Martinalia

Welcome to Martinalia. An academic career generates material which for one reason or another does not get into print. There are public lectures and keynote addresses. Some are never intended for publication. Others are commissioned for projects which never get off the ground. There is material prepared for teaching, which may be useful to colleagues and students involved in similar courses. Some projects seem worth sharing with interested readers even though they remain unfinished, lacking the final polish needed for conventional academic publication. Since 2014 I have used Martinalia to publish essays and research reports.

The term “Martinalia” was coined by my friend Jim Sturgis.

Two invocations of the Canadian Identity: Arthur Lower, Northrop Frye and the invisible French

English Canada has been home to few recognised intellectuals. Two of the most influential in the mid-twentieth century were the historian Arthur Lower, who disguised his theorising by projecting a persona based on robust common-sense, and Northrop Frye, who operated at the other extreme of oracular omniscience. Both engaged in fantastical invocations of the national psyche, Lower distorting the French Canadian identity, Frye ignoring it altogether. This essay briefly documents how the two academics attempted, separately, to theorise Canada without taking account of the identity and orientation of its French populations. It also notes that their definitions of Canada contained undeveloped hints of geographical determinism: the country was defined in some way by its landscape, but how this had impacted upon and shaped Canadians was not explored.

Magdalene College Cambridge Notes: the visit of the Duke of Wellington, 1842

The 250^th anniversary of the birth of the Duke of Wellington (1 May 1769) seems a good moment to remember his visit to Magdalene College Cambridge on Monday 4 July 1842.

Carnarvon Diaries: Camden Series, volume 35. Comments and Corrections

Peter Gordon, ed., The Political Diaries of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 1857-1890: Colonial Secretary and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland

Camden Fifth Series, volume 35 (Cambridge University Press, for the Royal Historical Society, London, 2009)[1]

In 2009, the Royal Historical Society published, as Volume 35 of its Camden Fifth Series, an edition comprising extensive extracts from the diaries of the fourth Earl of Carnarvon (1831-1890), the selections particularly emphasising his interest in Canada, South Africa and Ireland.

Pissingford: an embarrassing Essex place-name

Pissingford was a notable place-name on the Essex highway system for at least six hundred years. Excised from the collective memory for the past two centuries, it is now known by the tactfully laundered form of Passingford Bridge.

Explorations in the history of Tramore, County Waterford: a list

French in the Canadian public sphere, 1763-1969

What were the obstacles to the use of French in a society dominated by Anglophones? Who spoke French in English Canada? This May 2019 work-in-progress study by Ged Martin is offered as a British historian's tribute to fifty years of Canada's Official Languages Act.

Surname Issues and British Prime Ministers, 1828-2007

Roughly half the politicians who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom between 1828 and 2007 had some form of surname "issue": the name by which they were known was not the birth surname of their linear male forebears.

Explorations in the history of Cambridge by Ged Martin

The history of Cambridge is one of my interests. Over the decades, I have written about University life in the nineteenth century, the debates of the Cambridge Union, and episodes relating to Hughes Hall, King's and (especially) Magdalene. In addition, I have tried to understand some of the people connected with those institutions.

Passingford Bridge sketch map

Tramore, Sierra Leone and Johnny McGurk

In 1920, the British government decided to hold a major exhibition, on a world's-fair scale, to showcase the Empire.

Martinalia

Two invocations of the Canadian Identity: Arthur Lower, Northrop Frye and the invisible French

Magdalene College Cambridge Notes: the visit of the Duke of Wellington, 1842

Carnarvon Diaries: Camden Series, volume 35. Comments and Corrections

Pissingford: an embarrassing Essex place-name

Explorations in the history of Tramore, County Waterford: a list

French in the Canadian public sphere, 1763-1969

Surname Issues and British Prime Ministers, 1828-2007

Explorations in the history of Cambridge by Ged Martin

Passingford Bridge sketch map

Tramore, Sierra Leone and Johnny McGurk

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