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Showing posts with label anniversaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anniversaries. Show all posts
October is full of battle anniversaries and this one is extremely important. The history of this country and, let us not mince matters, of Europe changed on October 14, 1066 when William, Duke of Normandy and his French/Viking army defeated Harold Godwinson and his Anglo-Saxon army. The battle lasted the whole day, which as this article points out, is a long time for mediaeval engagements. Both sides fought valiantly, with the Normans finally securing victory by pretending to retreat.
The article has one of those jocular titles that we have all become used to: Battle of Hastings 950 year anniversary: the 9 things you might not know. Well, the first thing we might not know is that the anniversary falls on Saturday as it does not - it falls on Friday, that is today. The second thing we might not know, though too many people believe it, is that it was the last successful invasion of England. For some reason Henry Tudor's invasion with a French army, bolstered by some traitors and William of Orange bringing over far more Hollanders than expected are always forgotten.
Today, we must think of the Battle of Hastings, its place in the various changes in Europe in the eleventh century, the Viking expansion and the history of England as it emerged from the continuing battle between the Normans and Saxons. Here is another account and a more detailed one. But, perhaps, the best written and most imaginative interpretation of the tale are the first four stories and poems in Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill.
Yes, I am talking about the Battle of Lepanto, which took place 445 years ago yesterday. Sorry to have missed the exact anniversary but it is only a semi-significant one. As we can read in the Britannica: "The battle marked the first significant victory for a Christian naval force over a Turkish fleet and the climax of the age of galley warfare in the Mediterranean." The Battle of Salamis may have been as important but others, big though they were, are second-rank.
I wrote about its significance before but find it hard to resist the call of G. K. Chesterton's poetry though he claimed more than either the battle or Don John of Austria had actually achieved. But, really, who cares? This is a poem, not a history book.
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
Without comment:
William Pitt the Younger became Prime Minister at the age of 24 and died, on January 23, 1806, at the age of 46, exhausted by work and, let us not mince our words, the amount of port he put away every day of his life. How much more might he have achieved if not for the interminable French wars.
One of my favourite films is Carol Reed's The Young Mr Pitt, a very fine propaganda film made in 1942 with the great Robert Donat playing both the Elder and the Younger Pitt. Here is a scene between him and Talleyrand, played by Albert Lieven.
Some years ago I wrote an article about Kipling for the Reputations section of the Salisbury Review but, at the moment, I cannot find it either on the internet or in hard copy, which I do have. As soon as I do so, I shall either link to it or quote from it. I do recall that I referred both to Orwell's and T. S. Eliot's essay on the man and his work. They are both interesting in that they were written at a time when Kipling was seen as something of an embarrassment to the literary establishment and the two critics, approaching the subject from different political perspectives, came to similar conclusions: a very good poet, often a good prose writer, difficult to accept politically but not quite as bad as people make him out.
Times have changed and our attitude to Kipling (give or take idiot students in Oxford, I imagine) has also changed. We still think of hims as a good and accessible poet. If was voted as the nation's favourite poem and I am not surprised. Recessional is not seen as a glorification of imperialism and racism, as it was for many years, by anyone who has actually read it but as a warning against hubris and arrogance. His later poems about the First World War are full of woe, not least because he lost his only son in it and felt guilty about pushing him towards enlistment, despite him being too young.
His children's books are a delight and his Indian stories continue to be popular. He was one of the few authors who understood children and could write about them as well as for them without making one cringe with embarrassment. He also understood and could write about people usually dismissed by the literary establishment, such as ordinary soldiers, the people of India who are between castes and races as well as the lower ranks of the Indian Service.
There are so many things to say about this man who is still underestimated by many but let me just add one highly admirable characteristic: he consistently refused state honours even when George V personally offered him a knighthood. He even declined the Poet Laureateship. A writer and a poet, he thought, should not be accepting such honours. He did accept honorary degrees and, eventually, the Nobel Prize for Literature. How many literary personalities who pretend to be far more radical jump at the chance of a gong, a handle or the ermine?
Meanwhile, here are some links to discussions about Kipling: an OUP blog about what he really wrote about the First World War, an interesting piece about Kipling's birthday being celebrated in India and an excellent piece by Christopher Howse in the Telegraph about Kipling "the misfit poet".
... in 1874, Sir Winston Spencer Leonard Churchill. The current Conservative History Journal has a couple of extremely interesting articles about him that remind us of the fact that he remains a controversial figure as is right and proper.
At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the guns fell silent. It was not the war to end all wars and we have had a number since then. But at that time we remember all the dead of all the wars and honour those who survived.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Tomorrow is St Crispin's Day and 600 years ago it was the day upon which the Battle of Agincourt was fought. Here, as you would expect, is the speech made on the eve of the battle in Shakespeare's play by Sir Laurence Olivier:
And here is part of the battle from the same film:
One of the most famous battles in English history, a stupendous achievement by English arms but did it achieve anything? Well, it made the English temporarily victorious in the Hundred Years' War, created a great legend, which, oddly enough was largely true - the English and the Welsh army was considerably smaller than the French, which they defeated - and staved off the war between the House of York and the House of Lancaster.
Here is a useful account and a list of ten reasons why the French were defeated by numerically inferior forces.
Margaret Thatcher was born Margaret Roberts in Grantham on October 13, 1925 in Grantham. As the second volume of Charles Moore's biography is being read (though not yet by me as I am still immersed in Rab Butler who is unlikely to have approved of the Iron Lady) there seems no point in going through her various deeds and achievements here but a brief chronology, as posted on the Margaret Thatcher Foundation site is useful.
Her importance can be measured not through the words and attitudes of her admirers, especially as a number of us have managed to perceive that she was wrong from time to time either because she had to placate and earn the loyalty of all members of her party or because certain measures would not have been passed or because she was simply wrong. It is the fury and hatred that her name excites in so many people of varying ages who do not even know what it is they hate and certainly cannot argue any valid alternative ideas that is the true measure of her greatness.
Here, as ever for this blog, a few pictures of the greatest Prime Minister of the twentieth century, chosen at random.
Seventy years ago the first atom bomb to be used in war was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, the second one, on Nagasaki to follow two day later. It undoubtedly ushered in a new world politically and militarily and has remained in many people's minds the pre-eminent example of a war crime. In fact, the casualties incurred by the firebombing of Tokyo were higher and when it came to war crimes, there were many competitors for the title of the worst.
The decision to drop the two atom bombs was taken by President Harry S Truman because he considered, probably rightly, that the this was the only way to bring the war in the Pacific to an end speedily without further very high American and Japanese casualties. That alternative would have probably meant many more British, Australian, Indian and other casualties.
This is the day that all conservatives in the Anglosphere, with a small or large c, celebrate, even if they do not approve of everything the great Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield did. April 19, the anniversary of his death, was for a long time celebrated as Primrose Day, that being, allegedly, his favourite flower.
Out of that grew the Primrose League, the country's first popular political movement and the first political organization in which women played an important role. It is time to reconsider all these matters and, perhaps, revive and rethink those ideas and discussions. That would make a splendid change from the present election campaign.
Happy Primrose Day to all.
Early in the afternoon of January 30, 1649, Charles I, who, apparently, insisted on wearing three shirts so he would not shiver from cold, stepped through the window of Whitehall Palace's Banqueting Hall to the scaffold. His execution did not solve the various issues of the Great Rebellion as Lord Clarendon called it or the Civil War. It was, nevertheless, a shattering event. Kings had been deposed and murdered before in English, Scottish and other histories. But no King had ever been tried before for treason.
Here is the document that can be said to be the beginning of modern political thought, the Death Warrant of Charles I, agreed on by a number of Parliamentarians who had the unbelievable imagination to separate the person of the King from the institution of Kingship and State or, as they are known by some, the Regicides.
For many, it is the figure of the sad, misguided but, ultimately very brave King that is of significance, as can be seen in this picture of Charles the Martyr:
But to me it is the people who dared to think otherwise even when they thought they were looking back to Biblical and Ancient precedents who remain fascinating. As it happens, I was recently sent Charles Spencer's book, Killers of the King, subtitled The Men Who Dared To Execute Charles I. I am greatly looking forward to reading it and writing about it.
It was the most extraordinary event. Many people have written about it and tried to understand it but it remains hard to comprehend. It is not as if Churchill died young, nor had he been in power for some years. In fact, when in power or just politically active, he was not particularly popular, not even as war leader and certainly not after the war. Let us not forget that under his leadership the Conservative Party lost two elections out of three and barely managed to win the third one because the Liberal Party could not stand the financial strain of two elections in one year.
In the ten years between his well-earned retirement and his death, however, he was transferred into an god-like figure, an icon of British history and a man whom no criticism must touch. Of course, historians have discussed his political career and even his wartime actions for some time but any disagreement with the generally worshipping attitude has been met with shrieks of horror until very recently (as discussed in this posting).
The funeral was something separate. It was, unusually, a state funeral for a former political figure; it was beautifully planned and executed, furthermore, but that is not surprising. Britain, this blog maintains does pomp and circumstance better than any country. Besides, it has been said that Churchill himself had contributed a great deal to the planning.
There was more, though: the country was saying good-bye to a great leader but also to its own past without, perhaps, quite realizing it. Still recovering from the war and, even more so, the immediate post-war years, still unable to work out her role in the world, the whole country looked back with sorrow to a period, so well represented by the figure of Churchill, when its greatness, courage and steadfastness seemed unassailable. We were saying goodbye to all that. Sadly, it took a good many years to start looking forward again.
Here is a slightly abbreviated film of the funeral, very well worth seeing:
And here is the moment that always brings a lump to my throat: the cranes of London's docks (that were not going to survive Churchill for long) saying their farewell and the coffin beginning its final journey:
Very remiss of this blog not to note the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the great poet, essayist and conservative thinker, T. S. Eliot yesterday. As it happens, I am writing this in London Library, of which he was President from 1952 to 1964 and which has recently benefited greatly from the generosity of his widow, Valerie Eliot. Indeed, the new section of the library is called after the great man though I should have preferred it to be known as Old Possum House. Ah well, cannot have everything.
A few other links on the subject: the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Foundation and the Nobel Prize website, which also has his acceptance speech.
And, for conservative thinkers and readers, here is Roger Scruton's brilliant essay on Eliot as a conservative mentor.
T. S. Eliot was indisputably the greatest poet writing in English in the twentieth century. He was also the most revolutionary Anglophone literary critic since Samuel Johnson, and the most influential religious thinker in the Anglican tradition since the Wesleyan movement. His social and political vision is contained in all his writings, and has been absorbed and reabsorbed by generations of English and American readers, upon whom it exerts an almost mystical fascination—even when they are moved, as many are, to reject it. Without Eliot, the philosophy of Toryism would have lost all substance during the last century. And while not explicitly intending it, Eliot set this philosophy on a higher plane, intellectually, spiritually, and stylistically, than has ever been reached by the adherents of the socialist idea.It is very well worth reading in full.
Eliot attempted to shape a philosophy for our times that would be richer and more true to the complexity of human needs than the free-market panaceas that have so often dominated the thinking of conservatives in government. He assigned a central place in his social thinking to high culture. He was a thorough traditionalist in his beliefs but an adventurous modernist in his art, holding artistic modernism and social traditionalism to be different facets of a common enterprise. Modernism in art was, for Eliot, an attempt to salvage and fortify a living artistic tradition in the face of the corruption and decay of popular culture.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
It was one of those events all who lived through will remember. Where were you when you heard about the Wall being opened up and coming down? I was at home, glued to the radio (not having a TV set), tears welling in my eyes. Could we really believe it?
Yes, it did happen and on that day, the Second World War was finally over.
Wir sind ein Volk said the placards and the Germans asserted their right to be one united country. It was the people of East Germany and Eastern Europe in general who brought down the Wall and Communism as a whole with a little help from President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher.
The beginning of the Wall
And the end
Finally, a wordless history:
This really is just a posting about random thoughts and a short one at that. (Phew! I hear you say.) I went to an interesting talk about the Human Rights Act and whether it is a good thing or not by Guy Herbert, the man who runs NO2ID. His conclusions were not quite what people might expect, unless you knew Guy and his habit of thinking every issue through to the logical and unpalatable end.
During the discussion, almost inevitably, the subject of Magna Carta came up with somebody arguing that a great deal of the discussion is conducted on an emotional level. Thus, people who were "against" the Magna Carta were deemed to be bad or very bad whereas those who were "for" it were obviously the good guys. He was not talking about the actual participants of that event in 1215 but about people who talked about the subject now.
How, I asked, can one be for or against something that happened in the thirteenth century and was, whichever way you look at it, of some importance in this country's history? That reminds me of the possibly apocryphal story about Thomas Carlyle hearing that Margaret Fuller said that she had decided to accept the universe. "Gad!" - said the great conservative sage. - "She'd better."
Of course, one is for Magna Carta but what one might be against is the hysteria that is already growing around that event, important though it was, the political shenanigans that we shall see with different parties claiming that mediaeval document for themselves and, of course, the miasma of inevitability that will surround so many of the discussions. Magna Carta in 1215 ergo Britain being uniquely free and democratic. Not so, but far from it.
The picture above, in the National Portrait Gallery, shows him in a slightly unusual mode, as an art collector.
Here, on the other hand, is an article from History Today about the politician and his end.
100 years ago today, on June 28, 1914 the shots that ushered in the disaster of the twentieth century were fired in Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip at the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. I need not go through all the subsequent events that eventually led to the First World War which, in turn, led to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, and of Europe in general, pushed Britain and the British Empire closer to the bankruptcy and dissolution of the second half of the century and unleashed the two most evil ideologies of history: Nazism and Communism.
Just out of interest here is a link to The British Newspaper Archive that shows the coverage the Archduke's assassination received in British papers.
The second act of the century's tragedy is also commemorated today. 95 years ago, on June 28, 1919 the Versailles Treaty was signed and many of the century's tragedies was unleashed then. Certainly, in the Middle East we are still dealing with the outcome and no solution seems to be in sight.
