Hell, and the history thereof
As I cook an enormous lasagne to feed a 5 year old and 4 year old tonight (and their parents), I’m catching up on my “In our Time” podcasts. At the moment it’s “The history of hell,” which is interesting for a whole load of reasons. But something that just struck me: Bosch and Luther were contemporaries! Fascinating.
Now they’re talking about the fact that in many early traditions, hell was freezing, rather than being, with the speculation that this is some sort of folk memory of the change, 10,000 years ago, from the last Ice Age. Apparently – and I don’t know who thinks this – there is an idea that the Ice Age changed over just 10 years or so, such that people would experience it very obviously.
And now they’re talking about Heart of Darkness The Waste Land. The idea of the journey down the Congo, to the supervisor at the inner station, who might be described as a modern Tiresias. Now that is a really, really interesting idea.
Spice, and Spice Girls
I’ve been hearing the Spice Girls song, “Stop”, a lot recently, at school. This has a weird effect on me. A group of girls at college used to do the moves to this song all the time, and consequently when I hear it I have a vision of them doing so – and an urge to join in. Mainly to upset the kiddies.
What made me think of this is the book I am reading: Spice: The History of a Temptation, by Jack Turner. It’s very enjoyable – although I am dubious of his repeated use of the term ‘Dark Ages’ in referring to the time after the (now) official end of the Western Roman Empire. Nonetheless. He has a whole chapter, of course on spice and sex: looking at all the different ways it was recommended to use spice to improve sex in a variety of ways, as well as the problems the more prudish (and supposedly celibate) members of the community had with it. Throughout, he makes comments on some of the things that have lasted to the modern day, and towards the end he comments on the Spice Girls, saying they “shot like a gaudy, squawking comet through the outer orbits of pop stardom before, in obedience to the Newtonian physics of celebrity, the acrimonious plummet back to earth and bust-up.” Beautiful. No wonder he writes about spice; he certainly has the language for it.
Politics n stuff
“In the West there has been a tendency to stress the political aspect of democracy rather than its economic aspect, and although at times this may be carried too far, the fault is on the right side, seeing that a people which surrenders its political rights in return for promises of economic security will soon discover that it has made a bad bargain, as it is helpless if the promises are not kept.”
RN Carew Hunt, The Theory and Practice of Communism, Penguin 1950.
Substitute security in general and it seems like this is a good description of what Bush and Howard would like to do with their draconian laws….
Reading at the moment
1. Just finished Lady Friday, by Garth Nix.
2. History of Spice, by … someone…
3. the Theory and Practice of Communism, by RN Carew Hunt
Pretty much sums up my reading habits, really… fantasy, history, food, and technology.
That’s me.
BBC History: Feb 2007
Since the March edition arrived today, I thought I should finally finish the Feb edition. Some of the highlights:
An overview of the Basque issue – I’ve been fascinated by Basques since I was at school; I loved Mark thingo’s book about how Basques changed the world.
Two contrasting articles about the Suffragettes – one that essentially argued that they were essentially terrorists, and they didn’t have much popular support; the other saying that view is a load of bollocks. As a chick, I found it troubling to have the women who I thought had gained me my right to vote might be terrorists. One woman’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter… I’m not sure where I stand on this issue now. I definitely don’t hold with violence at any time, and never have, but the question of whether violence was necessary to gain suffrage… we’ll never know, I do certainly approve of exploding (tee hee) too-rosy mythology about historical events, especially ones so recent and still so pertinent.
The article on ‘the ghost that convicted the bishop’ was a bizarre look into the mindset of at some people in the seventeenth century… and a rather dismal look at the state of the church.
One of the big article is about Little Bighorn, and the possibility that one main reason why Custer was defeated was because his deputy Capt Benteen hated his guts. I am a military history baby, and the detailed stuff about directions etc really don’t work for me (the map helped a bit), but the stuff about how the two men interacted was quite interesting.
Another big article was about Klaus Fuchs, who passed nuclear secrets from the Anglo-American research he was involved in onto the USSR. Complements a BBC series, which hopefully the ABC will pick up sometime; very interesting because it mostly looked at his motivations and attitudes.
Two articles about Tudors – 1534, when Henry VIII officially decalred his ’empire’, and the consequences of this for the entire British Isles and Ireland… and a quick look at how Elizabeth I treated Dudley, and how she was regarded because of it, compared with Catherine of Russia and Potemkin, and Anne Stuart and the Churchills.
Much fun!
Ivanhoe
If the 1997 (?) adaptation of Ivanhoe is accurate, then I know a few things about Walter Scott:
1. He didn’t like the Templars.
2. He didn’t much like most of his characters.
3. He was a vicious old bugger who liked inflicting, or at least imagining, pain on other people.
I really enjoyed the portrayal of John. Young, childish, scared, weak – with a streak of ruthless cruelty. The scene with Richard, John and Eleanor is hilarious, with her treating her sons like children and ordering them around… just a pity that it was so ahistorical, since Richard was her favourite and she would have had problems with Richard spending little time in England in favour of Aquitaine, as he did. Which brings in the other ahistorical bit, with Richard and John both being abe to communicate with the Saxons very easily… unlikely, since neither of them spoke English, and I doubt that many of the Saxons – the peasants, anyway – spoke Norman. But, tut; so many people make these assumptions.
I really enjoyed Blois Guibert’s character – he was so very bad, and then to twist his heart in such a way as to make him fall for Rebecca was a terrible, tragic thing. And Christopher Lee as the Grand Master – superb!
I bought a second-hand copy of the book a while ago… not sure I can read it any time soon, now.
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.
Randomly Yours, Alex 