THE ULTIMATE
Black History in Britain goes back to before the Anglo-Saxons invaded and settled Britain creating the English. Black people lived in Britain as Roman Citizens during the Roman Empire's control of Britain. As the Roman Empire stretched across Europe and into North Africa, Africans could migrate as citizens, or as soldiers in the Roman Army. There has long been pictorial evidence from Roman Times, but as the BBC article featuring Lavinya Stennett shows archaeological evidence and scientific analysis in 2010 of a Roman woman's skeleton found in 1901, shows that she was born in Britain around 350 AD, and likely of North African descent.
Another fascinating example in the article is the case of John Blanke, Henry VIII's, and Henry VII's trumpeter, shown on a roll at a tournament to celebrate the birth of Henry VIII's scroll, on horseback in a troop of royal trumpeters. Incredibly, further evidence has survived in a petition by John Blanke to the king for a pay rise. The article includes the triumphs of the 1960s Bristol bus boycott, as well as the sadness of the Race Riots that followed the First World War when Black soldiers returned from the front to scapegoated (blamed unfairly) for the economic crises - as well as how slavery was a driving force in the UK's industrial development. Find out more on the BBC with Kameron Virk's article at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-52939694
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As VE Day (Victory in Europe) is celebrated, which drew to a close the war against the Nazis across Europe, it should be remembered that it was an international Allied effort - involving citizens from the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union (the main part of which was modern day Russia).
What is more, the war effort was even more international than the above list of countries suggests, for at that time Britain was a globe spanning Empire, and British citizens from across its Empire leapt to the defence of what they saw as the 'mother country'. Around 10,000 British citizens came from the Caribbean to fight for Britain against the Nazis, around 5,000 served in the RAF. See the story of 95 year-old veteran, Albert Jarret who travelled from the Caribbean to serve in the RAF, and the campaign to give such contributions greater recognition with a memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, on the BBC at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-birmingham-52543809/ve-day-the-experience-of-a-caribbean-ww2-raf-veteran On this day, 7th May 1840, Russian composer Pyotyr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born.
Tchaikovsky originally trained to become a Civil Servant, took music classes in St. Petersberg, and joined the newly opened St. Petersberg Conservatory. Here he learned the Western musical style, that he was able to mix with his native Russian musical culture that he knew since childhood. The result of this merging of cultures was compositions such as the 1812 Overture, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker Suite including the Dance of the Sugar PLum Fairy and Romeo & Juliet. Thus, symphonies, overtures, operas and ballets were all in his repertoire, Tchaikovsky's personal life as been the subject of censorship by Soviet and Russian governments, due to his homosexuality. Tchaikovsky found fame both internationally, being a guest conductor in Europe and the United States, and at home being honoured by Tsar Alexnder III. So much so, So much so, he is seen as the first Russian composer to gain international recognition. |
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