History books

[Liam]

Ahem. That's Alan Faulkner's copyright (and partly WW's copyright too, I suspect!).

 

I don't doubt that. I have scanned it to PDF as you can't rip a PDF

 

Merely just backed it up, as you would do with your collection of music, to MP3's.

 

I was speaking to Maureen in Middlewich last weekend, who told me about this book - Midlands Canals - History of the Canal Carriers

 

I've only read it yet, just flicked through looking at the pictures. It does show a couple of Willow Wren boats but doesn't seem to mention Leslie Morton. It does however have around 10 or so interesting short stories of Maureen Shaw, Caggy Stevens and Joe Safe, amongst others.

[Laurence Hogg]

One thing that has struck me is that there seems to be very little academic historical research in the areas that interest me - mainly the social history of canal boat life, and the social/economic history of canal carrying (as opposed to canal building). I've done my best to trawl the various academic databases with no results; I have asked historian colleagues, with the same outcome.

 

There is some good written history out there, but it seems almost entirely to be written by the enthusiast/gifted amateur (or in some cases of course not so gifted), and again, relatively little of it covers these areas. I'm not suggesting academic history is inherently 'better' - indeed, it would have to draw very much on accounts like those of Susan Woolfit and David Blagrove - but it is very surprising to me that not one single professional historian has thought it worth taking up as a field of research. Or am I wrong, and if so where can I find it?

 

In particular, I would like to read a history of the Grand Union company (other than The George and the Mary), and a biography of Leslie Morton. Does either exist?

 

The history of the GUCCo exists but is unpublished. It is far more accurate than the George & Mary.

[Chertsey]

The history of the GUCCo exists but is unpublished. It is far more accurate than the George & Mary.

Tease!

[David Schweizer]

No you're right, I wouldn't want to draw you into a public debate about it and I didn't honestly expect you to be reading it seconds after I posted.

 

It just struck me as another of those areas where people often feel fairly sanguine about ignoring the law and in some cases - particularly out of print works - I can see why, although as an author myself (albeit not one that has ever got any royalties) I can see the other side too.

As someone who has undertaken an enormous of time consuming historical research in order to publish a sometimes fairly short article, I always make sure that I place an all embracing copyright on the work. I am more than happy for anyone to include sections of my research in their own work with my consent, and appropriately credited. What I do object to is someone using it without my consent and claiming it to be their own work.

[Chertsey]

As someone who has undertaken an enormous of time consuming historical research in order to publish a sometimes fairly short article, I always make sure that I place an all embracing copyright on the work. I am more than happy for anyone to include sections of my research in their own work with my consent, and appropriately credited. What I do object to is someone using it without my consent and claiming it to be their own work.

Yes, I can see that. As an academic author my main concern has always been plagiarism rather than being jibbed of sales (which are pretty insignificant anyway). But stealing someone else's work and passing it off as your own, for credit or profit, is beyond the pale. I don't think you can stop other people quoting or citing your published work though, provided they do so within the terms of 'fair dealing' and credit it properly - although you can certainly request that they ask permission first I didn't think you could demand it.

 

I also take on board all the points that Richard makes, although morally (but I accept not legally) it is a bit of a grey area. There are various ways I could read a book that I do not own (and can not purchase), some of which are legal (borrowing a friend's copy) and some of which are not (making a PDF of a friend's copy) although the outcome for the author and publisher is the same in both cases.

[David Schweizer]

Yes, I can see that. As an academic author my main concern has always been plagiarism rather than being jibbed of sales (which are pretty insignificant anyway). But stealing someone else's work and passing it off as your own, for credit or profit, is beyond the pale. I don't think you can stop other people quoting or citing your published work though, provided they do so within the terms of 'fair dealing' and credit it properly - although you can certainly request that they ask permission first I didn't think you could demand it.

I also take on board all the points that Richard makes, although morally (but I accept not legally) it is a bit of a grey area. There are various ways I could read a book that I do not own (and can not purchase), some of which are legal (borrowing a friend's copy) and some of which are not (making a PDF of a friend's copy) although the outcome for the author and publisher is the same in both cases.

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 which is an update of the 1911Copyright Act protects the intellectual rights of all original work from unauthorised copying. Whilst the Act provides that you can demand that no other person copies any of your original work without your consent, there are a few exceptions, the main ones for written works being private and research study purposes, criticism and news reporting, and incidental inclusion.

 

Copyright remains with the original writer until their death, and then for a further 70 years thereafter. However, as any breach can only be prosecuted by Civil Action in Court, presumably the writer has to pass the rights onto another person in their will for this to take place after the original writer's death. There are some classic examples where commercial trusts vigorously protect deceased writer's copyright, including for example Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie.

Edited October 15, 2009 by David Schweizer

[Pluto]

The OP's original question was about academic books on canals, and this has set me thinking about what such books actually are. For me, an academic book implies criticism of the subject, and drawing conclusions about research. This suggests that there are comparatively few true academic books on canals. Most of Hadfield's books would not fit as his reason for writing them was to bring much of the source material together. He did tell me that he expected others to write more formal academic histories of individual canals, and that his work was just to give some sort of foundation for them to build upon. In my view, his most academic work is one of his least known, The Canal Age, where he tries to put the development of inland waterways into some sort of context. Edward Paget-Tomlinson's books are also not truly academic for the same reason as Hadfield's. This is not to belittle their work - they were striving, pretty successfully, to provide material and encouragement for others to really analyze individual canal subjects.

 

Amongst the academic writers on inland waterways, I would name Prof Skempton, for his work on the development of canal technology, Hanson's book on canal people, Ward on the financing of canals, Farrington on canal route selection, Mallet on the Duke of Bridgewater, and Willan on early waterways. Most other authors just relate the facts without too much assessment of their subject. Many are very interesting and well-written, but are they really academic?

[Chertsey]

I certainly wasn't thinking of 'academic' as preferable to what is already there - I was just surprised that it wasn't an ongoing area of research for a single professional historian, which might have thrown up new information/insights and connections. Certainly a lot of what has been written and the amount of research that has been done and compiled by some people - completely for its own sake and without reward - is of a far higher standard than some of the academic stuff I see every day (albeit in a different field). I guess I am a bit miffed that the historical 'profession' hasn't picked up on it.

 

Many thanks for all the suggestions, which I will definitely be following up.

[Southdowner]

I've no idea where you might get a copy now, but in 1985 BBC Radio Stoke issued a boxed set of 5 double-sided audio cassettes of interviews with a vast number of boatmen, 25 minutes per side. It was titled "On the Cut" and compiled by BBC Local Radio.

 

I've not listened to it since about that time, but I recall it as being very good. It was marketed by Live Sounds in Crewe, but I doubt that they still exist.

 

 

Link to hear these BBC RECORDINGS in 10 chapters.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/stoke/content/article...t_feature.shtml

[FadeToScarlet]

I certainly wasn't thinking of 'academic' as preferable to what is already there - I was just surprised that it wasn't an ongoing area of research for a single professional historian, which might have thrown up new information/insights and connections. Certainly a lot of what has been written and the amount of research that has been done and compiled by some people - completely for its own sake and without reward - is of a far higher standard than some of the academic stuff I see every day (albeit in a different field). I guess I am a bit miffed that the historical 'profession' hasn't picked up on it.

 

Many thanks for all the suggestions, which I will definitely be following up.

 

Me too- I feel a trip to the University Library is in order...

[Chertsey]

Me too- I feel a trip to the University Library is in order...

A part-time MA or PhD?... I know just the place.....

 

Link to hear these BBC RECORDINGS in 10 chapters.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/stoke/content/article...t_feature.shtml

Wow. Thank you. I will.

[Southdowner]

BBC - WW2 PEOPLE'S WAR

An archive of WW2 memories - written by the people, gathered by BBC

Mrs Jean Peters, contributed 2005.

 

Memories of a Canal Boater [J.Peters : Part 1]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/06/a4060306.shtml

 

Memories of a Canal Boater [J.Peters : Part 2]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/51/a4060351.shtml

 

Memories of a Canal Boater [J.Peters : Part 3]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/88/a4060388.shtml

 

Memories of a Canal Boater [J.Peters : Part 4]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/50/a4060450.shtml

 

Memories of a Canal Boater [J.Peters : Part 5]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/96/a4060496.shtml

 

Memories of a Canal Boater [J.Peters : Part 6]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/59/a4060559.shtml

 

Memories of a Canal Boater [J.Peters : Part 7]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/86/a4060586.shtml

 

Memories of a Canal Boater [J.Peters : Part 8]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/95/a4060595.shtml

 

I have not seen this before, indeed I haven't finished reading it yet,

looks like another contribution to the story of the "Idle Women" of WW2.

Is it new to you? Are there any more out there on the net? Wow!

 

Neil

[FadeToScarlet]

A part-time MA or PhD?... I know just the place.....

 

Will have to get past the PGCE and NQT year before I can even consider it... But it's not impossible, though.

[carlt]

Will have to get past the PGCE and NQT year before I can even consider it... But it's not impossible, though.

12 weeks holiday, a year, you should manage it

[Pluto]

I certainly wasn't thinking of 'academic' as preferable to what is already there - I was just surprised that it wasn't an ongoing area of research for a single professional historian, which might have thrown up new information/insights and connections. Certainly a lot of what has been written and the amount of research that has been done and compiled by some people - completely for its own sake and without reward - is of a far higher standard than some of the academic stuff I see every day (albeit in a different field). I guess I am a bit miffed that the historical 'profession' hasn't picked up on it.

There are some professional academic historians interested in inland waterways. I have a friend at Würzburg University (Lehrstuhl für Europäische Ethnologie/Volkskunde), Guido Fackler, who is looking at the cultural effects of the development of inland waterways. Historians often seem more interested by the technical and economic side of waterways, but cultural effects can be just as important, though 'ideas' can be more difficult to quantify than 'facts'. Amongst the subjects that Guido has written about is the promotion and opening of the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, including the political spin put on the project. His aim eventually is to look at the cultural effects of canals from a European-wide basis.

 

In Britain, John Armstrong has done some inland waterway research, but again from a more European perspective which is probably why you don't often hear about such research because of its European nature. Yet there is much of relevance to British history to be found abroad. For example, the best descriptions of the Worsley underground canal system can be found in Prussian and French reports.

[Night Hawk]

12 weeks holiday, a year, you should manage it

 

That's such a 'non-teacher' thing to say....us teachers have little enough time to sleep yet alone indulge in academic research!

[carlt]

That's such a 'non-teacher' thing to say....us teachers have little enough time to sleep yet alone indulge in academic research!

Sorry but, having worked in a school (non-teaching role) the main thing I observed was that 90% of the work was done by 10% of the teachers.

 

The rest sat in the staff room, during their free periods, drinking tea and moaning that they had to take marking home.

 

My job was year round (4 weeks holiday) and I saw the same teachers come in, unpaid, during the holidays, to prepare for the coming term.

 

There are a lot of teachers that go above and beyond, for their pupils, but the vast majority don't bother and do an average job and an average teacher's job is a lot cushier than real work.

Edited October 16, 2009 by carlt

[magpie patrick]

Just don't bother with Tom Chaplin's "Narrow Boats"!

 

This is a book I have seen good things said about, and I recently picked up a cheap copy from a "book boat", because the pictures looked promising.

 

The text is a different matter, and as well as being pompous and patronizing, is repeatedly just plain wrong.

 

However there is at a picture of a boatman in a Bowler hat, allegedly, (although it looks for the world to me like a Trilby).

 

Apparently wide beam boats did also regularly work right up to Braunston.......

 

Disappointed (again)!

 

I know Tom, he's a very nice guy, but that bit you've got off to a T

[MoominPapa]

But, on the other hand, the Stallmanite "everything should be free" mentality is little better and generally advanced by those who don't create much of worth themselves.

As someone who makes available under the GPL the results of thousands of hours of work over ten years, I object to that statement. If all the Stallmanites create little of worth, who wrote Linux and all the associated software?

 

MP.

[Derek R.]

BBC - WW2 PEOPLE'S WAR

An archive of WW2 memories - written by the people, gathered by BBC

Mrs Jean Peters, contributed 2005.

 

 

I have not seen this before, indeed I haven't finished reading it yet,

looks like another contribution to the story of the "Idle Women" of WW2.

Is it new to you? Are there any more out there on the net? Wow!

 

Neil

 

It's very good, though one or two points are confusing. I contacted her about them, and we chatted on the phone for some time.

She mentions '40 foot shafts, but of course it is more likely to be 21 foot or thereabouts, and the opening of the gates together on the Northern GU being connected by wires. This is not so, nor have Waterways archive been able to suggest it was ever intended. So maybe someone was having her on about that one! Nonetheless, a valuable collection of a Wartime trainees experiences.

 

I would still highly commend any of D.D. Gladwins books for not just the details of which canal, when and why, but the background to attitudes towards the cut, and the folk of the cut - as well as their own experiences, written in a very engaging way.

 

We bumped into George Phipps and his wife back in the late eighties skimming along in a forty footer. Anyone know if they are still about?

 

 

Derek

[BuckbyLocks]

It's very good, though one or two points are confusing. I contacted her about them, and we chatted on the phone for some time.

She mentions '40 foot shafts, but of course it is more likely to be 21 foot or thereabouts, and the opening of the gates together on the Northern GU being connected by wires. This is not so, nor have Waterways archive been able to suggest it was ever intended. So maybe someone was having her on about that one! Nonetheless, a valuable collection of a Wartime trainees experiences.

 

I think many of the difficulties with Jean's story are the result of the transcription of the recordings as it appears Voice recognition software was used by someone not familiar with the Canals and wartime. I believe the forty-foot shafts was really fourteen-foot shafts and if you read the text carefully you can spot lots of similar examples. The opening of gates is actually referring to the paddles and not the lock gates.

 

Jean appeared on 'the One Show' on August 19th this year. She was a late recruit to the Training Scheme.

Edited October 16, 2009 by BuckbyLocks

[Derek R.]

I think many of the difficulties with Jean's story are the result of the transcription of the recordings as it appears Voice recognition software was used by someone not familiar with the Canals and wartime. I believe the forty-foot shafts was really fourteen-foot shafts and if you read the text carefully you can spot lots of similar examples. The opening of gates is actually referring to the paddles and not the lock gates.

 

I'm sure you are correct about transcriptions, and her story was taken down I believe at Bournemouth. It was from Bournemouth Library that I first discovered her story, and Narrow Boat magazine has a link to the series. However, with regard to the gate mechanisms, Mrs. Peters was sure they were connected by wires. From part four of her recollections, I quote: - "The gates are exceptionally heavy and by a system of wires, two open at once."

I queried this point with her over the telephone, and she seemed quite sure this was so. In truth, I believe it may well have been some action of the water flow that made this seem so, as they have never been so connected, and the reference is not to the paddles at all.

 

'Fourteen' is easily mistaken for 'Forty', though I find a fourteen foot shaft neither good to man nor beast! From standing on the boat and shafting off the bottom, you are left holding the end when the bottom is felt! Nothing left to push with (and it's too long for poking gates!). Eighteen to twenty one is far more use. But I doubt you'll find a forty foot shaft outside of wide boats and docks. Mrs. Peters also thought she must have been mistaken on that one.

 

We had an interesting chat, and I sent her a revised copy of her account with small changes, such as Alperton where the transcript said Appleton and so on. The intention was to have her clear my 'audited' version for possible inclusion in the Historic Narrow Boat Club's journal. Sadly, I have not heard from her since.

 

Derek

[Richard Fairhurst]

As someone who makes available under the GPL the results of thousands of hours of work over ten years, I object to that statement. If all the Stallmanites create little of worth, who wrote Linux and all the associated software?

Oh, you really don't want to get me started on the GPL!

 

Linus isn't a Stallmanite. He's been quoted disagreeing with RMS a zillion times.

 

I'm absolutely not against open source. Quite the opposite. My best-known open source release is some 8,000 lines of code, all licensed as public domain, and I'm modestly prominent in a well-known open project. Heavens above, some of the stuff I've done in my paid job as WW editor has been released as open source.

 

But what I do object to is people who do relatively little in practical terms themselves, but who nonetheless belittle others' right to license their own creative works as they wish. And that's Stallman. He wrote Emacs, which is great for a small subset of users but unusable for 99% of people. He has conspicuously failed to write Hurd over the past 25 years: it took Linus to actually achieve a workable operating system (still makes me giggle that he started out on the Sinclair QL). Stallman's major contribution to Linux has been to petulantly demand the prefix "GNU/" to it.

[MoominPapa]

Oh, you really don't want to get me started on the GPL!

I don't really want to turn CWDF into debian-legal. (Though turning debian-legal into CWDF may well be a service to humanity). Nevertheless there is stuff here that has to be answered.

Linus isn't a Stallmanite. He's been quoted disagreeing with RMS a zillion times.

There probably isn't anyone who has had contact with RMS who hasn't disagreed with him many times, he has that sort of umcompromising personality. Nevertheless the Linux kernel is licensed under the GPL, and anyway as you must have realised, I used "Linux" as a lay shorthand for whole cannon of FOSS, not the kernel.

I'm absolutely not against open source. Quite the opposite. My best-known open source release is some 8,000 lines of code, all licensed as public domain, and I'm modestly prominent in a well-known open project. Heavens above, some of the stuff I've done in my paid job as WW editor has been released as open source.

I applaud your efforts, and uphold your right to us the public domain rather than using copyright law to fight software hoarding, but I maintain that if everybody did the same thing the universe of available software would be in a much worse state.

 

But what I do object to is people who do relatively little in practical terms themselves, but who nonetheless belittle others' right to license their own creative works as they wish. And that's Stallman.

 

You don't have to join his project, but it's worth considering what would have happened if no-one did.

 

He wrote Emacs, which is great for a small subset of users but unusable for 99% of people. He has conspicuously failed to write Hurd over the past 25 years: it took Linus to actually achieve a workable operating system (still makes me giggle that he started out on the Sinclair QL). Stallman's major contribution to Linux has been to petulantly demand the prefix "GNU/" to it.

Such a strawman! Why should the metric of good software be the number of people for which it is useful. The failure of the Hurd is a failure of development methodology, not license: I'm sure you have read the "The Cathedral and the Bazzar". The Gnu project's contribution to the FOSS universe includes gcc, libc, all the internationisation libraries, make........

 

MP.

Edited October 17, 2009 by MoominPapa

[PaddingtonBear]

Go Moomin