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The Friday Digest 08/11/13

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THP Friday digest

The Friday Digest brings you the best of the week's history news gathered from the experts:

 

Some thought POWs in Switzerland were cowards who were trying to avoid combat, but the grandfather of one of the POWs set out to change that misperception. (c) CBS News


The contribution of the US airmen imprisoned in Switzerland during the Second World War has finally been recognised. Many people thought that POWs in Switzerland were cowards who were trying to avoid combat, but the grandson of one of the POWs set out to change that misperception. 


Nazi "Degenerate Art" exhibition in Berlin, 24 Feb, 1938 (c) Reuters


* A flat in Munich has revealed a surprising discovery, with 1,500 paintings which have been missing since 1939 being found inside. The flat belonged to Cornelius Gurlitt, son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, one of four senior Modern Art dealers in Germany who were appointed in 1938  to sell 'degenerate art'  for foreign currency.

* Just why did Hitler hate modernism and so-called 'degenerate art'?  
 

Soldier’s tale: top, Wilfred Willett, seated second from right, paid a terrible price for his courage. Image from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10428000/The-enduring-agony-of-a-First-World-War-survivor.html 

* For the centenary of the Great War, there has been a renewed effort to remember the fallen, but do we consider the enduring agony of the First World War survivors

 

A memorial at Deopham Green, Norfolk, used by the US Air Force in WW2. Image from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24610481


* And as the very nature of memorials is changing, argues Dr Sam Edwards, how should we remember a war


Gwyneth Paltrow and Toni Collette in Emma (1996): 'The novel is supremely English – in character, landscape, sensibility and wit.' Photograph: Allstar/ Cinetext/ Miramax


* The Observer has placed Jane Austen's Emma  as number 7 of their 100 best novels. Do you agree that it is the best of Austen's work?

* 10 traps to avoid when modernising Jane Austen.

 

Fine focus … manuscripts by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one of many crime writers to have tackled a real-life mystery. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian 

* The 10 crime fiction writers who turned actual detective

* The CWA names Agatha Christie 'best ever' crime author in a poll conducted to celebrate the Association's 60th birthday.

* Reading over this advert for 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' you can see some very poor predictive skills at work! 


Albert Camus. Image from http://publishingperspectives.com/2013/11/albert-camus-at-100/


* The 7 November marked the centenary of Albert Camus’s birth with reissues of books and many events to celebrate the anniversary, but what is it about Camus’s body of work that provides such endless inspiration?

* Camus's book, The Outsider, is one of a select set of works that generations of disaffected teenagers have turned to as a rite of passage but is there really an 'angst canon' of books that teenagers read?

 

Book shelf. Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/39136843@N05/3709418364/


* Some wonderful pictures of awesome people reading...

* The inaugural Book Cover Design Awards were launched this month by two of the UK's leading book designers, Jon Gray and Jamie Keenan. The awards aim to celebrate book cover design from a wide range of genres - why not nominate your favourite cover from 2013?

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From Rapunzel to The Little Red Riding HoodBrain Pickings shares beloved children’s classics as minimalist posters.

10 things to love about brick-and-mortar bookstores

Digital Book World asks are UK publishers innovating in the ebook era?  

What is driving UK publishers out of business

 

NSA. Image from http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/snowden-nsa-files-surveillance-revelations-decoded#section/1

 

*  Spying, surveillance and snooping have been used by governments since the Romans; the BBC looks at a world history of government spying.  

NSA files decoded: Edward Snowden's surveillance revelations explained

 

Metal detectorist uncovers suspected Roman child coffin. Image from http://www.historyextra.com/news/metal-detectorist-uncovers-suspected-roman-child-coffin

 

Metal detectorist uncovers suspected Roman child coffin which is believed to date from the third century AD.


Haughmond Abbey (c) Image John Warburton-Lee
 
Professor Peter Gaunt shares his favourite historical places including Haughmond Abbey and Prague Castle. 

* What would Victorian BuzzFeed look like


Image from http://emotionsblog.history.qmul.ac.uk/?p=2994


Eleanor Betts shares her excitement at finding original written confessions by children who were charged with murder in nineteenth-century England

 

The team of students, named Pudding Lane Productions, adapted historical maps and engravings from the British Library using software from game developer Crytek. Image from http://www.historyextra.com/news/gamers-explore-streets-17th-century-london


* Maps of seventeenth-century London have been brought to life in a new 3D video game designed by a team of students from De Montfort University, Leicester. 


Richard III's final moments remain unclear


* How re-enactments could one day help us understand the final moments of Richard III.

 

Movember moustaches

 

* As men around the world start growing some facial fuzz for 'Movember', History Extra share the top five tashes in historyDon't forget to sponsor The History Press's Movember team HERE.


mary-beard-smiling-television-classicist. Photograph: Caterina Turroni/BBC/Lion TV

* Mary Beard asks, why do history?


Penny for the guy. (c) Getty


* It may have been Bonfire Night on 5 November, but where have all the guys gone?
 

Archaeologists have uncovered the largest and most diverse range of Middle Bronze Age domestic artefacts ever found in East Anglia.

 

A chimpanzee (c) Thinkstock



* Hans Rosling asks: do you know more about the world than a chimpanzee

 

Which history and publishing stories have you enjoyed reading this week?


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