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.
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!!
Randomly Yours, Alex 