Nicholas and Alexandra
As I mentioned a while ago, we put on a showing on this film at school for the kids doing Revolutions (we’re doing Russia, of course, and eventually China, which is a bit scary for me…). Very few turned up, which was a bit disappointing, but since I hadn’t seen it it was at least a good chance for me to watch it.
It was made in 1982, and it moves very slowly. Very slowly. If it wasn’t for the historical aspect, I would go so far as to say that it was very boring. Except for the point at which I realised that Ra-Ra-Rasputin was played by Tom Baker; that was a very funny moment, almost brain-messingly so.
The most interesting part was how the relationship between Nicky and ‘Sunny’ (I think that was her nickname) was shown… which makes sense, given the title. Most of the time, she is shown as completely domineering, which I think does indeed have some historical evidence to back it up. There are a few occasions where Nicky stands up to her, but very few. And Nicky’s reaction when he has to admit his abdication to Alexandra – it was amazing, and heartbreaking, and horrifying as well – that he broke down, and seemed almost to have a nervous breakdown, I think from the sheer shame of the event. I wonder how much evidence there is to support that idea.
We didn’t get to the end – it was hometime right when Lenin started doing his April Theses thing. Related to this is one of my biggest beefs with the film: I don’t think Trotsky had anything to do with Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1905 – in fact, not even by 1917, really – and yet in the film they are shown together right back as far as Bloody Sunday, almost. Pft.
Kerensky was probably my favourite bit-part. Possibly because I think he is in ‘real life’, too.
Zero, and all that
I’m reading Zero: Biography of a Dangerous Idea at the moment. It’s spinning my head a little bit, and I have to admit that I am skipping the serious maths bits. But it is enjoyable, and it is truly bizarre to think about the consequences of zero and infinity in maths, physics, and… everything else…. I should finish it tonight; I’ll write more about it once my brain recovers.
Happy Bombing of Darwin Day
Yes, today is the anniversary of the first Japanese bombing of Darwin during WWII. A serious amount of damage was done, and a number of ships were sunk, and lots of people were killed. Nasty. No one expected that it would actually happen… and then it did.
Kit Marlowe
I’ve just finished reading a book I picked up in Cambridge called The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe. I’ve always loved Kit Marlowe and the stories and conspiracies around him; one of the best college plays I ever saw was a take on his Faust, done with 1930s clothes and a very dark theme song (the Garbage song from Romeo and Juliet done only with sax and bass).
Anyway, this is Charles Nicholl’s attempt to find as much as information as he can about the people who were actually present at Marlowe’s death (Frizer, Skeres and Poley), their various connections and dealings iin life, and make some sense of them. He’s also found as much information as he can about Marlowe and his possible/probable spying efforts.
There is a lot of information gathered here. Some of it at least may have been more suited to a book on spies in Elizabethan times, which I still would have read anyway, although I can see the point of including most of it here – good background, shows just what sort of people were involved, and lends weight to Nicholl’s idea that it wasnt just a drunken brawl over the bill that left Marlowe with a dagger in his eye.
I’m not entirely convinced by Nicholl’s final ideas, which is that Marlowe was being set up in order to discredit Walter Raleigh (who was indeed jailed for treason about a decade later – Marlowe was killed in 1593). Marlowe’s connections to Raleigh seemed a bit tenuous, and even more so did the reasons for wanting to bring Raleigh down. Maybe I am too straight-forward a thinker that I can’t get my head around the convolutions that seemed to be involved in Elizabethan politics (and probably are today, in the murkier side of things).
I enjoyed it as a book. It’s easy to read, although I got lost a few times trying to keep up with who was who and how they were connected, although Nicholls does a fair job of keeping the reader up to speed with little reminders about info that has come before, which was most welcome. As I said, not entirely convinced that Raleigh was ultimately the reason for his death, but I am definitely willing to believe that there was some dastardly conspiracy behind it all.
On a related note, the last board you read as go out of the Globe in London is about the whole Shakespeare and authorship issue. Marlowe is, of course, mentioned… and there are leaflets for the Marlowe Society next to the board. I love that.
Supercentenarians
That may be spelt incorrectly. It’s people who’ve lived to be older than 110 years old. This website has really remarkable photos of some of them, and a few other people who are only just over 100 years old. There’s one man whose father stood next to Abraham Lincoln for the Gettysburg Address… I’m not even American and I think that’s cool.
**Edit: I got a great deal of traffic to this one little post when I had it spelt ‘supercentarians’. I decided I couldn’t stand the spelling error but wanted to see if I kept the traffic!!
Ivanhoe
I am in the middle of Ivanhoe, the TV show. I thought it was much older than it is – it was made in 1997! And there was me thinking there were parts that looked like Monty Python’s Holy Grail! Oops.
I am definitely enjoying it… I got Scott’s book at a second hand book sale ages ago, but haven’t got around to reading it yet. Of course. The romantic entanglements have me very confused about exactly how it will all be resolved in the end. Well, one of them is dead, so I guess that helps… .
Damming Sudan
This is a particularly appropriate title of an article in Archaeology magazine, an exceprt of which can be found here. I am so angry at what is being done here – the lack of attention that is being paid to the remains of the area, which may well be incredibly significant. But it also makes me wonder a lot of things.
How much does it matter if we don’t know about a certain period of time? (and how much is that a heresy for a historian?) We are always told not to make a case from silence, but surely there are many, many things we don’t know because it never got written down, or the mss/artefacts were not preserved… surely some, at least, of what we know is preserved by fluke alone. So does it matter that we don’t know something? How much does it matter? How can we make that call? I just don’t know the answer to that question, and it bugs me a lot. Does it change the world that we don’t know exactly how Nubia/Sudan influenced the ancient Egyptians, or more recently medieval African Christians? Maybe not that much… except that more people might respect the modern inhabitants of the area if that became more well-known (which begs the question, how much do people pay attention to historical/archaeological discoveries? Not that much, I suspect, except when it’s about homo sapiens and Neanderthals having sex…).
How do you make the call between modern needs and archaeological needs? I guess people who are still alive take precedence, but surely there can be ways that both interests can be served? It makes me very sad both that nomads are being displaced by this new dam, and that lots and lots of archaeoloical stuff will be lost. But that tribal elders can think that keeping archaeologists out because it will slow the dam down means either that they are stupid and naive – which I am very not convinced by – or they are getting bad advice….
Richard Pipes
I’ve just finished his Concise History of the Russian Revolution, preparing for next year. The book as a whole is fascinating, and glaringly showed up my lack of knowledge, but the end in particular is interesting, for its ruminations – and, to some extent, attack – on historians and thinkings about history. He says that historians should not be passionless in dealing with their subject, that we should not always be scientific in our thinking about historical events.
He says a lot of other things, but right now I have to both make a cassata and get busy with my reports, so I am going to leave this half-thought-out and do those… because my brain really isn’t on theoretical things at the moment.
Still in the Kingdom of Heaven
Gosh, it’s so useful to have a leader who used to be a blacksmith, isn’t it? You can think up all sorts of useful little tricks to bring down the belfries.
And, much as I am embarassed to admit it, Orlando really is a bit of a cutie (sorry J, but he is). He does always play the same character, though… much like Hugh Grant. And bordering on being almost as weak-looking, too. Perfect for Paris Alexandros… what a pansy.
Randomly Yours, Alex 