Mankind: The Story of All of Us TV - Kenneth Clark TV - Andrew Graham-Dixon TV - Waldemar Januszczak TV - Thomas Hood - Michael Mosley TV - Ronald Top TV - Gerben Wagenar - The World at War TV - Albert Camus - Anne Frank: The Nazi Capture TV - Chris Everard - World War II: The Apocalypse TV - David Starkey TV - Lord Byron - Anne Frank Remembered 1995 - Judah Friedlander TV - Andrew Marr TV -
Amsterdam 1639: the rarest bulbs are selling for one hundred times their weight in gold. Mankind: The Story of All of Us VIII: Treasure, History 2012
Holland is gripped by tulip mania. ibid.
Light. The light of early morning. The light of Holland. It spreads over the flat fields, it’s reflected in the canals, and it picks out distant towers and spires. This was the inspiration of the first great school of landscape; one might almost say skyscape painting. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 8/13: The Light of Experience, BBC 1969
[Jan] Van Eyck did in effect invent oil painting. Andrew Graham – Dixon, The High Art of the Low Countries: Dream of Plenty, BBC 2013
Heironymus Bosche: the Garden of Earthly Delights c. 1500. ibid.
Bruegel’s work was popular ... warmth and empathy to these people. ibid
Peter Paul Rubens: The supreme master of a new bold style – the Baroque. ibid.
The Netherlands: The Golden Age – this tiny country boasted the most powerful empire on Earth. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The High Art of the Low Countries II: Boom and Bust
The first truly free art market. ibid.
The cycle of boom and bust would be repeated throughout Holland during the Golden Age. ibid.
A furious anti-Spanish backlash that began in the 1560s: The Iconoclastic Fury. ibid.
An art dedicated to the depiction of daily life ... It’s first great star was an artist called Frans Hals. ibid.
Landscape was one of the great subjects of Dutch art. ibid.
Rembrandt: he painted more self-portraits than any previous artist. ibid.
Vermeer who most memorably more hauntingly depicted the interior spaces of the Dutch household. ibid.
Dutch art would be dominated by two towering figures. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The High Art of the Low Countries III: Daydreams and Nightmares
You can see van Gogh’s faith in Nature as a religion. ibid.
A work that is so dark, so murky: The Potato Eaters. ibid.
Holland’s greatest gift to Impressionism was a red-head, small and wiry, beady-eyed and grumpy. It’s the brilliant little Dutch gnome Vincent van Gogh. Waldemar Januszczak, The Impressionists IV: Painting and Revolution: Final Flourish, BBC 2011
Holland … lies so low they’re only saved by being dammed. Thomas Hood, Up the Rhine, 1840
Holland was already an emerging European force. Now the power of windmills turned it into an industrial powerhouse. Michael Mosley, The Story of Science: Power, Proof and Passion, BBC 2010
In 1600 Holland was fighting a losing battle against the sea and the wind. So how did one poor farmer turn it into the richest nation in Europe? Ronald Top, Industrial Revelations: The European Story s3e1: Reaping the Whirlwind, Discovery 2005
Holland began to prosper on its reclaimed land. In today’s values the biggest polder made fourteen million euros in agricultural production each year. ibid.
Harnessing the wind had secured the lowlands. And wind was about to propel Holland’s trading ambitions. Both the British and the Dutch had made contact with the East Indies, and in 1602 the Dutch East Indies Company was formed to harvest the treasure of the world. ibid.
Thousands in a tightly packed column marched through the streets in the centre of Amsterdam while the Germans circled round them in tanks. Of course the demonstrators weren’t armed, yet they found a weapon in marching and singing. So they marched along the Rosenbach singing the Internationale. Gerben Wagenar
The people of Holland had lived under Nazi occupation for four long years. The World at War 18/26: Occupation, ITV 1973
On May 10th 1940 without a declaration of war Germany struck against neutral Holland. ibid.
More than three hundred Dutchmen mainly Jews preferred to commit suicide. ibid.
For the Dutch Nazi movement – the NSB – this was a moment of jubilation as they gathered to welcome the invaders. ibid.
The Germans introduced a racial questionnaire. ibid.
In Amsterdam black-shirted NSB men marched into a working-class area, pulled Jews out of pubs and beat them up in the streets. ibid.
There were 140,000 Jews in Holland. ibid.
Shops ran out of food. Prices soared on the black market. People kept alive by eating tulip bulbs. ibid.
Hitler now stripped Holland bare. ibid.
At winter 16,000 Dutch men, women and children died of hunger. ibid.
Still the liberators did not come. ibid.
Holland is a dream, Monsieur, a dream of gold and smoke – smokier by day, more gilded by night. And night and day that dream is peopled with Lohengrins like these, dreamily riding their black bicycles with high handle-bars, funereal swans constantly drifting throughout the whole country, around the seas, along the canals. Albert Camus
On August 3rd 1944 a Royal Air Force reconnaissance plane flew a routine mission over German occupied Amsterdam. Among the structures photographed was an office located at Prinsengracht 263. The next day, in that building, Anne Frank and her seven companions would be arrested. Anne Frank: The Nazi Capture, caption, National Geographic 2015
Anne’s father chose exile rather than live under the new Nazi government in his native Germany. ibid.
Holland surrendered within one week. At the time of this surrender 140,000 Jews lived within its borders. ibid.
In July of 1942, when the Frank family went into hiding, over 20,000 concentration camps were under construction. ibid.
Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands wore a Nazi uniform throughout the Second World War. He worked for I G Farben who manufactured Zyklon B crystals which killed millions. Chris Everard, Illuminati III
After World War II the Nazi Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands continued the plan to build a royal-German Superstate. He presided over the first meeting of the Bilderberg Group. The Bilderberg Group continued Hitler’s plan and created a royal-Germanic European Superstate. ibid.
10th May 1940 at 5.35 a.m. the Germans unleash their offensive. German paratroopers are dropped into Holland. World War II: The Apocalypse: Collapse of France aka Apocalypse: The Second World War: Crushing Defeat, National Geographic 2009
At first the French fared better. Louis advanced in Holland and occupied five of seven provinces. But the Dutch refused to roll over. They broke their dikes; they used the floodwaters to stop the French advance. Monarchy by David Starkey s3e1: Return of the King, Channel 4 2006
Holland had conquered England without a shot being fired. ibid.
William and Mary would be joint King and Queen – a sort of double monarchy unique in the history of England ... William and Mary were formally offered the crown. ibid.
William of Orange was Dutch rather than Norman ... The Dutch conquest of 1688 would also have profound consequences, and not just for England but arguably for the whole of the rest of the world. For the revolution in government that it ushered in transformed England from a feeble imitator of the French absolute monarchy ... The Dutch conquest invented a modern England, a modern monarchy, perhaps even modernity itself. Monarchy by David Starkey s3e2: The Glorious Revolution
Holland had conquered England without a shot being fired. ibid.
That water-land of Dutchmen and of ditches. Lord Byron, Don Juan