Most of all, she was not the “black Nightingale” so many have dubbed her, and neither she nor her peer Florence need defining in terms – and at the expense – of each other.As her biographer, I’ve come to realise that Mary Seacole’s greatest gifts were her own idiosyncrasy, integrity and self-belief. She refused to be constrained by other people’s preconceptions during her lifetime; long may that last.’Mary Seacole: the charismatic black nurse who became a heroine of the Crimea’ by Jane Robinson is published by Constable on 27 January (£12.99). “Winston has written a big book about himself and called it The World Crisis,” said Arthur Balfour. Paul Addison has written a short book about world history and called it Churchill.
Winston Churchill was a leading member of two political parties and played a crucial role in two world wars. He was one of the important opponents of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and coined the phrase “Iron Curtain”. He was in New York on the day of the Wall Street Crash and in South Africa during the Boer War. Only occasionally does one get the sense that this book might have been sent to press rather too quickly for its own good; two different dates, both wrong, are given for the death of Churchill’s father.Addison captures both the great events of Churchill’s life and the peculiar character of the man He could be vain and petty.
As a young officer he travelled to India “for the sole purpose of taking part in the Inter-Regimental Polo Tournament”. He was inconsistent in almost everything and, though he was born and died an arch-Tory, there were times when he expressed affection for Stalin or toyed with abolition of the House of Lords. His contemporaries often found him exasperating.There is one disappointing aspect of this otherwise admirable book We learn remarkably little about the private Churchill. What was the man like when he was not playing to the gallery? Addison touches briefly on Churchill’s tormented relationship with his father, who warned his 18-year-old son that he risked becoming “one of the hundreds of public school failures”. Addison’s brief discussion of Churchill’s marriage to Clementine assures us that he was a “faithful husband who loved her” – if this is the case, and fidelity and love do not always go together, then the mere fact that someone of Churchill’s generation, class and self-indulgence did not keep mistresses might itself be worthy of more sustained comment.There are two lines on the death of his infant daughter and about the same on the fact that another daughter committed suicide and a third sank into alcoholism. There is more discussion of his son Randolph, who inherited all his father’s vices and none of his virtues, but again we get little sense of the agony for those involved.
More than anything else, I finished this book feeling that I wanted to know more about the private unhappiness that lay beneath Churchill’s Falstaffian exterior.The reviewer’s ‘A History in Fragments: Europe in the 20th century’ is published by Abacus Buy any book reviewed on this site at postage and packing are free in the UK. Can you keep a secret? Well, so can engineers, it seems. Since 1992, one of their best-kept confidences has been a new kind of qualification aimed at producing career high-flyers. And the recipe? The Engineering Doctorate (EngD) – a four-year postgraduate programme based in industry. It aims to train the next generation of fast-streamers to be fluent in high-tech engineering and management, and its first crop of talent have been making waves in industry since 1997. The standard of the EngD is recognised as being equivalent to the traditional PhD, but there the similarity ends
Can you keep a secret? Well, so can engineers, it seems.
They only interrupt their industrial experience to be seen on university campuses when attending the compulsory taught modules that form an integral part of the EngD curriculum. Where a traditional PhD thesis is expected to make a significant contribution to scientific knowledge, the EngD’s benchmark asks that the research project brings a significant innovation to the application of existing knowledge with measurable benefits, such as cost-saving, product development or efficient manufacturing, says Kevin Nealey, who heads Warwick University’s Manufacturing Group EngD centre.The choice of research projects on offer at the 15 university-based EngD centres, open to all graduates in numerate degrees, is broad. It reflects the diversity of industrial partners involved in the scheme, from multinationals to small start-ups. But the structure of EngDs follows a prescribed formula of three-quarters industrial experience, one quarter taught programme, plus ongoing professional development. Most EngD centres ensure that their graduates’ industrial experience is accredited by the relevant professional body, so that by the end of their projects, they will have chartered status, or at least be very close to it.
