Zhao Kangmin obituary

Single-minded museum curator who discovered the ancient Terracotta Army in 1974 after farmers had unearthed shards of pottery

The Queen viewed the Terracotta Army in 1986

As he gathered up the terracotta heads, torsos and arms half-buried in the soil, Zhao Kangmin knew that he had made one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in the world — an ancient terracotta army designed never to be seen by the living.

He wrapped the earthen limbs in linen and took them back to the small government museum where he worked as a curator. He then laboured through the night, washing the shards and using glue and plaster to piece them back together. Some fragments were no bigger than his thumbnail. A man of strict discipline and few words, Zhao was devoted to archaeology and nothing if not patient. When he had finished, two giant terracotta warriors towered over him.

What he had identified that day in 1974 was a vast terracotta army, commissioned about 2,000 years ago by China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, to guard his tomb in the afterlife. As official excavations began around the ancient capital, Xianyang, about 22 miles from present-day Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi province, archaeologists soon found that there were thousands of figures. Among them were infantrymen, officers and kneeling archers, each with different facial expressions and positioned according to rank, as well as clay chariots with horses. The army occupied a series of underground burial chambers nearly 200 times bigger than the Valley of the Kings in Egypt; one chamber was the size of an aircraft hangar.

100 Years Ago

AUGUST 8, 1918

Forward with the Americans

New murder traps have been set by the Germans to catch unwary Americans in the towns and cities from which the enemy has been driven. On the floors in houses were found glass bulbs or bladders, full of phosgene gas to poison our men when entering. Other deposits of the same gas were left in tiny bags under helmets, as the Germans know that souvenir collecting is a passion of Americans. The captain who led the advance patrol of 30 Americans into a captured town saw in the dining-room of a small hotel a loaf of bread on the table, with a knife sticking in it. Suspecting a snare, he called upon a German prisoner to withdraw the knife. The effect was a violent explosion. A bomb had been left in the loaf, but only the prisoner was injured. When the captain reached the hotel a German officer came out, speaking excellent English, saying he desired to surrender. The American pulled out his revolver and jumped back barely in time to escape a rain of bullets from a machine-gun hidden under a cellar door.

Machine-guns, which have practically supplanted rifles with the Germans, are the bane of the overseas soldier, yet the Americans throw themselves against the pernicious weapons with almost superhuman audacity. Set up in rocky nests, clumps of bushes, or along ridges commanding fields of uncut grain, they are handled by an experienced enemy who keeps his presence of mind and offers the most desperate resistance before his opponents can come to hand-to-hand conflicts, where the superiority of the fresh and well-fed American troops always manifests itself

In the operating room of a hospital left by the enemy were some rolls of crepe paper, which the Germans have been using for dressing wounds, showing they have little cloth left. We also discovered that some burned bits of harness, instead of leather, were made from composite paper and hemp. A number of motor-cars burned and abandoned by the Germans in their flight had iron tires, indicating that the enemy was out of rubber. Millions of dollars’ worth of German supplies have been destroyed by the retreating enemy. The horizon at night is a succession of gigantic red patches, with occasional roars of touched-off ammunition which they could not remove.

This Week in History - The Armada Campaign (8 August 1588)

https://ospreypublishing.com/thisweekhistory/

Early on 8 August, Lord Howard's fireship attack drove the Spanish Armada from its anchorage off Calais. Most ships had to abandon their best and heaviest anchors as they manoeuvred rapidly to escape the threat and so were unable to return to the French coast where it had been planned that the Duke of Parma's invasion force would board. The Spanish were now widely scattered with the English fleet poised to windward and about to engage for the final, decisive battle of Gravelines. Superior English gunnery and a change in the wind ultimately overcame determined resistance and the Armada was driven up into the North Sea to sail home round Scotland. It was still intact as a fleet and a threat for the future, but in September Atlantic storms sweeping onto the west coast of Ireland destroyed around 45 of the 110 ships that had set sail from Lisbon five months earlier. Philip II did plan a second attempt to invade England with a new Armada, but, in 1596 and 1597, bad weather again defeated him and preserved the Reformation.

Further reading

Campaign 86: The Armada Campaign 1588 The Great Enterprise against England (see extract) is a detailed and gripping account of the 10 days of action between the first sighting of the Armada off the Devon coast and the battle at Gravelines and also covers the build-up to the invasion and the aftermath of its failure, all in the context of the national and religious politics of the time, and naval technology, tactics and strategy. Elite 15: The Armada Campaign 1588 focuses on the organisation, troops and equipment of the opposing sides while Elite 70:Elizabethan Sea Dogs 1560-1605 (extract below) goes into more detail on the swashbuckling English sea captains of the era, notably Drake, Grenville, Hawkins and Frobisher who were all involved in the action against the Armada. It also includes background on the Elizabethan art of war and on the ships that defeated the Armada. 

The Times History of the War: Austria-Hungary, July 1914-November 1916

Austria-Hungary, July 1914-November 1916

This week's chapter explores the meaning of the war for the Austro-Hungarian state, the German Austrians and the war, the Magyars, the Austrian poles, the subject nationalities and the war, the Yugo-Slaves, the Czecho-Slovaks, the Little Russians, schemes of centralisation and Germanisation, reconstruction of the Austrian cabinet, propaganda in favour of Central European Union, the Magyars, Austrian centralism and Mittel-Europa, the Polish question, demand for reassembling parliament, the death of the Emperor Francis Joseph 1

The German Austrians greeted the outbreak of war with almost hilarious excitement. War, at last! No more tiring discussions or wranglings with the Czechs and Jugo-Slavs, but short, sharp orders. The Germans were to be masters in Austria once more

Phantoms of starving Serbia december 2, 1916

Punitive expeditions, both Austrian and Bulgarian have failed to intimidate the raiders, and the enemy has long since learned not to provoke them

“Tell our brothers at Salonika to make haste, for Serbia is at her last gasp!”

This message has been brought direct from Old Serbia by a special correspondent of the Paris Journal, who, greatly daring, rowed across the Danube by night from the Rumanian shore and landed in occupied territory. On the farther shore he and his companion found awaiting them a score of haggard figures, in ragged uniforms and armed.
These were Serbian officers and soldiers, survivors of last year’s Serbian Army; a handful of the heroic 10,000 guerrilla troops who, fugitives in their own land, have taken to the mountains and harry the enemy when opportunity offers. On one occasion they made a descent upon an occupied town and put the Austrian garrison to flight. Punitive expeditions, both Austrian and Bulgarian have failed to intimidate the raiders, and the enemy has long since learned not to provoke them.

One day a Serbian general landed in their midst from a French aeroplane and heartened them. They are the soul of the surviving population and the oppressed country’s one link with freedom.
With these phantoms of Old Serbia grouped about him, the correspondent conversed with one of their leaders, a captain wounded in the great retreat 12 months ago. He spoke of the nameless atrocities committed by the enemy in the early days of the occupation, of the massacres, and of the famine to which the country was succumbing. Stocks of food which were estimated to be enough to last the whole population for two years had immediately been commandeered with the most pitiless thoroughness. In particular, thousands of pigs had been driven off by the Germans.

The whole of this season’s harvest had also been requisitioned, so that by the end of the year the people would be starving. Destitution was boundless, and children were dying wholesale for want of food. Conditions were worse in the towns than in the country, and many persons committed suicide in order to end their sufferings.
And to all this is to be added the moral and religious persecution at which the Bulgarians in particular have proved themselves such adepts.

100 Years Ago

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/the-scots-at-buzancy-nf6zvbw5z

AUGUST 2, 1918

The Scots at Buzancy

A week ago I suppose there was hardly a soul in Scotland who had heard of Buzancy, which is one of the gates of the plateau on its western side. Today there is no prouder name borne on the colours of the eight famous regiments by which it was stormed. The Scottish Division has done no harder fighting during the war. The violence of the struggle was frightful. A great deal of it was hand-to-hand fighting in the streets. At the end of the day two bodies were found locked together in death. One was a German officer, in his hand the revolver with which he had shot his opponent. Our man was still holding the rifle with which he had bayoneted the officer as he fired the shot which killed him. The village and the sandstone caves were stiff with machine-guns. At one place there was a high wall which had to be crossed. Our men got over it by climbing on each others’ shoulders, and dropping on the other side in face of a terrible fire. The enemy showed no trace of the failing moral which is too freely talked about. Almost to a man they resisted to the very last, and after the battle several German machine-guns and one Tank were found with the men dead at their posts, and a ring of our dead and wounded close up to them.

The division had already had a strenuous time. They were brought back from Arras after seven months in the line, entrained at 2 in the morning and then moved to their new quarters in motor-omnibuses and, at the end of a 10-miles march, ordered to attack at daybreak. After a great fight, though exposed to galling machine-gun fire on their flanks, they reached their objective, consolidated their position, and held it till the morning of the 26th. Next day came the order for the attack on Buzancy and the high ground beyond, and by midday on the 28th the first wave was through and the objectives attained. Then, however, there was a hitch, as the troops on the right, in spite of the most gallant efforts, could not advance, and were compelled to fall back.

The difficulty about the position is that it is enfiladed by German heavy batteries. The valleys behind the lines are doused with gas, and as, except in the caves, there is almost no shelter, the troops have need of philosophy, as well as courage, to stick it as they do. The whole countryside is horribly devastated.

Dad's Army: the making of our finest, funniest half hour

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/dads-army-making-tvs-finest-funniest-half-hour/

A scene from the 1971 Dad's Army film

This piece on the creation of Dad's Army first ran in 2008, and has been republished to mark the show's 50th anniversary, on July 31, 2018. Series creators Jimmy Perry and David Croft passed away in 2016 and 2011, respectively

The funniest Dad's Army episode, by common consent, is Deadly Attachment - the one with the captured U-Boat crew. It has the best one-liner ('Don't tell him, Pike'); the best comedy Nazi ('I do not vont nasty soggy chips. I vont my chips crisp und light brown'); the best hand-grenade-down-the-trousers-scene (poor Corporal Jones, inevitably); and many of the choicest character vignettes, such as the moment when brash, rude Air Warden Hodges is held at gunpoint by the Nazis, causing Private Frazer to observe: 'That's a terrrrible decision you've got tae take, Captain Mainwaring. But you must admit - you never liked the man.'

But to get to the heart of Dad's Army's lasting popularity, I'd recommend an earlier, less well known episode called Branded. It's the personal favourite of co-writer Jimmy Perry, and if you've seen it, I think you'll understand why.

The 100 greatest novels of all time

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/100-greatest-novels-time/


Muriel Spark at work in Edinburgh, 1960

Our critics choose the best novels ever written, from Tolkien to Proust

100 The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (1954-55)

Hairy-toed hobbit Frodo leaves home to defend the world from dark forces by destroying a cursed ring, in Tolkien's epic trilogy. WH Auden thought this tale of fantastic creatures looking for lost jewellery was a “masterpiece”.

99 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

This child’s-eye view of racial prejudice and freaky neighbours in Thirties Alabama was the only novel Lee published in her lifetime – until an early draft of it was released as a "new" book in 2015.

98 The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore (1916)

A rich Bengali noble lives happily until a radical revolutionary appears, in this Bengali tale of clashing cultures from the Nobel Prize-winning poet and novelist.

97 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)

Extra-terrestrial travel meets very English humour, as Earth is demolished to make way for a Hyperspatial Express Route. Don’t panic!

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams, c.1988 CREDIT: REX

96 One Thousand and One Nights (anonymous)

A Persian king’s new bride tells tales to stall post-coital execution, in a tangled collection of Middle Eastern folk stories first translated into English in 1706.

95 The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774)

Werther loves Charlotte, but she’s already engaged. Woe is he! Goethe was inspired by his own obsessive romance with a married woman to write this epistolary novel, which made him famous overnight.

94 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1980)

The children of poor Hindus and wealthy Muslims are switched at birth in this Booker Prize winner, which uses magical realism to question the legacy of Indian partition.

93 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré (1974)

The pseudonymous le Carré drew on his own work in the secret service to create fictional spymaster George Smiley. In his finest adventure, a nursery rhyme provides the code names for British spies suspected of treason.

92 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)

Hilarious satire on bleak rural romances. “Something nasty” has been observed in the woodshed, and elderly Ada Doom is perturbed.

91 The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki (11th century)

The life and loves of an emperor’s son. And the world’s first novel?