Dr Administrator

Author's posts

Feb 26 2025

Book review: 1666 – Plague, War and Hellfire by Rebecca Rideal

My next review is of 1666 : Plague, War and Hellfire by Rebecca Rideal. The book is centred on London, in the year 1666 with a substantial chunk on 1665 which provides background to the events of the following year. It was certainly a very eventful time, the plague of the title is the Black Death which made a return to London in the summer of 1665. The war is the second Anglo-Dutch War and the hellfire is the Great Fire of London.

It is only a few years after the Restoration. As an interesting aside I learnt of the Indemnity and Oblivion Act 1660 which appears to have forgiven all crimes committed during the Civil War, except for regicide. This is relevant since some senior figures in the navy had been involved in Cromwell’s government. John Milton benefited from it too, as someone imprisoned for his anti-Royalist views.

1666 is substantially about the “great men”, such as the king, his brother and the court but it contains quite a lot of rather smaller characters. I was intrigued by the reports from William Taswell, a schoolboy, whose autobiography was published posthumously in 1852.

Also mentioned, amongst many others are Margaret Cavendish, whose biography I read previously, and Aphra Behn – who sounds like a really interesting woman. In this book Behn travels to the Netherlands as a spy, she would later go on to become a prolific playwright. Rather inevitably Samuel Pepys appears frequently, as does another diarist, John Evelyn. Robert Hooke, John Milton and Isaac Newton also gain a couple of pages but it feels a little like they were bolted on for additional colour.

I must admit I read the section on the plague assuming that it was written after the COVID pandemic, and only realised after I’d finished that it was written in 2016. This highlights some of the similarities in pandemics across the years. In contrast to the present day, the 1666 plague led to a mass exodus from London. Those suffering plague were quarantined in their own homes, typically with their families, with fatal consequences for most concerned. At the time there was some discussion as to the wisdom of this type of quarantine. The government took steps to limit public gatherings which seem to have been largely obeyed. The plague was petering out in London by early 1666 but was starting to rage outside the capital. It killed around 100,000 from a population of 460,000 in London.

I have read books on plague, and as a child the Great Fire of London was a regular feature in history lessons. The Anglo-Dutch Wars are something I have not read about before. This thread of the story starts with the accidental destruction of the London in the Thames. Followed by a number of naval engagements where it seemed, to a large degree, that the weather was a determining factor – the navies of the English and Dutch were fairly evenly matched at this point. The English were possibly gaining the upper hand during later Summer 1666 but the Great Fire strained resources considerably. The Dutch successfully attacked the Chatham Docks in the summer of 1667, shortly after a peace was agreed which only lasted until 1672.

The “Pudding” of Pudding Lane, where the Great Fire started, is black pudding, not dessert. Providing a segue from the Angle-Dutch War: Thomas Farriner, the owner of the bakery where the fire started had a contract with the navy to make ship’s biscuit. Farriner was a jury member in the trial of Frenchman Robert Hubert who confessed to starting the Fire, he was found guilty and executed despite being clearly innocent (even at the time). This was an aspect of the Fire I had not appreciated as a child – there was a lot of suspicion, and even violence, against foreigners even as the fire raged on the assumption that the fire could not have spread so fast without help. The total damage was 70,000 made homeless, 13,000 houses destroyed, 87 churches, and 52 livery halls with a total financial loss estimated at £10,000,000 (about £2billion in current figures). Over the four year Blitz campaign during the Second World War around 70,000 buildings were destroyed but the population of London was nearly 9 million rather than several hundred thousand. The fire ran its course in 4 days and obliterated most of the city of London within the Walls.

The official death toll was 6 people, however Rideal highlights this was probably a large under-estimate; many of the elderly and infirm would not have been able to evacuate quickly enough and their bodies would have been completely consumed by the fire. Rideal also talks about the psychological impact of the fire, Pepys writes of his nightmares after the Fire and there are a number of accounts of people clearly permanently changed by the Fire. I can’t help thinking the Plague would have had a similar impact.

The book finishes with an epilogue containing paragraphs on key characters and what they did next.

I found this a very enjoyable read, it is relatively short with quite a narrow scope but it gives a gripping picture of London at the time. The themes of plague, fire and war “work well together”.

Feb 07 2025

Book review: Roads in Roman Britain by Hugh Davies

My next review is of Roads in Roman Britain by Hugh Davies. Davies was a road engineer, and the study of Roman roads is a retirement project for him, which amused me since I am currently contemplating retirement. I don’t mean this pejoratively – I think in Roads he did a great job bringing together his expertise and the existing academic work in the area, as well as his own original research. He gained a PhD in 2001 from Reading University. In addition he has compiled a database of Roman road characteristics which is exactly my sort of thing.

The book starts with some basic definitions of what a road is and how it is structured. Davies focusses on the function of the road as a transport mechanism rather than as a boundary indicator, a navigation system or an expression of Roman power – uses I hadn’t really considered. As a structure a road has a route and a cross-section. I liked the quote from John London McAdam which basically said the function of the road cross-section was to stop the running surface becoming unusable as a result of water coming from above or below!

There is very limited primary documentary evidence for the Roman roads of Britain, there is the Antonine Iternary, tables of routes across the Roman empire which includes some routes in Britain and the Peutiger Tables, a sort of pseudo-map of roads across the Roman Empire of which Britain is only covered in a small fragment showing the far south east of the country.

This leaves us with archaeology, fortunately Roman roads in Britain have been excavated for many years. Less fortunately dating evidence is sparse in roads. Some roads identified as Roman may well date to medieval or even the 17th century when the turnpike roads were the first to match the quality of construction of Roman roads. It’s worth noting that none of the names used for Roman roads (Watling Street, Ermine Street, the Foss Way etc) are original – they are labels dating to the medieval period at earliest. It is not clear if Romans used any sort of naming for roads.

Archaeological practices have improved over the years, it is only really in the last quarter of the 20th century that it was appreciated that Roman roads are structures that were repaired and reconstructed over centuries.

I think the most interesting idea in this book Davis’s proposal for a reason for the straightness of Roman roads. He argues, unlike others, that the Roman’s must have made some sort of map before laying out roads and that the likelihood was that this was some large scale object possibly inscribed onto a floor. Under these circumstances straight road segments are the easiest to transmit to “the field”. It is easy to say “go to this point, build a straight road in this direction until you have gone this distance”, imagine trying to describe a more complex route accurately.

One of the recurring themes of the book is as to whether the Romans built roads to a strict pattern in terms of construction details and width. Justinian codified road classifications in the 6th century AD; an iter is pedestrian only, actus will allow a beast of burden, via will allow a cart however no numerical widths were defined. The Twelve Tables from fifth century BC says a straight section of road must be 8 pedes (Roman feet) wide on the straight an 16 on corners. However, on the ground road widths follow quite a broad distribution with a peak around 20 pedes (which is about six metres). This is wide enough for two-way cart traffic.

Based on the road surface (crushed stone/gravel) and the maximum gradients Davies suggests that Roman roads were designed for heavy carts moving at walking pace rather than fast passenger carriages. I was interested to learn the optimum gradients for carts are based on the rolling resistance of the surface balancing gravity (which becomes larger for steeper slopes). This is to avoid runaway carts since braking technology at the time was poor.

In the past historians have tended to the view that the Romans worked in a very regimented fashion. Davies comes down on the side of a more flexible approach determined by local factors. This is complicated in the archaeological record by repair and reconstruction activities, in some places there is evidence for 9 or 10 cycles of repair/reconstruction – sometimes this is as an addition on top of an older road but sometimes it is a widening of the route.

Davies observes that there is a difference in construction methods between the north and west of the country and the south and east with the north and west making greater use of stone. He attributes this to much more significant military use in the north and west, and better availability of suitable stone.

There is a chapter on Roman town plans which looked like it could be a whole separate book. Roman towns are typically built on a grid sometimes this grid is based around a Roman road alignment – suggesting road predates town and sometimes the road deviates to adapt to the town grid, suggesting town predates road.

Davies covers fairly briefly the development of the network over time, in terms of the military function of roads. The Royal Engineers estimated that the initial road from a Kent invasion landing point to London would have taken 1000 men about 15 weeks, a full version would take 3400 men about 3 years. The Roman road system was not fully developed until into the 2nd century AD – some 60 or so years after the invasion. London was not the transport centre of Britain at the beginning of the Roman occupation but became so over time.

This book is somewhat specialist, I enjoyed it because I’m interested in civil engineering and Roman history. It is short and readable, and I think provides a unique perspective.

Jul 02 2023

Book review: The Earth Transformed by Peter Frankopan

frankopanIt is rare that I am menaced by the sheer size of a book but The Earth Transformed by Peter Frankopan has done this to a degree. The Silk Roads, by the same author is similarly massive. So in a break from my usual habit I am going to review as I read.

The book is about the interplay of climate and humanity, and how humanity impacts the environment with an attempt to cover history across the world rather than focussing on Western Europe.

The extensive footnotes for this book are found in a separate downloadable pdf.

0 – Introduction – Frankopan is a year younger than me – born in 1971, and his early memories were shaped by news reports of acid rain, the fear of nuclear winter and Chernobyl – all stark demonstrations of man’s potential impact on the environment.

1 – The World from the Dawn of Time(4.5bn-7m BC) – The earth’s environment has always been changing, in deep time there was a much lower concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere. Those animals we see around us are the result of evolution through multiple cataclysmic environmental events.

2 – On the origins of our species (7m BC-12,000BC) – Climate change in central Africa and growing social groups led to speciation of the hominid group. We started large scale manipulation of the environment – managing forests with fire – 65,000 years ago.

3 – Human interactions with Ecologies (c.12000-c.3500BC) – End of the Younger Dryas and the start of the Holocene is a key point for civilisations, the climate becomes more benign and stable and larger settlements start to grow.

4 – The first cities and trade networks (c3500-c2500 BC) – the first cities are founded, and arguably the first anthropogenic climate change takes place. With cities came hierarchies, ownership and vulnerability to shocks and disease.

5 – On the risks of living beyond one’s means (2500BC-c.2200BC) – One such shock is the great drought of 2200BC, often seen as a global phenomena but actually rather complicated with different regional effects and an impact which was perhaps most obvious on the ruling class.

6 – The first age of connectivity (c.2200-c.800BC) – the environment provides resources unevenly, and so trade is necessary as societies become more sophisticated, these trade networks lead to interdependence so when one society falls others are impacted. The trade is not just in goods but also in ideas.

7 – Regarding Nature and the Divine (c1700-c.300BC) – Religions which we still see today arose several hundred years BC, and many of them made references to the environment. The ruler was often an intermediary to the gods/control of the weather – rain being particularly important. Even in this time there were exhortations to preserve the environment.

8 – The Steppe Frontier and Formation of Empires (c.1700-c.300BC) – the Eurasian steppes provided a catalyst for the growth of empires in the neighbouring region, alongside the domestication of the horse in about 3000BC. This combination provided rapid transport, and the flatness of the terrain made expansion easy. There is also an interplay between nomadic and pastoral peoples.

9 – The Roman Warm Period (c.300BC-AD c.500) – the Roman Empire grew at a time of benign and stable climatic conditions – and fell when those climatic conditions changed. Contemporary writers noted the pollution in Rome and other big cities. We can see the lead of the Roman Empire in Greenland ice cores.

10 – The Crisis of Late Antiquity (AD c.500-c.600) – the decades from 530AD saw multiple volcanic eruptions leading to global cooling, food shortages, and the rise of disease (the Justinian plague) and the fall of empires.

11 – The Golden Age of Empire (c.600-c.900) – the Prophet Mohammad’s agreement with the ruling elite in Mecca in 628AD provided an Arab identity that grew to an Empire stretching across North Africa and into Spain. Trade grows with sub-Saharan Africa. These patterns are replicated in the Americas and the Far East. Literacy grew in the eighth century with the introduction of paper from China. Empires started to decline in the 9th century as another warmer drier period started.

12 – The Medieval Warm Period (c.900-c.1250) – the Medieval Warm Period was both warm, and stable with unusually low levels of volcanic activity. During this time there was a large growth in global population, and Northern Europe saw significant growth. This growth was a result of improvements in crops and technology, as well as the benign climate.

13 – Disease and the formation of a New World (c.1250-c.1450) – the 13th century saw the rise of the Mongol empire, under Genghis Khan, stimulated by wetting weather in the steppe leading to more productive pasture when other areas were suffering drought. But the wet weather and the extensive trade networks of the Empire led to the rise of Black Death. Interesting parallels between post-Plague and post-1918 influenza Europe – the roaring twenties.

14 – On the expansion of Ecological Horizons (c.1400-c.1500) – the 14th and 15th century saw the fall of some of those empires that rose during the earlier more benign and stable weather, more driven by the instability of large empires than by climate change. It also saw the European "exploration" of the world and the large scale transport of plant and animal species across the world.

15 – The Fusion of the Old and the New Worlds (c.1500-c.1700) – the European "discovery" of the New World introduced a massive migration of flora and fauna around the world, potatoes, tomatoes,chillies from the New World to the Old. Pigs, sheep, goats and cattle from the Old to the New.

16 – On the exploitation of Nature and People (c.1650-c.1750) – the new sugar, tobacco and cotton industries required a large workforce, resistant to malaria, and Africans fitted the bill – this chapter to about slavery.

17 – The Little Ice Age (c.1550-c.1800) – the Little Ice Age has long been known but its magnitude was quite variable around the world, many things have been ascribed to the Little Ice Age but connections and causality are tenuous. The 17th century saw significant developments in military technology and spending on professional armies in Europe. There was also a large rise in urbanisation. Variable weather, uncertain crops hit some countries hard.

18 – Concerning Great and Little Divergences (c.1600-c.1800) – 1600-1800 was the period in which the economies of Europe diverged from those of Asia and Africa, and in Europe the North pulled away from the South. The introduction of the potato to Europe was important, as was maize and manioc (cassava) to Africa.

19 – Industry, extraction and the Natural World (c.1800-c.1870) – markets became truly global with wheat from North America cheaper to ship from Canada to Liverpool than from Dublin to Liverpool. Colonialism was at its height with Britain leading the world and the Americans expelling indigenous people from their own lands.

20 – The Age of Turbulence (c.1870-c.1920) – new resources became ripe for exploitation like rubber, guano and tin. Industrialisation proceeded apace. Concerns about climate began, and the Carrington Event and the Krakatoa eruption started scientists thinking about global impacts. Global pandemics made an appearance for both people and animals.

21 – Fashioning New Utopias (c.1920-c.1950) – the middle years of the 20th century saw a new wave of exploitation with oil, copper, uranium and more recently lithium becoming important resources. Colonialism receded but was replaced by corporate and government interference in states. In the Soviet Union ecological damage, and great human upheaval was driven by the dash to modernise but in a communist rather than capitalist framework.

22 – Reshaping the Global Environment (the mid-Twentieth Century) – the USSR and the USA started large scale environmental modification projects, see Teller’s proposals to use nuclear explosions to change just about anything.

23 – The Sharpening of Anxieties (c.1960-c.1990) – in the sixties the USA and USSR got heavily into weather modification, and the Americans into Agent Orange in Vietnam. The USA programme was conducted in deep secrecy, and when it was revealed there was an outcry which lead to a treaty banning such environmental modification. This led to a wider thaw of Cold War interactions.

24 – On the edge of Ecological Limits (c.1990-today) – the 1990s saw the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Industrial China. It also saw the discussions over climate change heating up.

25 – Conclusions – Frankopan’s conclusion is rather gloomy, he highlights how we are failing to act on climate change but then points we may suffer worse consequences from volcanic activity, or an asteroid strike!

There are themes across the whole book, in the environment we see periods of stable climate interspersed by periods of change – particularly driven by volcanic eruptions. From the human side we see the growing scale of civilisations, larger civilisations with more connections are more vulnerable to instability and the fall of other civilisations. We see ever increasing urbanisation and exploitation of the environment at ever greater scale.

Although initially intimidating, I found The Earth Transformed rather readable – perhaps because I saw each chapter as a separate essay.

Jun 30 2023

Leaving Address

suit-collageAs of 5pm this afternoon I will no longer be working at GBG.

Since the pandemic leaving a company has been a subdued event with many slipping off into the night, scarcely noticed. This morning I had a final standup with the Data Science Team who shared the card everyone had written in and your gift.

I wanted to write down my thoughts on leaving, and to thank everyone for making my time at GBG – nearly 8 years – an enjoyable one.

I am not mentioning any names for reasons of my failing memory, and GDPR, a subject of which I have surprising knowledge – I first sat in GBG in the Compliance team which was at the time named differently and was rather more diverse in its members.

In my career I have been a university lecturer, a research scientist at Unilever, a data scientist at a start-up and finally a data scientist at GBG. I have been used to working in environments full of scientists. GBG represented quite a dramatic and refreshing change for me. I have enjoyed meeting and chatting to you all. It turns out I even enjoyed talking to potential customers – something I had not done before.

I have sat in the Chester office, in pretty much the same place, for my entire time at GBG with a slowly changing cast of characters. It was a spot where we could watch the world go by, occasionally seeing cars driving into the ornamental lake. When lockdown came we migrated to a Teams channel called “The Lonely Aisle”. My aisle mates hold a special place in my heart.

It will surprise many to learn that previously I have not been known for my collection of flamboyant suits, I think everyone will know what I am talking about here! I have always worked in environments which either didn’t have a company Christmas party or I didn’t attend. All I can say is that for one Christmas party my watch recorded 13 miles of dancing! I have illustrated this post with a collection of photos of me, in my suits, which feels a little odd but I have so few pictures of you.

I was given the Property Intelligence dataset to create on my first day in GBG by the Business Unit leader, and working on it will be the last thing I do as I leave. It was with some sadness I sent the email marking the end of the most recent build to the Product Manager.

The Dave’s from the Chester Production team have been a fixture throughout my time at GBG and I have enjoyed working with them all. “The Dave’s” does not count as revealing names since it is the law that members of the Production team are Dave even when they aren’t.

I would like to thank all my line managers at GBG, in retrospect I realise that I considered them “keepers” who had been assigned to me somewhat arbitrarily for bureaucratic reasons. I generally took what they considered to be directions as suggestions. This attitude may have led to some friction on occasion but I enjoyed our contractually required meetings.

It has long said on my blog that “[I work at] GBG where they pay me to do what I used to do for fun!”. I enjoy playing with data and computers, I have done since I was about 10. GBG actually paid me to attend meetings and do other things I did not enjoy. My play may not seem commercially relevant however it means I am in good position to address a wide range of urgent issues at short notice and I also made a bunch of interesting prototypes including voice input for address lookups, and the notorious Edited Electoral Roll in Elasticsearch experiment which probably marked my cards with Compliance – amongst many others.

It has only been in the last year or so that I have worked in a team of data scientist, prior to this I was a lone wolf or perhaps a rogue elephant. It was nice to work in a team where we could learn new things together.

I am not leaving voluntarily and the process of my departure has been stressful, for more than just me. I have been really touched by the support of my friends at GBG, and the wider Linkedin community, during this difficult time. If I can make one recommendation for those experiencing redundancy it is “Don’t suffer in silence”.

I go now to a better place! I know it is difficult to believe but it looks like I might actually be able to retire. I don’t think this is what I will do but I will take the summer off – the last before my son goes to high school. Then I will be looking for consulting style work. I welcome your thoughts on this, I’m not really prepared for retirement.

I am available on a wide range of social media platforms, so stop by and say hello.

Apr 08 2023

Book review: Margaret the First – A Biography of Margaret Cavendish by Douglas Grant

magaret_cavendishI have come across Margaret Cavendish in number of times in reading about the history of science, I think most recently in a biography of Christiaan Huygens. She is noted for attending a Royal Society meeting in 1666, and for being one of the earliest published female authors in England. She sounded very interesting so I picked up Margaret the First: A biography of Margaret Cavendish by Douglas Grant – one of the few biographies about her.

Margaret Cavendish was born in 1623 to the aristocratic Lucas family of Colchester and died at the relatively early age of 50 in 1673. As a child she was a keen writer, and picked up an interest in science from her brother John although as a girl her formal education was limited.

The Lucas’s were fairly heavily involved in the Civil War on the Royalist side. Margaret joined the household of the queen, Henrietta Maria, as a maid of honour in 1643. She fled to Paris with the queen’s household in 1644.  At this point William Cavendish (1st Duke of Newcastle), later to became Margaret’s husband enters the story – he was immensely wealthy and was Captain-General to the Royalist army North England. Following the Battle of Marston Moor he too fled to Europe – to Hamburg in the first instance.

William Cavendish was widower – his first wife, Elizabeth having died in 1643. Margaret and William met in Paris and were married in late 1645. Having read quite a lot of scientific biography I am starting to get a feel for what written resources are available to the biographer – in this case I suspect it was Margaret’s published writings and the financial records of her husband, which were most important. In exile William Cavendish was always struggling for money, although he seems to have had the gift of the gab since a number of times they appear on the brink of destitution which is resolved when William goes and talks to his creditors!

Whilst in Paris, Margaret dined with at least René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes – there was a fairly active salon culture in Paris at the time in which I believe women were moderately involved. In England involvement in intellectual circles appears to have been forbidden for women but perhaps it was a little more open in Paris.

The couple moved to Antwerp in 1648, where they lived in Rubens old house, again surviving on credit which William Cavendish often seemed to spend on horses! It was at this time that Margaret started to write for publication. Grant’s broad view of her output could be summarised as "needed an editor", she appeared to write straight to publication with little sign of returning to work to correct and edit for structure and coherence. 

Her early books were poetic with a theme of natural philosophy, this isn’t as outlandish as it first sounds – Erasmus Darwin was to write poetically about natural philosophy in the following century. Her atomic theories would read oddly to our eyes but were not inconsistent with prevailing theories of the time. She sat within the Classical / Cartesian school of natural philosophy with an emphasis on pure thought which in the second half of the 17th century was being displaced by a science driven by observation and experiment. In fact she wrote some criticism of the newly invented microscope. Her writing covers a wide range of forms (poetry, prose, plays, orations, letters), and a substantial fraction of it is what you might describe as romantic fiction – although The Blazing World has been described as proto-science fiction.

Margaret and her husband returned to England in 1660 following the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658 and the Restoration of Charles II. After spending some time in London, whilst William Cavendish regained possession of his estates, the couple retired to the country from where Margaret promoted her writing – providing free copies of her books to universities and individuals. It is during this period that she attended a meeting of the Royal Society, Samuel Pepys is quite critical of her and the general impression was that men felt she shouldn’t have been there.

She died rather suddenly in 1673, a few years before her much older husband who died in 1676.

It would seem that Margaret Cavendish was a very bright young woman, who missed out almost entirely on any sort of education because she was a women. Her interest in science was promoted by her older brother John, her husband and his brother as well as extensive correspondence and dinners with leading intellectuals of the day arising from her time in Paris and Antwerp. Her work was published and promoted broadly most likely because of the power of her husband, which also served to mute criticism. She was widely seen as a rather eccentric character, in part this seems to be down to a vintage dress sense but her simply writing would probably been a factor too.

It would be nice to report that Margaret Cavendish was a pioneer, soon followed by other women into the public, scientific sphere but she wasn’t. Caroline Herschel’s work was presented to the Royal Society in 1788 – over 100 years later, exceptionally Queen Victoria became a member of the Royal Society but it wasn’t until 1945 that Kathleen Lonsdale and Marjory Stephenson became the first female fellows of the Royal Society. The first women to study for undergraduate degrees started in 1880 with Oxford and Cambridge not awarding degrees to women until 1920 and 1945 respectively.

This book was published in 1956, there are a limited number of biographies of Margaret Cavendish and although this one was entirely acceptable it is a bit dated and I can’t help feeling there will have been a lot of scholarly work done on her life in the intervening years.