A while before I joined u3a, I started reading some history books. Briefly, I became interested in the English Civil War, and bought a book about it. The problem with the book was that it didn’t tell me what led up to the start of the war.
I temporarily gave up on the book (OK, temporary being almost 3 years). I went back to a period where I expected there would be good records as evidence for today’s history books. That period turned out to be the time of the Plantagenets, the 12th & 13th Centuries, and I started reading from there. I reached a point in a book about the Stuart Kings where I felt comfortable going back to the original book.
This detail is important because, as I was reading the books, I became increasingly interested in the societies in which these people lived, and the level of organisation that existed at that time.
Ironically, I am going to mention an undertaking that happened roughly 100 years before the Plantagenets; the Domesday Book. With that, and society after that time, there were events that continually caused me to wonder, “How did they know how to do that?” It wasn’t what they did, it was how they did it.
Enter the u3a. There are two groups of which I am a member, the Gosport group “History”, and the online interest group, “Archaeology”. As I’ve taken part in those groups, I have been reminded to ask that one question.
I suspect it is a question that will stay with me.
Bills Posts 