(The historical literature of political deviance is sparse...)
The historical literature of political deviance is sparse. This unusual work, chronicling the history of Jonathan Wild, represents an effort to come to terms with one of the more amazing characters of English social history.
(Since most of the 3,500 aircraft used in the Spanish Civi...)
Since most of the 3,500 aircraft used in the Spanish Civil War were smuggled into the country, only recently have archives opened, lost records surfaced, and people found it safe to tell their stories.
(The victory of fascism in Spain in 1936 set the stage for...)
The victory of fascism in Spain in 1936 set the stage for World War Two. As Gerald Howson argues in this startling and compelling new look at the Spanish Civil War, that victory was assured by the non-fascist European powers.
Gerald Howson was a British photographer and writer. Gerald Howson’s body of work represented a passion for the eighteenth-century English history - evidenced by such biographical subjects as General John Burgoyne, and the criminals Dr. William Dodd and Jonathan Wild - and twentieth-century Spanish history and culture, which is detailed in his works on the Spanish Civil War and Spanish Flamenco guitar.
Background
Gerald Howson was born on November 29, 1925, in the Cambridgeshire village of Buckden, but grew up in the East End of London, where his father, Vincent, previously an actor, was an Anglican vicar in Limehouse; his mother, Kate, was the daughter of the housekeeper at the Savoy hotel in the West End. The Howson's' home was destroyed in the blitz, which triggered a lifelong interest in military aircraft in the then 14-year-old Gerald, culminating in one of his later books, Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War (1990).
The family was relocated to the congenial parish of the actors' church, St Paul's, Covent Garden, where Gerald got his first real taste of bohemia. To his mother's dismay, the boy would invite rough sleepers into bed down for the night in the vicarage when the weather was bad.
Education
Howson attended Chelsea School of Art, focusing on painting, but also developed a passion for Spanish guitar music, particularly flamenco. He also attended the Courtauld Institute of Art History.
Howie did his military service in Palestine during the tumultuous period at the end of the British mandate, leading to the creation of the state of Israel and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war. But by this stage, he knew that his main interest lay in the creative arts.
In 1954, he took up a position teaching English in Spain, first in Vigo, Galicia, and later in Cádiz, Andalucía, throwing himself into the exuberant life of flamenco musicians and Gypsy culture, which would give him the necessary material for his flamboyantly candid memoir (and first published book), The Flamencos of Cádiz Bay (1965).
Howie was also an author of several other books. Howson’s The Macaroni Parson: The Life of the Unfortunate Doctor Dodd detailed the events leading to the last public execution for forgery in England. Dodd’s case was famously championed by Samuel Johnson. Howson suggests that Dodd’s execution was a critical turning point in public and legal perceptions of capital punishment. Howson details the life of gangster Jonathan Wild in Thief-Taker General: The Rise and Fall of Jonathan Wild.
In Aircraft of the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, Howson again displayed his penchant for intensive research. In Arms for Spain: The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War, Howson reexamined the political and militaristic implications of the Spanish Civil War.
Howie then tried a career as a photojournalist. One of his first assignments was in Poland in 1959, to illustrate a feature in Queen magazine, for which a friend, the novelist Frank Tuohy (then working for the British Council in Warsaw), had been commissioned to write the text. The article was never published, and Gerald's pictures remained unseen by the public until half a century later, when they appeared in the exhibition and associated book, Gerald Howson: A Very Polish Affair (2014). When he showed some of his prints to the Polish embassy's cultural attache on his return to London from the abortive trip and she asked angrily were all the smiling faces were, he replied drily that there weren't any.
Gerald took up more stable employment, teaching part-time as head of photography at Wimbledon College of Art, where he remained until his retirement in 1992. In Arms for Spain: The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War, Howson reexamines the political and militaristic implications of the Spanish Civil War. The latter argued a thesis, contested by some leftwing scholars, that the Republicans had been cynically exploited by Soviet Russia, which made them pay for second-rate weapons with gold.
Howson was fascinated with Spanish culture, music, history, and art. Though Gerald could hardly string two words of Spanish together when he first arrived in Franco's Spain, by the time he left a couple of years later he was fluent in the language and also an accomplished flamenco guitarist.
He could sometimes be spotted sitting on a bench at Charing Cross station, carefully amending footnotes.
Quotes from others about the person
"I have long admired Gerald Howson for his dogged determination to get to the truth, whatever the cost in hard labour." - Raymond Carr
Interests
flamenco guitar, aircraft
Music & Bands
spanish music
Connections
Howson married Vera Cox on April 12, 1958. They had two children, Rebecca and Robert.