread, cheese and farmhouse cider in August 1990. I was rereading Eliade, and suddenly realised that I could do something distinctive with the subject.
EDW:
More recently, you have turned your attention to the thorny issue of
the Druids with
your books The
Druids: A History (Hambledon
Continuum, 2007) and Blood
and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain
(Yale University
Press, 2009). However, rather than simply going over the little
evidence that we do have for these magico-religious specialists of
the Western European Iron Age, as many others have already done, you
have provided an analysis of how they have actually been
re-interpreted through history, from the Early Medieval to the 1990s.
What drove you to investigate this particular subject and to author
both an academically-oriented and popular-oriented book on the basis
of your research?
![]() |
Hutton's two books on the Druids: The Druids (2007) was aimed at a popular audience, while Blood and Mistletoe (2009) was academically-oriented. Copyright Hambledon Continuum and Yale UP respectively. |
RH:
Once more a confluence of modern spirituality and scholarly
trajectory inspired these books. Druidry had become a major component
of British Paganism during the early 1990s, and I had been befriended
by a number of leading Druids as a result of my publications; so it
was enticing to write about their tradition. More important, to deal
with Druids as an aspect of the British imagination since 1500 was a
natural offshoot of my existing work on the modern reception of
images and ideas gained from ancient paganism. It was an especially
important, rich and extensive field, which plugged into all sorts of
political, cultural and social issues in British history.
Furthermore,
I was aware by the opening of the 2000s of the damage that my
association with the study of modern witchcraft had done to my
academic career, and thought that my engagement with a different
subject – though still related to the reception of ancient paganism
– would reduce this association in the minds of professional
colleagues; which it certainly did. My reason for publishing two
books was that I wanted to see if instead – as had been my habit –
of trying to fuse heavyweight scholarly research and popular appeal
into the same book, I would split them between two different works. I
don’t think that the tactic really worked, as the bigger and more
scholarly one still stole the limelight from the other, so I
abandoned it thereafter.
EDW:
What projects have you got on the horizon for which we should be
keeping an eye out?
RH:
I have a big one on the go at present, funded by the Leverhulme
Trust, of a comprehensive study of the concept of the witch, in a
global, ancient and folkloric setting, to understand more fully the
context of the early modern witch trials. This is of course inspired
by the work of Continental historians and folklorists such as Carlo
Ginzburg, Éva
PĂłcs, Wolfgang
Behringer and Gustav Henningsen, and as such is an approach which
has been much less favoured by English-speaking counterparts. It
will, however, inevitably have some differences from the work of
these Continental colleagues, in making a more comprehensive survey
of the evidence, emphasising regional differences much more heavily,
and relying less on modern folklore collections to plug gaps in
earlier evidence. I have six people on my team, the others consisting
of a distinguished Classicist, Dr Genevieve Liveley, a medievalist,
Dr Louise Wilson,
and three research students, working respectively on Italy, male
witches and the animal familiar. Together we should produce three
books, mine being the largest and the broadest in its scope, and
three doctoral theses with resulting spin-off publications, in three
to four years.
EDW:
Much has been said about your relationship with contemporary
Paganism, and in particular Wicca, although in contrast basically
nothing has been commented on your dealings with other world
religions. Given that you were born in India, I would be particularly
interested to learn of your relationship with the religions of the
subcontinent.
RH:
I don’t have much of a personal relationship with them, though I
know them fairly well and have interacted with both at times,
especially on my travels. I find Hinduism perfectly familiar and
attractive as an eastern extension of ancient European paganism.
Buddhism appeals to me rather less, as I am too fond of this world
and life, but I admire the compassion which it encourages in some of
its adherents.
EDW:
Are your relations with Christianity, Islam or Judaism more
important?
RH:
Certainly they have impinged on me more often, both because my
travels have taken in more countries where they are significant
forces, and because of their impact on my own society. I know their
core texts, especially those of Judaism and Christianity, and of
course Christianity has been the dominant and defining faith of my
own society. My relationship with all three might be described as one
of benevolent detachment. In the case of Christianity, however, my
attitudes take almost an opposite form to that propounded by most
liberal humanists, which is to suggest that Jesus Christ was at the
least a wonderful person and teacher, but that his message was
distorted and deformed by established Churches. I remain deeply
impressed by the achievements to which many Christians have been
inspired by their religion, in art, architecture, literature and acts
of courage and generosity, while finding its original texts
completely unsympathetic and the figure of Jesus deeply unattractive.
That is the reason why I could never be a Christian myself, and of
course the influence of the religion is totally missing from my
personal background. My affection and respect for many individual
Christians, now and in the past, is therefore propelled by what they
have managed to make of what seems to me such unpromising original
material. I am perfectly aware that the same religion has also
inspired people to appalling acts of atrocity, and that its basic
claim to sole truth and goodness can been deeply problematic in a
multi-cultural, multi-faith society. On the other hand, some of the
finest Christian literature, art and architecture has been produced
by societies which were also among the most murderously intolerant,
so there is no straightforward opposition of good and evil in the
story. I have little in common with people of any kind who
instinctually view the cosmos as polarised between right and wrong
beliefs, causes and groups, both in the past and in the present. The
world seems to me always to have been a messier sort of place.
EDW:
Most recently you have been making regular appearances on British
television, presenting the 12-episode series Curiosities
(Yesterday, 2013), in which you
visited various lesser known museums around Britain, as well as the
documentary A
Very British Witchcraft
(Channel 4, 2013),
which offered a biographical account of Gerald
Gardner and the foundation of Gardnerian
Wicca. Aside from these ventures, you also make semi-regular
appearances in a wide array of documentaries, most recently Tudor
Monastery Farm,
and have become a familiar face on British television.
How did you get
involved in the world of TV and what do you see as the importance of
such appearances for public outreach?
RH:
I have been making television appearances since the mid-1980s, and
got essential broadcasting experience before then on radio stations,
first local and then national, like a lot of academics who have
become prominent in the media. During my teens I regularly acted on
stage, and this gave me an ability to speak concisely and clearly and
to be directed by others, both of which come in useful when
broadcasting. Television companies and crews are very unstable units,
and so a straightforward continuity of reputation was difficult to
build for a part-time media person like myself. I could get a deluge
of work for a few years and then little for a few after that, and
often commissioning editors would want me to present a series but
were unable to find a good enough proposal for one from a company. It
has taken thirty years for me to become the ‘go-to’ historian on
a range of subjects for most directors. I enjoy being interviewed,
because I can give spontaneous answers and turn up on set for a few
hours of work. Presenting is less fun, because I often have to speak
scripted lines, and the amount of time that needs to be blocked out
to film a one-hour documentary, let alone a series, cannot usually be
taken off from my university duties. Television and radio, however,
are marvellous ways of communicating history and prehistory to the
general public, and especially the first: I reckon that two minutes
of prime television time is worth an hour on radio or a weekly column
in a newspaper. I also feel a debt to the mass media, in that my
school, though it did have one very good history teacher, simply did
not have the resources to train me for the broad approach to the past
needed to pass the Cambridge entrance examination. I did that myself
by reading popular history books borrowed from the public library,
and by watching as much television history and prehistory as I could.
Without those media I would have no academic career, and I feel
obliged to give a lot back to them in gratitude.
EDW:
From October 2009 to September 2013, you served as a Commissioner of
English
Heritage. How did you find yourself in this prestigious role, and
what did the position actually entail?
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The English Heritage logo |
RH:
English Heritage is the public organisation, answerable to the
central government, which protects the physical remains of the
nation’s past, both by dealing with apparent threats to buildings
and landscapes from neglect and development and by caring for over
four hundred properties itself, including Stonehenge and the best
bits of Hadrian’s Wall. The commission on which I served is the
governing body of the whole thing, forming all policies for it and
taking all major decisions, and I was the historian upon it for that
term, being preceded by Sir
David Cannadine. I applied because English Heritage itself
invited me to do so, as a result of my combination of an academic
profile with one in public service and the mass media. I was not the
only person whom it approached, and other notable scholars applied
independently, so the competition was serious. I think that I won the
position when interviewed (by top civil servants and a leading
archaeologist) because I had first-hand knowledge of all the
properties which English Heritage manages. Again, my teenage
activities were crucial here, because in my school holidays I had
systematically visited all of them, and all those in Wales, when they
were still directly run by the government.
I had a wonderful time during my four-year term, not least because the quality of my fellow commissioners was so high, and their reputations and achievements in a range of national activities so much more impressive than mine. None the less, I pulled my weight, and was rapidly appointed to chair the Remuneration Committee of English Heritage, which discusses pay arrangements, and the Designation Review Committee, which advises the government in controversial cases where buildings or sites have either been granted or refused protection as historic. My period of service was an exceptionally difficult one for the whole organisation, because the government cut its funding so severely, as part of the emergency measures taken to combat the national economic crash, that it effectively ceased to be viable in its traditional form. We eventually agreed to propose its division into two halves, one to become financially self-supporting, which at time of writing is yet to be implemented. At the end of my service as a commissioner, I was immediately appointed to two new public positions, as chair of the Blue Plaques Panel, which decides which historic figures should be honoured with memorials placed on their former homes in London, and as an academic advisor to the Royal Armouries, the national museum of arms and armour from all ages.
I had a wonderful time during my four-year term, not least because the quality of my fellow commissioners was so high, and their reputations and achievements in a range of national activities so much more impressive than mine. None the less, I pulled my weight, and was rapidly appointed to chair the Remuneration Committee of English Heritage, which discusses pay arrangements, and the Designation Review Committee, which advises the government in controversial cases where buildings or sites have either been granted or refused protection as historic. My period of service was an exceptionally difficult one for the whole organisation, because the government cut its funding so severely, as part of the emergency measures taken to combat the national economic crash, that it effectively ceased to be viable in its traditional form. We eventually agreed to propose its division into two halves, one to become financially self-supporting, which at time of writing is yet to be implemented. At the end of my service as a commissioner, I was immediately appointed to two new public positions, as chair of the Blue Plaques Panel, which decides which historic figures should be honoured with memorials placed on their former homes in London, and as an academic advisor to the Royal Armouries, the national museum of arms and armour from all ages.
EDW:
You’ve now been operating within the study of history for
thirty-eight years, and that being the case, I'd be interested to
hear your take on where the discipline is headed, particularly given
the current cut-backs to higher education. More specifically, it
would be good if you could articulate your views on where those areas
in which you have taken a research interest – such as Pagan
studies, the study of shamanism, and the study of witchcraft – are
headed.
RH:
History itself is in a very strong position in the educational system
of the United Kingdom, as it is so popular amongst school and
university students. This is because many people find it fun in
itself, as a huge number of allegedly true stories, and it also
provides a very good general training, in taking a mass of evidence,
basing a personal interpretation on that, and then seeking to
persuade others of the viability of that viewpoint. This skill is
essential to many different subsequent careers, which is why history
graduates are rarely unemployed. The government tried till recently
to restrict entry into history degrees, and force students into less
popular and more directly vocational subjects, by funding the latter
more generously. The current coalition has, however, completely
deregulated university entry, now that applicants have to pay for
their own degrees, and history departments are undergoing a
considerable expansion in staff and students, including my own. It is
a very good time at which to specialise in the subject.
The other
areas about which you asked are in very different positions, both
from that of history in general and from each other. Pagan Studies
have not established themselves as a sub discipline anywhere in the
British academic system; the best that happens is that they are
taught by a few individuals attached to some Religious Studies
departments. More generally, to be a Pagan in contemporary Britain is
not too dissimilar from being a Baptist or Quaker in
eighteenth-century Britain: it is now possible to be known as one
without fear of losing your job, having your home attacked or having
your children taken away, but such a religious allegiance can still
be enough to stop those who profess it from being taken seriously as
candidates for responsible and powerful positions. Shamanism, by
contrast, is a huge growth area for research in many disciplines, and
is in danger of being used as a catch-all category and mechanism for
explanation in large areas of history, prehistory and archaeology.
The early modern witch trials, and the beliefs that generated them,
are now a heavily populated and totally respectable subject for
research among professional historians, and the study of witchcraft
and magic in the ancient and medieval worlds is expanding rapidly.
That of the same subjects in the modern Western world, by contrast,
has hardly commenced, and is tainted by the general public prejudice
against practitioners. We still have a long way to go in order to
build a genuinely tolerant, liberal and multi-faith society, based on
individual choice, in our nation at least, Ethan. Your blog may be
doing something valuable to further that cause.
EDW:
Thank you so much for talking with me here today, Professor Hutton; I
wish you all the very best in future.
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