Friday 15 November 2013

Tudor nudity? History has never been so much fun.

So here I am, new to my role as a history teacher, charged with the responsibility of awakening the concept of connectivity with the past in my classes of year 8 and 10 students (who are about 13 and 15 years old respectively, I only mention that as some of the people reading this who don't work in schools may need help in visualising the sort of children we're talking about here!). 

Thankfully I have a scheme of work and trusty reference book from those stalwart people in Oxford to work with so what could possibly go wrong?  Let's start with the sense of humour that these authors have.  They know as well as we do that the first thing any school boy does when he gets a new book is to have a look through for any suggestive or lewd pictures, along with any text that may prove hilarious hidden in the more sober messages about the Tudors or Stuarts.  Not that I ever did that..

Alarm bells should have been ringing when it was highlighted that Henry VIII employed someone specifically to wipe the Royal personage after he had been to the toilet.  Clearly put in to bring some levity to the subject of the much married one and it worked very well.  Suffice to say I resisted adding the comment 'the money was good but it was a bit of a s**t job..'. (Sorry Mum..)  That was then followed up with a chapter on Bloody Mary, bloody great..  I've never heard so much 'bloody'ing' going on in my life.  Why couldn't they just call her Very Dangerous Mary, or Vicious Mary?

Then I was approached by a colleague who whispered in hushed tones 'whatever you do, don't teach Tudor Crime on page 41'.  Now, we live in a conservative environment, school trips are single sex to avoid any hanky panky on the bus to the water de-salination works or wherever it is they go.  Suffice to say saucy pictures are a no go area.  So what part of Tudor criminality do the authors choose to focus on?  Highway men, smugglers, child pick pockets, no they chose criminal gangs who lure men to secluded spots then rob them.  What is the bait?  Topless women.  You have to be kidding me..

Yes, unknown to me as my school omitted this from the curriculum when I were a lad, in Tudor times there were gangs of semi naked women roaming the streets acting as lures for footpads.  Not happy in telling us about it, the publishers thankfully included a Tudor pen and ink drawing of these women in action in an alehouse, with their upper bodies completely uncovered to illustrate how the trap worked.  Thanks guys..  Needless to say that is the most thumbed page in all the books that belong to boys, who think it is the most incredible piece of publishing they have even seen, mind you they're not fishing in a big pond.  Almost worth learning to read so that they could enjoy such riské delights, definitely worth getting your glasses changed.

The school used to run an overseas trip to France, imagine taking these teenage lads who have had a sheltered upbringing like this to Europe.  First stop Carrefour for a baguette and Coke, but hang on what's this on the top shelf....  Boom, fifteen boys simultaneously faint and have to be immersed in the local fountain to contain their ardor sufficiently to get them back on the coach.  What if they had gone to Amsterdam?  Imagine the scene, 'Ooh look, there's Anne Frank's house, what the blazes is that! Splash...'.  Those trips have now been cancelled, or at least they're teaching them how to swim before they go.

As if that wasn't enough, in bypassing Tudor Crime we skip straight to Tudor Torture, surely no nudity here, just stocks, pillories, the rack, that sort of thing?  I hadn't realised how much time torturers spent devising ways of battering a man's private parts..  Why didn't they just call them Gooly Bashers instead of Torturers? (I'd like to take the credit for resurrecting the word gooly, last used in 1977.)  Two of the six methods shown were specifically designed to focus on this area, surely that can't be representative?  Whatever happened to thumb screws or the Iron Maiden (please, no comments about 'oh they're still touring and have a new single coming out..')?  Clearly another cruel joke from the publishers, and why did they have to show diagrams??  This also meant that I had the same question from every class that read the text,  'Sir, what are genitals?'.  Oh how we laughed...

Next week it's the Treaty of Versailles, which should be safer ground unless Clemenceau, Wilson and Lloyd George had a bunga bunga party that no-one's told me about?

Come back English, all is forgiven...


No comments: