100 years ago today: Edith Cavell returns home

From the collection of the Imperial War Museums

The body of British nurse Edith Cavell is depicted here being taken to Westminster Abbey in London for a state funeral on the 15th of May, 1919. The image was created by English artist Henry Rushbury.

Cavell, who had helped Allied soldiers escape German-occupied Belgium during the First World War, was arrested by German authorities and executed by firing squad on the 12th of October, 1915.

Cavell’s killing sparked international outrage, and the incident was used in war propaganda in the years following her death.

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On this day: a US air display in Germany

The United States’ Third Army Air Service, an organisation based in France and Germany immediately after the First World War, is shown here demonstrating Caquot Observation balloons and planes at an air show in Coblenz, Germany on the 26th of April 1919.

The area was occupied by France in the aftermath of the war, and in a sign of defiance of the occupation, the Germans living in the region began using the alternative spelling of “Koblenz” – which is the name used today.

The American organisation was disbanded in July of the same year.

On this day: waiting for news on the Titanic

This photograph is stamped as being taken at 7am on the 19th of April, 1912. People form a crowd at Cunard’s Pier 54 in New York, possibly waiting for more news on what happened to the Titanic.

RMS Carpathia had arrived the evening before carrying the survivors of Titanic’s sinking. It is said around 40 000 people were waiting to see the ship arrive.

 

107 Years Ago: Titanic survivors rescued by the Carpathia

These images, taken on the 15th of April, 1912, show survivors of the sinking of the RMS Titanic arriving at and being helped aboard the RMS Carpathia 107 years ago.

Six years later the Carpathia was torpedoed by a German submarine.

Possibly taken by passenger J.W. Barker.

Source

On this Day: British Royalty on the Front

30th March 1918: Britain’s King George V, escorted by Lieutenant Colonel Reginald B. Rickman, inspects troops who survived the Battle of Bullecourt the previous year. The photograph was taken in Hermin, France in the final year of the First World War.

Part of the bigger Second Battle of Arras between the German and British Empires, the conflict claimed hundreds of thousands of casualties.

From the collection of the Imperial War Museum.

Prisoners of War in The Mikado

The comic opera The Mikado, created by Englishmen Gilbert & Sullivan, premiered at the Savoy Theatre in London on the 14th of March, 1885.

This painting depicts the show being performed in the Ruhleben internment camp west of Berlin in Germany in 1916. British prisoners, interned during the First World War, staged the show from memory.

The painting is by Anglo-Dutch artist Nico Jungmann, who was interned at Ruhleben because he was a naturalised British citizen.

From the collection of the Imperial War Museums.

The Cottingley Fairies by Ana Sender

Fairies exist and these girls have proof!

Elsie and Frances feel sad for adults who simply can’t see the magic in the forests around them. If only they could see what we see. Taking photos is like opening windows . . .

And that’s just what they did.

In 1918, Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffith photographed fairies in their garden, in the small village of Cottingley (Yorkshire). Without expecting it, many people paid attention—including renowned writer and spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Although initially reluctant, the famous author convinced a large part of public opinion.

This is the story, narrated by Elsie herself, of the true events.

The Cottingley Fairies by Ana Sender

In the 1910s, two cousins in West Yorkshire, England became famous after releasing photographs of what they claimed to be real fairies. Many people were tricked into believing the girls, including – infamously – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame.

It was decades before one of the women involved admitted that the pictures were faked; the other maintained until her death that while four were fake, the fifth and final one was real.

The fifth picture.

I remember learning about these “fairies” as a child, but the fact they were fake was never in question.

Any author of a children’s book on this topic is going to have to make the decision: do you present facts, or do you go along with the assertion that the fifth image really was of fairies?

Ana Sender has chosen to finish her book with the possibility fairies do, in fact, exist, and that the girls really photographed them.

A smart choice? A silly one? Coming from someone who never believed in Santa, I’m probably not the best one to judge…

Sender’s take on the “Cottingley Fairies” uses childlike illustrations, which will appeal to some readers, while others will prefer something more magical for the subject matter. I’ve noticed a trend in this sort of illustration in recent children’s books.

Unfortunately, my review copy was disastrous. In ebook form, it began halfway through the book, the text didn’t appear until the midway point, and I was glad there wasn’t a lot of it to decipher the order of!

As always, buy books for younger readers in paper form.

 

Review copy provided by NetGalley.