The Friday Digest 29/11/13

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

* Fifty years after his death, C.S. Lewis' name is to be added to 'Poets' Corner' in the South Transept of Westminster Abbey, but does he deserve a place there? 

* Because C.S. Lewis died a mere hour before Kennedy was assassinated, his death was lost in the media furore that surrounded the president's death. Lewis' stepson Douglas Gresham recalls the day it happened.

 
* The myth and reality of John F. Kennedy; the events in Dallas made JFK a myth rather than a man and he is one of history's most malleable figures, revered and reviled in equal measure. 

* Tuesday 26 November marked the judicial review regarding the reburial of Richard III with a group of Richard III’s distant relatives campaigning to see the former king reburied in York.  The Richard III Foundation released a statement calling for a stop to the 'unseemly squabbling' and asking the queen to intercede and 'call a halt to these constant arguments'.

Do you agree?

* Could a hunting accident at Welbeck, Nottinghamshire have delayed or prevented the outbreak of the First World War?
 

* The Daily Mail and the First World War: Adrian Bingham looks back at a time when the newspaper’s belief in its national duty provoked intense debate and copies were burnt in the City of London.

* The 20,000 dogs who helped front line soldiers in the First World War by carrying aid to the wounded, delivering messages, pulling along vital equipment and sniffing out enemy soldiers.

* The (newly relaunched) Historical Honey site interview Greg Jenner, the historian, writer and historical consultant to the BAFTA-winning Horrible Histories. 

* Upon the ninety-first anniversary of the discovery in the Valley of the Kings, here are some very weird and wonderful facts about Tutankhamun and his mummy.
 

* In 1911, Roger Casement was knighted for his humanitarian work. A mere five years later, he was hanged for treason at London's Pentonville prison and his naked body was thrown into an open grave, but how did a hero become a traitor?

 * Judith Kerr and the story behind The Tiger Who Came To Tea: Judith Kerr's story was told in Imagine... Hitler, the Tiger and Me broadcast on Tuesday 26 November at 22:35 GMT on BBC One and is on BBC iPlayer.

* Just why do Americans get so excited about Magna Carta? 

 * A Swedish woman was amazed when she learnt that the gold ring she stumbled across in a field was 2,000 years old.

* Jad Adams looks back to a time when passengers embraced the world’s first supersonic airliner - Concorde.

* 25 health products you'll be glad you don't see today, including 'ambition pills' and 'nose-shapers' 

* A leaky roof and heavy rains have led to unwanted water in the museum housing the Ara Pacis and subsequent damage to the structure. 

* On Sunday 24 November, Pope Francis displayed the bones of the apostle Peter at a Mass celebrated on the steps of St Peter’s basilica in the Vatican. This was a truly momentous occasion: no pope before Francis had ever displayed these relics and no pope has ever officially declared that these human remains held in the Vatican are indeed the bones of the apostle.

* Archaeologists digging at a 6,000-year-old site on Papua New Guinea's New Britain Island have discovered a cache of stone tools that were deliberately shaped as phalluses, which they believe were status symbols.

* The dredging and cleaning of a spring on the Chassahowitzka River has yielded 'an amazing array of artefacts that basically represent every period of human occupation in Florida', according to archaeologist Michael Arbuthnot.

* Margaret Tudor: Scotland's forgotten queen. Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII and aunt of Elizabeth I, was the first Tudor woman to rule a kingdom and caused scandal with her divorce, but her legacy was the eventual union of England and Scotland.

* A guide to Britain in the Second World War for members of the American Expeditionary Forces posted here...

* Did Everest pioneer Frank Smythe really 'see George Mallory's body in 1936'? 

* An Israeli wine cellar which predates the Bible has been found, dating to approximately 1700 BC, at a site called Tel Kabri within the ruins of a northern Canaanite city.  

* An expert's guide to Bath...

* Robert McCrum explains how to choose the 100 best novels

* 30 awesome book dedications that might be better than the actual book... 

* Who in fiction are you? 

* No, Mike Shatzkin did NOT say that publishing is spiralling down the drain

* 'Books of the Year 2013' by History Today 

* David Bowie’s 75 must-read books

* The history behind the Penguin logo  

 

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