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 David Edgerton

t h e r i s e a n d fa l l o f t h e b r i t i s h
n at i o n

A Twentieth-century History
 Contents

List of Maps
List of Tables
List of Figures
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Maps
Introduction

PART 1
1900–1950

1 The Country with No Name

2 Mightier Yet!
3 Globalization to Nationalization
4 Kingdom of Capital
5 British Capitalism?
6 Knowledge and Power
7 Tomorrow, Perhaps the Future
8 A Mirror of the Nation at Work
9 From Class to Nation

PART 2
1950–2000

10 A Nation in the World

11 Building the Future
12 National Capitalism
13 Warfare State
14 Two Classes, Two Parties, One Nation
15 Social Democracy, Nationalism and Declinism
16 Possibilities
17 Defending the Nation
18 Rulers’ Revolt
19 A Nation Lost
20 New Times, New Labour

Illustrations
Notes
Bibliography
Further Reading
Sources
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
For Alicia Edgerton
 List of Maps

Coalfields of Great Britain, 1910

Principal ports for the import of goods, and export of UK-produced
goods, by value, 1913
Accession to EFTA and the EEC/EU
 List of Tables

Parliaments, governments and prime ministers, 1900–1950

Parliaments, governments and prime ministers, 1950–2000

1.1: The United Kingdom’s most important suppliers and export

markets, 1928
3.1: Imports of food and animal feeding-stuffs to the United
Kingdom, 1934–44
4.1: The top eighteen colliery companies by size of labour force in
1935, with senior figure if peer
9.1: Central and local government expenditure on social services,
1920–38
9.2: The structure of interwar social services: expenditure and
contributions
11.1: UK final energy consumption, 1948–98, million tonnes of oil
equivalent
12.1: Manufacturing shares of output, labour and capital in the
whole economy (per cent)
12.2: Output of manufacturing and services, 1948–2000 (1948 =
100)
13.1: Nine major conflicts by operational deaths, UK armed
services, 1945–
 List of Figures

3.1: UK coal production, inland consumption and exports

(including bunkers)
4.1: Share of total personal wealth by percentile, 1895–2015
8.1: Trade Union membership and the Labour Party vote, 1880–
1960
10.1: Goods trade as a percentage of GDP, 1900–2000
10.2: Trade as a proportion of GDP, main Western European
economies, 1950–90
11.1: UK food, feed and drink imports and exports at 2011 prices
£000 (GDP deflator)
11.2: Household consumption (grams per week) of selected foods
from the National Food Survey
18.1: Defence, NHS, education, social security and public
investment as percentage of GDP, 1948–2000
18.2: Inflation and interest rates, 1900–2000
19.1: Percentage of UK stock market owned by foreign capital, by
value, 1963–2000
19.2: Real GDP, logged, 1948–99 (£ billion)
19.3: United Kingdom estimated gross value added by sector at
constant prices, 1948–2000 (£ million)
19.4: UK manufacturing output, 1948–2014
 List of Illustrations

Integrated illustrations
4.1: Low, ‘If Bolshevism Came to England. No. 1 – Capital Leaves
the Country’ (1928). (British Cartoon Archive LSE0435,
Associated Newspapers Ltd)
15.1: Vicky, ‘The New Cabinet’ (1958). (British Cartoon Archive
VY1066)
15.2: Vicky, ‘A Nation Neglects Its Eggheads at Its Peril’ (1964).
(British Cartoon Archive 06099, Associated Newspapers Ltd)
17.1: Steve Bell, ‘Falkland Victory’, If #0201 (1982). (© Steve Bell)
17.2: Steve Bell, ‘Argy Bargee’ If #0167 (1982). (© Steve Bell)
20.1: Steve Bell, ‘TUC Conference’ If #4564 (1999). (© Steve Bell)

Inset illustrations
1. Second World War Canadian propaganda poster showing
different administrative regimes in the British Commonwealth
and Empire. (Library and Archives Canada National Film Board
of Canada fonds e010753702)
2. The Edith Cavell monument in London. (Getty)
3. A Great War recruitment poster. (Library of Congress LC-
USZC4-10880)
4. British children in a bomb shelter. (Library of Congress LC-
USW33-021089-C)
5. An Indian soldier arriving in Singapore 1941 or 1942. (Library
of Congress LC-DIG-ds-04824)
 6. Cartoon by Stanger Pritchard, 1913, from Truth, December
1913. (CC BY Wellcome Collection, no. 15781i)
7. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin with Foreign Secretary Austen
Chamberlain and Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston
Churchill in 1925. (Library of Congress LC-USZ62-111781)
8. Clement Attlee, with Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin, in
Berlin, August 1945. (Library of Congress LC-USZ62-11988)
9. Sir Winston Churchill, with Anthony Eden, visiting President
Dwight Eisenhower. (Library of Congress LC-DIG-ppmsca-
51668)
10. The Temple of Peace and Health, Cardiff. (Getty)
11. The new Battersea Power Station, photographed in 1935.
(RIBApix RIBA2478)
12. The ICI pavilion at the Empire Exhibition, Glasgow, 1938.
(RIBApix RIBA17102)
13. Spillers Ltd in the Roath Dock, Cardiff, in the 1930s. (©
RCAHMW WPWO045713)
14. The new Retiro station of the Central Argentine Railway in
Buenos Aires. (Library of Congress LC-F81-3829)
15. A Ministry of Health leaflet, c.1960. (CC BY Wellcome
Collection no. 576282i)
16. A Ministry of Health pamphlet, 1948, explaining what would
be available on the National Health Service. (CC BY Wellcome
Collection)
17. A Ministry of Health poster by H. M. Bateman, 1950. (CC BY
Wellcome Collection no. 576162i)
18. The Brabazon hangar, 1949. (RIBApix RIBA25271)
19. A lorry of the newly nationalized railways, 1948. (Getty)
20. Ardil Production in Dumfries, 1936, by the noted industrial
photographer Walter Nurnberg. (Getty)
21. The Royal Mail Amazon, 1965. (Fotoflite)
22. Union Jack hat with flags of state industries and enterprises,
c.1970. (Getty)
23. Cleaners at work on Concorde 002, at the British Aircraft
Corporation (BAC) works at Filton, Bristol, 1967. (Getty)
24. Women machining clothes, 1968, Matlock, Derbyshire.
(Getty)
25. Possession, by Victor Burgin (1976). (Courtesy British Council
Collection)
26. Harold Wilson with the Labour Party’s slogan and symbol for
the February 1974 general election. (Getty)
27. Margaret Thatcher with cows. (Getty)
28. Diana, Princess of Wales, speaking to machinists at Ford’s
Halewood Plant on its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1988. (©
Stephen Shakeshaft/Liverpool Echo)
29. Tony Benn, Arthur Scargill and Dennis Skinner at the miners’
rally in London on 21 October 1992. (Christopher
Thomond/Guardian)
 List of Abbreviations

AEU Amalgamated Engineering Union

AGR Advanced gas-cooled reactor (a nuclear reactor)
ASTMS Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs
AUEW Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers
AV Alternative Vote
BAT British American Tobacco
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BMC British Motor Corporation
BNOC British National Oil Corporation
BP British Petroleum Company, previously Anglo-Iranian
BUF British Union of Fascists
CEGB Central Electricity Generating Board
EFTA European Free Trade Association
EMB Empire Marketing Board
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GEC General Electric Company
GLC Greater London Council
GRT Gross Register Tonnage
ICI Imperial Chemical Industries
ILP Independent Labour Party
INLA Irish National Liberation Army
IRA Irish Republican Army
LRC Labour Representation Committee
LSE London School of Economics
NACODS National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and
Shotfirers
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NDLP National Democratic and Labour Party
NEDC National Economic Development Council
NHS National Health Service
NUM National Union of Mineworkers
NUR National Union of Railwaymen
PFI Private Finance Initiative
PIRA Provisional IRA
PPP Public-Private Partnership
PWR Pressurized water reactor (a nuclear reactor)
RAF Royal Air Force
SDLP Social Democratic and Labour Party (Northern Ireland)
SNP Scottish National Party
STV Single Transferable Vote
TUC Trades Union Congress
WMD Weapons of mass destruction
 Introduction

Objectivity is not the same thing as conventional judiciousness. A celebration

of the virtues of our own society which leaves out its ugly and cruel features,
which fails to face the question of a connection between its attractive and
cruel features, remains an apologia even if it is spoken in the most measured
academic terms.
Barrington Moore Jnr, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
(1966)

The past, it has been said, is another country, but twentieth-century

British history is a familiar place. We know how it looked, how it
changed, how it thought. We know its heroes, its villains and its
storylines. This book offers an unfamiliar when, why and who of
British history, reflecting transformative historical research of recent
years. This research, in social and cultural history, but also in
economic, political, imperial and military history, has not only
widened the scope of recent British history, but perhaps most
significantly also refreshed and revised accounts of core themes. We
can now write our history not just as observers of the theatre of
government but as analysts peering behind the scenes in
Westminster and Whitehall, and indeed beyond. We can distance
ourselves from national sentimentalities about people, politics and
parliament. We need not follow the politicians and pundits of the
past or present in focusing on the rise of the welfare state, or the
empire, or economic decline or more recent revival. We can address
ideas from the outside rather than writing from within them, and can
discuss national stories we do not take at face value. Above all we
can engage with the question of power in its many dimensions, both
power within the United Kingdom, and the power of the United
Kingdom. In other words, we can study the history of the United
Kingdom as we might study that of Germany or the Soviet Union. As
well as making the past foreign we need to take account of
foreigners in our national history. While this point would be obvious
in the historiographies of Germany and Russia, it bears making for
the UK.1 The United Kingdom did not just forge itself – it was made
as other nations were, and other nations had a great impact on its
making. If the United Kingdom was distinctive in 1900, and it was in
astonishing ways, it was made over the century into a nation much
like other rich nations. In making the United Kingdom’s national past
different, at times unsettlingly so, I hope to make it less suitable for
the political purposes it currently serves.
This book tells the history of the United Kingdom around a core
theme of the twentieth-century rise, as well as the fall, of something
I call the British nation. The United Kingdom, just like Ireland and
India, Canada and Australia, had its own post-imperial, indeed anti-
imperial, nationalism, though one which could not speak its name.
This nationalism, which flourished from 1945 to the 1970s,
manifested itself in, for example, the internal rebuilding of the
nation. A British nation was created, by which I mean a distinctive
economic, political, and social unit within the borders of the United
Kingdom. Yet as well as rising, this British nation also fell. The many
barriers between the British nation and other nations were pulled
down from the 1970s, a process which in part meant a return to the
situation existing at the beginning of the century. Rise and fall refer
to these processes and not to the rise and decline of British power,
or the rise and fall of the British Empire, or the British economy,
which concerned an entity different from the British nation in my
sense. Indeed, as I show, it is a mistake to conflate nation, empire,
power and economy: each had different dynamics. Untangling them
is a central concern of the book, and it does so by highlighting the
rise and fall of a very distinct object. This British nation is something
a history of the United Kingdom should necessarily be centrally
concerned with, but it has been curiously invisible, for reasons to be
discussed.
The British nation, as I define it, was not a natural state of affairs.
The British nation was created: it emerged out of the British Empire,
and out of a cosmopolitan economy, after the Second World War.
Leaving behind empire went hand in hand with the development of a
peculiar kind of nationalism which entailed the rejection of imperial
citizenship and imperialism. Leaving behind economic liberalism
meant creating not just an economic border but increasingly a
culture of national self-supply. None of this was the product of a
choice by the British elites, who favoured free-trading and/or
imperialist projects, but who were thwarted by many brute realities.
Taking serious note of this British nation, and in that light at what
came before and after, provides richer explanations for many well-
known elements of the story of the United Kingdom, from its politics,
to its economics and foreign relations, to the evolution of its welfare
state and more. It also allows previously marginalized aspects such
as the warfare state and the history of its capitalism into the picture
in fresh ways.
The term ‘British nation’ requires some more explanation. It was
used in the early nineteenth century, meaning the political nation
within the United Kingdom, and less so in the early twentieth
century, when its meaning partially extended to encompass a
broader empire.2 For the remainder of the twentieth century it was
barely used, even as a term of art. In my account, ‘British nation’
refers unambiguously to the United Kingdom as a whole rather than
to a larger entity such as the British Empire, or a smaller one, such
as England and Wales. It is important to note that ‘United Kingdom’
was itself a term barely used in political and historical discourse
through most of the century. It was the preserve of statisticians,
diplomats and the military. But its use is now required in historical
work in recognition of legal and economic realities. I don’t use the
term ‘Britain’ except when actors did, which was often. After 1945,
especially, ‘Britain’ was the standard usage in politics, and in
histories, apparently shifting its meaning between Great Britain and
the United Kingdom without warning.
The national moment was a time of what might be called a
developmental state, one of many features of the nation which have
been supposed not to exist (among the others in older accounts are
militarism and technocracy). This was the time (and not the
nineteenth century) when the United Kingdom was at its most
industrial. It was also the moment when it was refashioned by the
state to look much more like its continental neighbours, with
conscription and development of national agriculture, and protected
industry. Ideologically it generated national rather than imperial
histories, a nationalist critique of cosmopolitan capitalism and a
powerfully nationalist declinism. Thinking of this period in this way is
a more explanatory alternative than the common references to
Keynesianism, the welfare state, decline, social democracy and
consensus. It allows us to rethink the politics of the Labour Party,
which I see as much more national productionist than welfarist after
1945. It also allows us to rethink the story of racism and
immigration, and of emigration. It also points to the need to think of
foreign policy in new ways, from the Suez invasions to going into the
Common Market. I see the former as a national not an imperial war,
and entry to the EEC not as moving from liberalism and empire to
protectionism and subsidy, but from economic nationalism to a
European economic liberalism.
Making the national aspect explicit allows us to notice the vital
non-national features of earlier and later periods. Recognizing its
temporary existence allows us to also write what might seem
paradoxical – a non-national national history. For while nationalism
has not been important in histories of the United Kingdom, a certain
methodological nationalism which assumes away the nation and
nationalism overtly, but covertly makes both central, has been.3
Taking seriously the nationalism of the national period allows us to
see that in the first decades of the twentieth century
cosmopolitanism, and imperialism, were central. This allows a
reasoned account of the very great differences then existing in its
economic structure and military posture compared with the nations
and empires of continental Europe. These differences are of vital
importance in understanding British power in two world wars – it
was based on its position as a great trading enterprise, as well as an
imperial one. British power at its peak was not national power, but
rather a form of global and imperial power.
 Turning to the end of the twentieth century, I suggest we can only
understand the move to economic liberalism from the 1970s, and
especially the 1980s, if we recognize the significance of previous
nation-building. Thatcherism relied on the previous successes of
national development to make it workable, whether self-sufficiency
in food or the expanding welfare state. The great transformation of
the economy from the 1980s followed from its reintegration with the
external world to such an extent that it no longer made sense to talk
of a national economy. In addition, the United Kingdom ceased to
have a distinctly national capitalism and became instead a major
financial centre, now largely for the capital of others. The re-
emergence of sub-national nationalist parties from the 1970s made a
specifically British nationalism politically incoherent as well. New
Labour more than the Conservatives embodied this new non-
nationalist politics and economics.
The central concern with the rise and fall of the British nation, and
what came before and after it, is supplemented by considering three
main sub-themes: the stories of British capitalism, of militarism and
the state, and of political economic ideas. These are not there to
provide colour or context, but are central to the story itself. My aim
especially in telling very material stories of capitalism and militarism
is to suggest fresh ways of thinking about British history more
generally, rather than to provide material examples to supplement
existing stories. British capitalism, to be understood not just as the
market system, or the political doctrine of liberalism, but as the
private ownership of capital, was at the core of the economy
through the century. This capitalism was never merely abstractedly
financial, though it has often been treated as such. The story of
British capitalism was one of particular metals and textiles, of
factories and farms, of managers and workers, of plants and of
animals, from pit ponies to continental cattle breeds, both in the
United Kingdom and overseas. British capitalism, as well as geology,
made the United Kingdom the largest exporter of energy in the
world down to 1939, as well as the largest exporter of
manufactures. British multinational enterprises operating overseas
supplied the United Kingdom, the largest importer in the world at
the beginning of the century. Ships of many types, and ports, docks
and warehouses were as central to it as factories. British capitalism,
its global, and especially European reach, was a source of strength,
not weakness. Although it became relatively less important, it was
into the 1960s at least one of the three great capitalisms of the
world, and far more successful than its many critics contended. But
in the recent past it is hardly possible to speak of British capitalism,
and to the extent it exists, it is hardly confined to or even dominant
within the United Kingdom.
The success or otherwise of British capitalism was the central
issue in British politics through the century. More than this,
throughout, but especially before, 1945, British capitalist families
supplied many members of the political class including prime
ministers. The two main political parties into the 1920s were parties
of capitalists, as was the dominant political party of the rest of the
century. The Conservative Party was in office for nearly seventy of
the 100 years of the century, and at least thirty years in each half of
the century. The politics of capital – whether of the free trade versus
protection or national or global orientations of who was in charge of
the economy – were the central political fights of the twentieth
century. There was a politics of returns on investments, not mainly
of investments in the empire, but in the British national debt.
Capitalism was also, of course, a matter of class, and this book
discusses business, politics and the politics of labour very much
within this context. The Labour Party was a party which, while it
wanted to do away with class distinction, was created and
maintained by the organized employees of a class-divided society
and needs to be understood as such. Its relationship to power was
structurally different from that of the other main parties.
The second theme is not so much war as the warfare state. The
United Kingdom was long distinctive in its approach to warfighting,
opting for machines over men. Its distinctive liberal militarism was a
thoroughly modern way of war, one which, like British capitalism,
needs to be understood in its material manifestations, not least great
battleships and long-range bombing aircraft and atomic bombs. Only
from 1945 did it conform to the European pattern of conscription in
peacetime. The warfare state was always strong, and at the core of
the state, and shaped the United Kingdom, the rest of the empire
and much of the world so as to emerge victorious, with allies, in two
world wars. The Dunkirk/Blitz Churchillian moment of 1940 and 1941
was not, in my account, the birth of the nation, but the last moment
of the British Empire, and the global United Kingdom, as a great
power, a period which ended with the Japanese conquest of Malaya
in early 1942. The warfare state was also central to the internal
story of empire – it was kept by force, kept going in part to preserve
military bases and lost by an inability to use enough force to keep it.
British imperial power flowed out of the barrel of a British gun, not
the Anglican Bible or textbooks of liberal political economy. The
empire was not lost or given up; it was taken away. In matters
military the national moment was brief, its life that of the short-lived
independent national nuclear bomb. It gave way to a policy of
dependence on the USA, from as early as the late 1950s, though the
fiction of an independent bomb and defence policy was maintained.
Yet the post-national period saw the creation of a new expeditionary
force and new claims for the need for a global military capacity –
bizarrely and tragically British arms returned East of Suez from the
1990s. The warfare state, like the story of British capitalism, makes
clear that empire needs to be kept in proportion. The empire was far
from the only foreign entanglement – Europe was generally more
important.
The third theme is ideas. We need to recover the nature and
power of the key animating ideas, not least the powerful
assumptions that undergird national histories – the idea of the
centrality of governments, rather than the state, of Westminster
rather than Whitehall, of ‘political’ ideas rather than economic or
scientific ones. The key set of ideas discussed in this book are
summed up by the term ‘political economy’, which I take to be the
central language and conceptual scheme for understanding and
acting in the twentieth-century United Kingdom. It is an abstract,
universalist language which hid as much as it illuminated, yet was
the language not only of politics, but of thinking about international
relations, and indeed of thinking about the nation. The most
important form was liberalism, with its cosmopolitanism, its
economism and its internationalism. It was hugely influential in
shaping even British militarism, whose central ideas owe more to
British liberalism than to jingo Tories or US imperialists. Liberal
political economy was the language of the key public intellectuals
from Beveridge to Hayek and beyond. It is also important because of
what it made difficult to think about or describe. One cannot get a
full enough picture of the economy from within the conventions of
liberal political economy, Keynesianism included. Political economy
even rendered the empirical manifestations of a capitalist economy
invisible – its abstractions had no need for the discussion of
particular capitalists or particular firms. The British left, steeped in
political economy, itself notably failed to write an account of actual
British capitalism, of British militarism, of the British state, and
instead, in nationalist mode, criticized British capitalism for not being
British enough and the nation for being subservient to the militarism
of others. Social democratic political economy was weakly
developed, at least until the 1970s, as was Marxist political economy.
The language of class has been important, but not class analysis.4
Much more unfamiliar is the idea associated with a key theme in
the book: British nationalism. It was a peculiar nationalism because
it had little overt presence. I associate it mainly but far from
exclusively with Labour, though only after 1945. This is in contrast to
the more common view in which Labour is seen as a weak carrier of
social democracy, which is itself the main threat and alternative to
liberalism. But nationalism too was a great challenge to both liberal
and imperial orthodoxies and was, I suggest, at least as important
as weak forms of socialism in the British case. I think, for example,
that the actual post-Second World War United Kingdom was in some
ways better prefigured in the programme of the Tories and the
British Union of Fascists (BUF) than that of the Liberals or the Labour
Party. Although explicit nationalist political economy was a rarity, it
was to become implicit in much economic commentary, concerning
everything from the balance of payments to research policy. As
economic practice it was very important.
 Nationalism was also important in history-writing. Like historians in
other post-imperial formations, whether Hungary or Australia, or
Ireland, British historians from the 1960s especially created national
histories of the twentieth century, which downplayed and/or
criticized the imperial context in which the proto-nation existed.
Many national histories tended to criticize the United Kingdom for
not being national enough, and were both national-celebratory and
declinist. They also downplayed the fact that the United Kingdom
was and is a country of countries, a nation of nations – England,
Wales, Scotland and Ireland. These national histories, mostly written
by the centre-left, especially those from the 1960s, tended to tell the
story of the nation in terms of the rise of the welfare state. Other
key concepts deployed in national histories were such notions as
appeasement, consensus, Keynesianism, post-war settlement,
people’s war, decline, welfare state, affluence, permissiveness,
reconstruction and indeed neo-liberalism. Such ideas have powerfully
constrained the writing of histories, much more so than they
constrained or explained the actions of historical actors. We no
longer need to think with such clichés, but rather with new principles
which help us understand the power they once had.
This book thus has a much greater focus than most on the right
rather than the left, on capitalists rather than workers, on liberals,
imperialists and nationalists rather than socialists, on warfare rather
than welfare, on the material rather than particular assumptions
about the material. The consequence is not ignoring the welfare
state, the Labour Party and social democracy, and the empire – all
staples of histories – but rather that they are put in a new light. For
example, Lloyd George’s people’s budget, so called, funded the
building of battleships and not only the emergent welfare state. The
Great War led, in the 1920s, to the creation, by Conservatives, of a
comprehensive, specifically working-class welfare state. This was
extended by Labour in the 1940s, as a national welfare state, and
transformed in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1940s welfare had a
lower priority, for the Labour government, than warfare and
production, understood very nationally. Peak welfare in terms of
generosity arrived in the 1970s, and in many respects very much
later, and came into its own only with the decline of the warfare
state, and indeed the weight of industrial production. The empire
was an alternative to globalism, a controversial one, desired by a
fraction of capital and the Conservative Party in particular. Empire
was an economic, political and racial project, which very largely
failed. The British economy was in fact at its most imperial in the
1940s and 1950s, long after the ideological or military heyday of
empire.
Much recent historical work on the United Kingdom has stressed
the significance of imperialist ideas, seeing nationalism as indivisible
from imperialism. In fact nationalism needs distinguishing from
imperialism. If we do so we can see the significance of nationalist
critiques of imperialism, from both the right and the left. Many on
the left have for a long time attacked British imperialism and its
domestic consequences long and short term from a national
perspective. They have blamed militarism, economic decline, racism,
global pretensions and more on it. Some external force, it seemed,
had corrupted the true beneficent nature of the British, whose
mission to, say, rid the world of nuclear weapons was being
thwarted. Even on the left, there has been a deep reluctance to
criticize close to home. Overplaying the significance – economic,
ideological and political – of empire has been at the expense of
understanding non-imperial, indeed national, sources of inequality,
racism, economic problems and militarism too. Blaming empire and
imperialism has let the guilty get away scot free!
In histories of the twentieth-century United Kingdom we have to
take into account what I call anti-histories. Anti-history is a history of
opposition to things which the commentator values, leading to the
disappearance from history of what such histories intended to
promote. Thus the national project was invisible partly because the
nation was not nationalist enough in that it was always too imperial
and too liberal for nationalist critics, especially of the left. Promoters
of military power wrote the military out of British history, putting in
its place a peculiarly powerful liberal pacifism and/or imperialist
illusions. Declinism rendered positive economic growth and change
invisible and emphasized backwardness and immobile continuity
from the nineteenth century. Successful British capitalism was buried
in mountains of evidence of what supposedly thwarted it, like
aristocratic culture, cosmopolitan finance and empire. It is said, by
those who wanted the United Kingdom to join the Common Market,
that it resisted European integration because of the strength of
imperial, global and US orientations, such that it was not possible to
explain why it was it applied as early as 1961. C. P. Snow and many
followers insist on the thesis that science was smothered by the
condescension of an elite of novelists and poets. We need to take
account of this particular form of historiography from below, in
which the realms of elite practice – of soldiers, scientists, politicians,
and economists and politics – generated their own sets of historical
stories. They have been very influential in telling stories now so
tangled that things that never happened were routinely explained by
imaginary argument and evidence. Instead of being a history of
absences, this book makes power present.
Although it is rightly observed that most history is the history of
elites, for twentieth-century British history this is perhaps not the
case. Paradoxical as it might seem, British labour is better known
than British capital, the working class than the ruling class, trade
unions than businesses. The reason is clear – histories reflect
visibility in the public sphere. Welfare, trade unions, and labour had
to operate publicly, in a way which British capitalism, given its power,
never did. Thus the welfare state has been much more visible than
the warfare state, the welfare sociologist more visible than the
defence intellectuals. Very clearly men were much more visible than
women reflecting separate spheres which were public, and the other
private in orientation. British capitalism was less visible than
nationalized industries. Socialists have been more present than
reactionaries, Labour figures more than Conservative ones.
Liberalism as ideology is much more visible than capitalism as
practice. The state has been more visible than the private sector, the
state pension more than the occupational pension, the ordinary old-
age pension more than the military pension. The imperial, extra-
European orientation has been more visible than the orientation
towards Europe. Immigration by non-white people has been more
visible than that by white people, or the very important white
emigration. Indeed, one of the threads running through the book is
a concern with what was public and what was private, what was
open and what was closed, visible and obscured. The mere visibility
of ideas and of things is no guide to their significance; the visibility
of arguments no guarantee of their plausibility.
This, then, is a history in many dimensions – cultural, political,
economic and military – which is sceptical of the standard analytical
apparatus used to understand British history. The very ideas which
structure historical accounts, how they conceptualize the nation, the
economy, war, knowledge, need to be challenged, it suggests. It is
sceptical, too, when it comes to many key claims. It is a history full
of paradox and contradiction, of ideas often out of kilter with reality.
However, the main point is to tell a coherent story at a time when
the old apparent certainties have crumbled, one which is more
consonant with what we now know and what we now need. That
includes more description of what for earlier generations would have
been obvious, and a stronger analytical grip than older narrative
histories allowed. I hope that by the end of this book the reader will
find it obvious that just as no British historian would dream of
writing a history of the Soviet Union or Germany without ideology,
militarism, nationalism, I. G. Farben, the Wehrmacht, Magnitogorsk
and the Dnieper dam, no British historian of the United Kingdom
should ignore British militarism and nationalism, Imperial Chemical
Industries and the Royal Air Force. If there was a German iron cage
of modernity there was assuredly a British one too. But I also hope
the reader will reflect on how and why histories without one have
made so much sense to generations of readers.
History has played and continues to play a powerful role in British
public life. The past is appealed too as explanation of the present, as
legitimation for this or that policy, the place where a true national
essence is revealed. The issue is not that historical perspective is
lacking in policy and politics, it is very obviously present. The issue is
the kind of history that is in play. I hope that for those in public life,
for those concerned with politics and policy, this book will help
liberate us from the conventional framings of British history and all
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 First Sight of the “Valley of the Mist.”
The Oases of the Libyan desert lie in
depressions several hundred feet deep in the
main plateau. This huge depression had not
previously been reported. (p. 95).

Gazelle Trap. (266) Trap for Quail and Small Birds.

(268)
(Large-size)
These two ingenious traps are used by the people of Farafra Oasis, many of whom are
great hunters.

After some discussion, during which he displayed much learning

in his occult science, it was at length arranged that he should go
through the performance on the following day.
The next morning he arrived with his staff and rosary and came
up the stairs muttering prayers, or incantations, as before.
After he had drunk the usual tea, and approved of the boy that
had been provided, he declared himself ready to start work. He
asked for a charcoal fire in a brazier, some paper and ink. He then
retired to the room that had been cleared for him, and, having closed
the door and shutters, so as to produce an imposing dim religious
light, seated himself in the darkest corner on a black sheep-skin, with
the brazier beside him, and requested to be left alone while he went
through the preliminary ceremonies. The doctor and I accordingly
retired to another room, taking the boy with us.
Soon a faint smell of incense that reached us from next door, the
sound of much muttering and an occasional shout, as the magician
invoked the spirits, told us that he had got to work.
After his dawa had been going on for some ten minutes the
magician called out to us that he was ready, and that we could bring
in the boy. He made him sit down on the sheep-skin cross-legged in
front of him, patted him and told him there was nothing to be afraid
of, if he only did as he was told, and at length soothed him
sufficiently to enable the performance to be continued.
The magician first drew in ink the khatim (seal) on the palm of the
boy’s right hand. He then put a written slip of paper on his forehead,
licking it to make it stick to his skin, and finally, as that did not make it
adhere, slipping the top edge of it under the rim of his cap. He then
proceeded to complete the khatim by putting a large blot of ink in the
centre of the square he had drawn—the whole when completed
having the following appearance:
 The magician told the boy to gaze in the pool of ink in his hand
and to fear nothing, and started again with the spells.
He soon got seriously to work, repeating his incantations over and
over again at an extraordinarily rapid rate, swaying himself to and
fro, sometimes dropping his voice to a whisper that was almost
inaudible, then suddenly raising it to a shout as he called upon
Maimun, or some other afrit. At length he worked himself up to such
a pitch that the perspiration fairly streamed from his face. Now and
then he dropped pieces of incense into the earthenware dish that he
used as brazier; once he pulled out a leather pouch and produced a
knife and pieces of stick, from which he cut off shavings to drop into
the fire. Soon the whole room was filled with the sweet sickly smoke
of burning perfumes.
Occasionally he peered through the smoke at the boy to judge
how far he had been affected by his magic. After a time he
apparently concluded that the end of the incantations was close at
hand. He redoubled his efforts, jabbering at such a pace that it was
impossible to catch a single word and working himself up to an
extraordinary pitch of excitement. Then he suddenly dropped his
voice till it became almost inaudible, and followed this up by shouting
out something as loud as he could bawl. He stopped abruptly; leant
back panting against the wall, mopped his streaming face and told
the boy to say “Ataro.”
The boy repeated the word after him. The magician, evidently
considering that his labours were over, then asked the boy to tell us
what he saw in the ink.
The experiment, however, proved a distinct failure. The boy was
unable to see anything, and, though the magician tried again to
reduce him to the clairvoyant state, he was equally unsuccessful on
the second attempt.
On a subsequent occasion, when I met this magician, I induced
him to write out the necessary incantations, etc., required for the
performance of the mandal. The translation of what he wrote on the
paper that he placed on the tahdir’s forehead was as follows:
“We have set forth your propositions, and according to the Koran
we beg our Prophet Mohammed to answer our prayer.”
He commenced the incantations by calling on the spirits he was
invoking thus:
“Toorsh, toorsh, Fiboos, fiboos, Sheshel, sheshel, Koftel, koftel,
Kofelsha.”
The first four names, which are each repeated twice, are those
which are written so as to form the frame of the khatim, the first
being that at the top, the second the one on the left, the third the
bottom one and the fourth that on the right-hand side. The last word,
“Kofelsha,” does not appear in the khatim, and may be some word
used in magic.
The dawa, or invocation proper, ran as follows:
 “Descend this day, Oh! Celestial Spirits, so that he here may see
you with his own eyes and talk to you with his own mouth and set
before you that which he desires. Descend quickly, and without
delay, this very minute. I call on you in the name of Solomon, in the
name of Allah the clement and gracious, to obey and to submit
yourselves to my orders for the love of Allah. Zaagra zagiran
zaafiran hafayan nakeb, Zaagra Zagiran Zaafiran hafayan nakeb,
zaagra zagiran zaafiran hafayan nakeb.”
This dawa was repeated over and over again, punctuated
occasionally with a loud shout of “Maimun,” which was presumably
the name of his own familiar spirit.
The last part of the dawa, which it will be seen is a series of words
three times repeated, is untranslatable. It is either the names of
some fresh spirits or, more probably, some magical gibberish
designed to impress the tahdir and spectator.
He told me that if the séance had not been a failure, and he had
been able to get the spirits under his control when summoned, that it
would have been necessary for him to have liberated them
afterwards by means of a second incantation which he called a saraf
(change?), the form of which was as follows:
“In the name of Allah who has sent you, subdued to my orders, I
pray you, Oh! spirits, to go back whence you came. I pray Allah to
preserve you for ever to do good and to fulfil all that is asked of you.”
Later on, while staying at Luxor, I made another attempt to
witness the mandal. This time I was rather more successful.
The dawa, so far as I could see, was practically the same as the
invocation of the magician in Dakhla; but the Sheykh el Afrit made no
attempt to be impressive, and went through the performance in the
most perfunctory manner. The boy appeared to be merely bored,
and anxious only to earn his bakhshish, and to get away again and
play.
When he had finished the incantations, the magician asked the
boy what he saw in the ink. He replied that he saw a broom
sweeping the ground. The magician told him that, when the
sweeping was finished, he was to tell “them” (presumably the spirits)
to pitch a tent.
After a short interval, during which the boy attentively watched the
ink, he said that the tent was pitched. He was then told to command
them to place seven chairs in it. When the boy declared that this had
been done, he was told that they were to summon the seven kings.
Shortly after, the boy declared that the kings had arrived and were
seated on the chairs.
The Sheykh el Afrit then asked me what it was I wanted to know. I
told him I wished the boy to tell me of what I was thinking, and I
pictured to myself a young man of the Tawarek race I had once met
in the desert.
The boy peered into the ink for some time before answering.
Then, in a rather hesitating voice, said that he saw a woman.
I asked if she were veiled. The boy replied that she was. I told him
to describe the veil. He said it was black, and in two parts, one
covering the lower part of her face and the other the upper portion.
This was correct. The man I had seen was wearing the usual
litham, or mask, carried by his race, consisting of a long strip of black
cotton, wrapped twice round his head, the lower strip covering his
face up to the level of his eyes and the upper one concealing his
forehead, a narrow opening being left between the two through
which he could see.
I next asked the boy if he could see the woman’s hair. It was a
long time before he replied to this question. Then, in a very doubtful
tone, as though he felt he were not describing it properly, he said he
could see it sticking up from the top of her head.
This was also correct, as the litham the man had been wearing
did not cover the crown of his head, and consequently his hair was
exposed. It was remarkable, owing to the fact that Moslem women
are even more particular to conceal the top of their heads than to
cover their faces. The crown of their head must not be seen by their
own father, or some say even by the moon.
 I then told the boy that his description was perfectly accurate,
except that, as the figure he saw was veiled, he had very naturally
concluded it to be that of a woman instead of a man. I asked him
whether the man carried any weapons, and pictured to myself a
curious dagger he had been wearing, which lay along the under side
of his left forearm, secured to it by a band round his wrist, with the
hilt lying in the palm of his hand.
The boy replied that he carried a sword. This was true, though I
was not thinking of it at the time. I asked him to tell me what he was
doing with it. He said he could see a drawn sword, and the man was
holding it in his left hand. He again seemed doubtful in making this
statement.
The left hand is considered as unclean among Moslems, and
consequently left-handed natives are very rare, so, although his
statement as to his holding a drawn sword in his hand was wrong,
the connection with the left hand, on which the man had been
carrying the sheathed dagger I had had in my mind, was rather
curious, unless he were seeing his image reversed, as he would
have done if he had seen him in a mirror. I asked him whether he
was sure that it was a sword that he saw, and not a dagger, but he
was quite positive on the point, and added that it was an unusually
long one. This would have tallied well with the sword, which was a
long and straight one, much like the ordinary Dervish type from the
Sudan. But I had been thinking of the dagger and not of the sword,
so on this point he was wrong.
At this point in the proceedings the wretched dragoman from the
hotel, who had led me to the magician, shoved in his oar, asked the
boy some stupid question, causing him to look up from the ink to
reply, and the magician declared it would be useless to ask him any
further questions, as the spell had been broken.
This method of clairvoyance, if such it be, has been seen by
several reliable Europeans—Lane, for instance, gives an account of
it in his book on “The Manners and Customs of the Modern
Egyptians”—and there can be no doubt at all that, in some
unexplained manner, correct answers have often been given to the
questions asked of the boy when the possibility of collusion was out
of the question.
The phenomena of thought transference have been considerably
investigated of late years, and many serious scientists believe in the
possibility of communicating ideas in this way, without the medium of
either speech or hearing. Assuming this to be feasible, thought
transference affords a ready means of explaining the phenomena of
the Derb el Mandal in a case like that I have just described.
But the mandal is said to be used with success for other purposes
besides the mere reading of another person’s thoughts. The finding
of hidden treasure, or articles that have been lost, is a very frequent
reason for it being employed, and I have been assured, by natives,
that the results are often satisfactory; but reliable evidence on this
point is certainly desirable.
One of the railway guards in the Nile Valley used to have a great
reputation for doing the mandal. He was once called in to diagnose
the case of the young daughter of a man I knew, and to prescribe
treatment. This, I was told, he did successfully, and the girl
completely recovered. There is nothing, however, remarkable in this,
as most complaints will cure themselves if doctors and other
magicians will only leave them alone. The influence, too, of faith-
healing and suggestion in this case would also have to be
considered.
The railway man used a small mirror instead of a pool of ink. The
boy, who was looking into it, stated subsequently that, after gazing at
it for some time, it appeared to become greatly enlarged, and a room
seemed to be reflected in it. This he was told to order to be swept
and then sprinkled. I have seen a glass of water used instead of a
pool of ink, and believe that a basin of oil is also sometimes
employed. The whole question is an extremely curious one, and
might possibly repay investigations on the ground that it is not magic.
 CHAPTER XXVII

NATURAL HISTORY

T HE intense heat and dryness, with the resulting great

evaporation, combined with the almost total absence of rain, and
the cutting action of the sand, when driven by the furious desert
gales, makes the existence of vegetation in the desert almost an
impossibility.
Still here and there a few blades of grass, or even a green bush or
two, are to be met with, though one may travel for several days’
journey in any direction from them before any other growing plants
are to be seen.
The plants that grow in the desert are all especially adapted by
nature to withstand the heat and drought. The stems of the bushes
have a dense outer covering to prevent evaporation. Their leaves
are small and leathery for the same reason. But their chief peculiarity
is perhaps the extraordinary development of their roots, which
stretch for enormous distances in search of water.
Some of the wild plants I collected in Dakhla Oasis were found
growing on very saline ground—in a few cases the soil around them
being white, with the salt lying on the surface. The date palm seems
to have been specially designed by nature to flourish under desert
conditions. A palm will grow in soils containing as much as four per
cent of salt, providing its roots can reach a stratum containing less
than one per cent, and, if it can find a layer with a half per cent of salt
only, it is capable of yielding an abundant crop.
The animals in the oasis are no less interesting than the plants.
The nights in Dakhla—especially at Rashida and Mut—are made
hideous by the dismal howling of the jackals. The dog tribe in the
oasis are probably unusually interesting. I collected a number of
skins, but, when I went off into the desert, was unable to take them
with me, and had to leave them behind in a half-cured state in Mut.
Insects swarm in the hot weather, with the result that, by the time I
returned from my various desert trips, I invariably found that they had
got at my skins to such an extent as to render them worthless to any
museum.
One jackal skin that I managed to bring in in a fair state, and gave
to the Natural History Museum in Kensington, was most kindly
identified for me by Mr. Martin A. C. Hinton as being identical with
the large Egyptian jackal, or “wolf,” canis lupaster. All the jackals of
Dakhla are of an unusually large size, and are locally called wolves. I
was told that they breed freely with the village dogs. In addition to
the jackals, foxes are extremely numerous, some being apparently
identical with the common greyish fox of the Nile Valley.
There are probably some species of the dog tribe in the oasis
which are new. One evening near Mut I happened to be returning to
the town about sunset, and noticed a fox that struck me as being of
an unusual appearance. Shortly after I first saw him, he went to the
far side of a low mound of earth; I was consequently able to
approach him unseen, and managed to get within about ten yards of
him before attracting his attention. He then bolted; but not before I
had had a good view of him.
He was a fairly large fox of a greyish brown colour, and carried a
very fine brush. But his most striking peculiarity was that he was
covered with large black spots, which appeared to be about an inch
and a half in diameter. On questioning the inhabitants, I found that a
spotted fox was occasionally seen in the oasis, but was not
apparently very common. Markings of this nature are, I believe, quite
unknown in any fox, so that this one probably was of unusual
interest. Unfortunately, I was unable to secure a specimen.
In addition to the jackals and foxes, an occasional hyena is said to
appear in the oasis, but none, so far as I heard, were seen while I
was there.
 A curious fact in relation to the jackals in Dakhla is that they
appear to be to a great extent vegetarians, living largely upon the
fallen fruit in the plantations—a fact which recalls the story of the fox
and the grapes.
Gazelles used to be fairly numerous in the scrub-covered areas in
and around the oases, but I invariably found them extremely shy and
difficult to approach. Once, in the distance, I caught sight of a pair
that looked interesting. One of them had an extremely pale coat, and
was perhaps a rim (Loder’s gazelle); but the other was of a deep
reddish—almost chestnut—colour that, from a distance, looked
unlike any known variety. The usual gazelle found in these parts is
the common Dorcas; but these two looked entirely different. The
natives do not seem to distinguish between the various varieties, all
of which bear a strong resemblance to each other, classing them
altogether as “gazelle.”
Scorpions swarm in the older buildings of the town, and the
natives get frequently stung, sometimes, I was told, with fatal effect.
The leaves of a round-leaved plant known as khobbayza[17] are
pounded and made into a poultice to apply to their stings—it is said
with considerable effect. A native quack doctor from the Nile Valley
used to do a considerable trade in little blackish wafers of a
composition that he kept secret, which were also said to be very
beneficial not only against the stings of scorpions but also in the
case of snake bites. One of the native doctors I met in Mut tried them
on some of his patients with, he told me, great success. Very large,
hairy, yellow spiders, tarantulas perhaps, I saw once or twice, and
found the natives very much afraid of them.
In the Nile Valley, curious mud-built tables supported on a single
thick leg are used on which to place young children to secure them
from the attacks of scorpions and tarantulas that, owing to the
overhang of the table, are unable to climb to the top. The table-top
itself is surrounded by a low wall to prevent the children from falling
off, the crest of the wall itself being often fantastically decorated.
I never came across any snakes at Dakhla, but more than once
saw the skin they had shed. There is said to be a long black snake,
generally found in or near the water channels, whose bite is
considered to be extremely dangerous. The ordinary horned
cerastes viper, though often met with in the desert, seems to be rare
in the oasis—and the same may be said of the unhorned viper that
so much resembles it at first sight. Insects swarm during the hot
weather in the oases. Butterflies are scarce, but moths are fairly
numerous. In Kharga I caught the cotton moth, but I did not see it in
Dakhla. Locusts are almost, I believe, unknown, but the grasshopper
tribe are in some parts—Tenida for instance—extremely numerous.

SCORPION-PROOF PLATFORM.

Bristle tails (silver fish) were unpleasantly destructive, and boring

bees do much damage by perforating the palm-trunk joists and
rafters of the houses and rendering them unsafe. House flies were
quite common enough to be a nuisance, though not to the extent
usually found in the Nile Valley. Mosquitoes were present in only
small numbers in Mut, owing probably to the scarcity of water in the
neighbourhood.
Dragon flies were conspicuously numerous—a dark red, a
greenish variety and a beautiful steely blue kind being, so far as I
saw, the most common.
In the spring there is a large immigration of birds into the oasis,
coming up from the south-west. Sand grouse—both a pintailed and a
spotted variety—are to be met with on the outskirts of the oasis and
in the parts of it remote from the villages. Quail, duck, snipe and
various water birds abound in the oasis at certain seasons. Kites I
never saw or heard, but eagles were several times seen. Also a bird
of the hawk species. Ravens exist in small numbers.
Pigeons are fairly well represented, a large wild pigeon—the blue
rock apparently, which lives largely in the cliffs surrounding the oasis
—being common. These at times give very good sport; in the open
they are far too wary to be approached within gun-shot. But in the
evening they come down to the wells to drink, usually choosing one
that is removed some distance from the villages.
But these pigeons proved to be very poor eating, their flesh being
hard and dry, and not to be compared with sand grouse for the pot.
The sand grouse, too, were singularly hard to bag. The only place
where I ever succeeded in shooting any was on the Gubary road
between Dakhla and Kharga Oases. I found them fairly numerous
there, being generally to be seen in the early morning at the places
where the bedawin camped for the night. As the day grew older they
left the road altogether and flew off into the desert.
The birds that interested me most in the oases were the kimri, or
palm doves. There are at least two kinds in Dakhla, the kimri beladi,
or local palm dove, and the kimri sifi, or summer dove. The former
seems to be resident in Dakhla all the year round; but the latter are
migrants, coming into the oasis in March and returning in the autumn
after the date harvest. They take somewhat the place in Dakhla that
the cuckoo does in England, their advent being regarded as a sign
that the winter is past and the summer close at hand. The palm
groves of the oasis, when the hot weather comes on, swarm with
these pretty little birds, whose soft cooing as they sit swaying in the
palm tops is a most melodious sound—extremely pleasant and
soothing after a long hot desert journey.
The whole question of the animal and vegetable life in these
desolate regions is one of great interest. In spite of the intensely arid
nature of these deserts, they support in some marvellous way a
considerable amount of life.
Small lizards were often to be seen in the desert scuttling about
the ground. They run with extraordinary speed, and are very difficult
to catch. The usual way, I believe, is to throw a handkerchief on the
ground and to drive the lizard towards it, when it will frequently run
under the handkerchief to shelter, and can then be easily picked up. I
found that, though they could run very fast for a short distance, they
very soon tired, and, if steadily followed up for a hundred yards,
without allowing them time to rest, they became so exhausted that
they could be easily secured.
I never saw a specimen of the waran, or large lizard, in the desert,
but on one occasion saw what looked like its track. It resembled the
trail of a large-bodied lizard crawling slowly over the sand. My men,
however, declared it to be the track of an issulla, which they
described as a creature between a snake and a lizard in shape,
which, when approached, will fly at an intruder, rising into the air
after a rapid run on membraneous wings stretched between its legs
—acting apparently somewhat like an aeroplane. They said its bite
was poisonous, and generally fatal, but that, if it failed to strike home
during its flight, it fell on the ground and burst! The existence of such
a reptile—if we exclude the bursting part of the story—is perhaps not
absolutely impossible. One has to take native statements of this kind
with more than the usual amount of salt; but it does not do to ignore
them entirely.
Its track corresponded well with the description of the reptile given
me by my men, for, outside the marks where its feet had been
placed, something had clearly been dragged along the sand, leaving
a trace that showed upon its surface as a scratch. What that
“something” was it is difficult to say—unless, as my men declared, it
was part of the membrane upon which the issulla is said to sail
through the air. It could not have been caused by its tail, as it
appeared in places upon both sides of the track at once.
With regard to the capacity it is said to have of being able to rise
into the air from the ground, that, I think, presents but little difficulty. I
gathered from my men’s account that it would have been nearly
three feet long. The small fast-running lizards previously mentioned
are mostly under six inches in length, and must be able to travel at
nearly ten miles an hour, as it takes a man on foot all his time to
catch them up. As the issulla must be five times the length of these
little lizards, it is not unreasonable to assume that it can run quite
twice as fast, or say at twenty miles an hour, which, if it were running
against a stiffish breeze, would be equivalent to say fifty miles an
hour through the air—a speed that would probably easily cause it to
rise from the ground—but it is a tall story.
Snakes are very common in the desert—the lefa’a, or horned
viper, and a very similar viper without horns being in places rather
unpleasantly numerous. In addition we killed a very thin sandy-
coloured snake, about four feet in length, which, so far as I could
judge from its head, did not appear to be poisonous. The naja, or
Egyptian cobra, sometimes seen in the Nile Valley, is, I believe, quite
unknown in the desert and oases.
I several times heard rumours of a feathered snake. At first I put
this down as being a myth, but I afterwards found that this creature
had been seen by at least one European, who had been long
resident in the country. The specimen he saw was one killed in the
Nile Valley. He described it as being a short, stout, sandy-coloured
snake, having along its back, for some distance behind its head, a
sort of crest of elongated scales considerably frayed out at their
ends.
The existence of this creature is by no means an impossibility, for
reptiles and birds are closely related.
 Insects in the desert are comparatively few in number. I once
found a few small ants, pink and silver in colour. Large grotesque-
looking mantids were often seen running about on the sandy
portions of the desert. Some of them were of considerable size,
many of them being quite three inches long. They were curious
creatures, and apparently very pugnacious, as, when approached,
they would often turn round and face me, raising themselves slightly
on their squat fat bodies and pawing the air with their big front legs.
If I pushed my foot towards them they frequently attacked it,
grappling my toe with their legs and trying to bite. I picked up one of
the larger ones and gave him the end of my thumb to bite—a rather
foolish proceeding, it struck me afterwards, as, for all I knew to the
contrary, his bite might have been poisonous. He bit furiously at the
end of my thumb with his rather formidable jaws, foaming at the
mouth and doing his feeble best to damage me. He managed to get
hold of a small pinch of skin between his jaws, which closed in a
horizontal direction, and gave me a nip I could distinctly feel.
Once, in the desert west of Dakhla, I found a mosquito, which
considerably raised my hopes that I might be getting near water. But
it proved to be only a wind-born specimen, coming probably from
Nesla or Bu Mungar. Lace-winged flies frequently came into our
camp, even when far out into the desert, and on most nights a few
moths flew into my tent and came to my candle; occasionally they
were in considerable numbers.
The common house flies, though a nuisance in the oasis, are
fortunately unknown in the desert, though frequently a swarm of
them, if there is no wind, will follow a caravan when starting from an
oasis; but they disappear in a day or two.
Once while riding in a desert with my caravan, when, having left
an oasis the day before, we were considerably bothered with these
pests, a swarm of which kept buzzing round our heads, I was
relieved of them in a rather unexpected manner. A swallow—
evidently migrating—came up to the caravan from the south, and
being presumably very hungry, kept flying round and round our
heads, snapping up a fly at every circle. Owing probably to its
hunger, the little creature was extraordinarily tame—its wing tips
several times almost touched my face. Having remained with the
caravan for a few minutes, it circled round us half a dozen times to
make sure that there were no flies that it had overlooked, and then
flew off and pursued its way to the north.
A list of some of the insects I collected will be found in Appendix
II.
The road that we followed to the south-west from Dakhla lay in the
direction from which the birds were migrating, so I not only noted
every specimen that we saw, but put down in my route book every
feather that I picked up, and even the marks on the sand where
these migrants had alighted, as this was all valuable evidence that
we were still travelling in the right direction.
In addition to palm doves and the smaller migrants, we several
times saw storks and cranes, or their tracks; but this, of course, only
occurred during the season of their migration. There was a large
white bird, which appeared to be an eagle, that we frequently saw at
all seasons, but I was never able to get very close to it, as, unlike
most desert creatures, it was extremely wild.
The only place where I ever saw any sand grouse, outside the
oases, was on the road between Kharga and Dakhla. They seemed
to be entirely absent from the desert to the south and south-west of
Dakhla, and also from the desert surrounding Farafra Oasis—the
reason of their absence presumably being the lack of food.
Not only were insects, reptiles and birds fairly well represented in
the desert, but even mammals were not unknown. In addition to the
desert rats, about eighty miles to the south of Dakhla I came across
the remains of a gazelle, but possibly the poor little beast had only
wandered out into the desert to die. Small foxes, though they existed
in the oasis, I never saw in the desert—the rats would not have been
so numerous if I had. The tracks of a larger fox were seen several
times, often several days’ journey away from an oasis. The tracks of
jackals, or wolves, I could not be sure which, were still oftener
encountered.
 The dog tribe, of course, could live on the rats and lizards, but,
unless they obtained sufficient moisture from the blood of their
victims, they must have returned occasionally to the oases to drink.
One wonders why these animals, who can live also in the oases,
should prefer to exist in the desert, where the conditions under which
they are forced to live must make life almost impossible.
The problem of how the desert rats exist has caused much
discussion, and cannot yet be said to be solved. I have found them
certainly a good hundred and fifty miles from any oasis, in a part
quite barren, yet they were obviously perfectly healthy, plump and
lively.
I was once camped for several weeks in the dune belt that runs
through Kharga Oasis. One evening I had just sat down to dinner,
when I noticed one of these little kangaroo rats hopping about in the
candle-light just outside the door of my tent. A sudden movement
that I made scared him. He jumped about four feet and was gone in
a flash.
But in a minute or two, prompted probably by curiosity, he was
back again in his old place, hovering about just outside the tent.
Hoping to get a better look at him, I flipped a small piece of bread so
that it fell just in front of him. After some hesitation, he pounced on to
it, and carrying it a few yards away, proceeded to eat it.
He then came back again, stationing himself a little nearer in, and
seized another piece of bread I threw him that dropped about half-
way between us. Soon I had him taking pieces actually out of my
hand—he was extraordinarily tame.
I was just finishing my meal, and had forgotten all about him, and
was reading a book propped up on the table as I ate, when I
suddenly felt a tap on the top of my thigh, and on looking down to
see what it was, found that he had not only returned, but had actually
jumped up on to my leg as I sat at table. In a moment more, he had
hopped up on to the table itself and was eating the crumbs.
He was so absolutely fearless that he even allowed me to stroke
his back with my finger; but directly I attempted to close my hand
over him he jumped off the table in alarm on to the ground, where,
however, he remained restlessly hopping about with his
extraordinarily springy movement, till I threw him another piece of
bread.
Apparently, however, he had had as much as he wanted for the
moment, for, instead of eating it as he had done before, he picked it
up, hopped out of the tent, and disappeared for several minutes.
Presently, however, he came back again. I threw him another piece
that he again made off with, and after an interval returned for more.
He must have carried off about ten pieces in this way that evening,
each piece about the size of a filbert. I kept on feeding him so long
as he continued to return; but at last, being perhaps tired after
carrying so often what must have been a heavy load for him, he
ceased to appear.
He returned again on the following night, and for eight
consecutive ones. Each night I gave him as much bread as he would
eat and carry away. He seemed to be a very small eater; but he must
have taken off with him enough bread to make two or three loaves.
In addition, he levied toll on the grain for the camels, which he
obtained by gnawing holes in the sacks.
This last, however, proved to be his undoing, for one of my men
happened to catch him in the act, and promptly, much to my disgust,
killed him. It was unquestionably the same rat that had come nightly
to my tent that had also carried off the grain, for there was no
possibility of mistaking him, owing to the fact that he had lost an eye.
I felt quite sorry to lose the little beast, which had become quite a
pet, and latterly became so tame that he would allow me to pick him
up and stroke him. When my man, however, grabbed hold of him in
his hand, he promptly bit him in the thumb.
These little kangaroo rats are wonderfully pretty little creatures,
just the colour of the sand itself, with large black eyes and a very
long tail. Their most striking peculiarity is the enormous muscular
development of their hind legs, which seem quite disproportionately
massive in comparison with their small bodies.
 It is this great muscular development of their long hind legs that
gives them such wonderful powers of locomotion. Once, while
travelling with my caravan over a large area of level sand, I came
across the track of one of these rats, quite clearly visible on the
smooth surface, and as it happened to be travelling in practically the
same direction as I was going myself, I followed it for a long
distance.
The track consisted of a series of double dots where the hind feet
had landed on the sand, occurring at regular intervals of three to four
feet apart. I followed those tracks for over nine miles in practically a
straight line, till a change in the direction of my route from that of the
rat compelled me to leave them.
During the whole of the time during which I followed them, I only
found three or four places where the rat had abandoned his regular
pace and stopped for a moment or two to turn round and round
apparently to play with his tail.
The speed at which these little beasts can travel is little short of
marvellous. The fastest runner would not have the remotest chance
of catching them; when frightened, they will go off at a pace that the
natives say even a horse cannot equal. The steady rate which the
one whose tracks I had followed had kept up for so many miles,
shows that they can travel long distances without tiring, and that they
not only can, but do.
It is in this marvellous capacity for getting over the ground, and
their habit of hoarding up provisions, that the explanation of their
ability to live in these districts can, I believe, be found.
Absolutely barren as this district seems to be, there are here and
there patches of grass, quite dead to all appearances, but which
have probably shed their seed on the surrounding ground. Even in
these arid districts rain is not unknown—there were stories in Dakhla
of a regular downpour that was said to have occurred not many
years before, when rain fell in such quantities that many of the mud-
built houses of the oasis melted before it and fell down. Rainfall such
as this, or even a heavy shower, might cause the seed to sprout. The
grass is usually found growing on the stiffest clay, which would hold