BBC History May 2007
Yeh, bit slack with reading these mags at the moment… I got stuck on an article about Charles II and the restoration, and then it occurred to me that I didn’t have to finish reading it – novel, eh?
The two articles about the mutiny/insurrection/pick your favourite word in India, against the Brits, were fascinating. Saul David and William Dalrymple give different perspectives on it (literally: one Brit, one Indian). Given I knew zip about the issues and results of the conflict, these articles were intriguing for me. The question about motivations, and whether it was religious or political or how those things worked together in somewhere like India, with Hindus and Muslims and Christians, was absorbing. And I am not willing to draw any modern parallels.
I’ve heard the word Oxyrhynchos (sharp nose) with reference to papyri before, but never really knew what was going on there. Now I know, thanks to Peter Parsons! I love things like this: piles of rubbish being preserved for millenia, and then being just the ticket for archaeologists – a great big mound of treasure, basically. Yay for the preserving sands!
It’s the 300th birthday of the union between England and Scotland this year, and apparently there’s a bit of grumbling and muttering, in Scotland especially, about what a bad deal they got. Not so, according to Eric J Evans, who reckons the Scots got a very good deal indeed – especially economically, if not politically.
There’s a new book coming out about Stalin as a young man – who’s not interested in analysing the youth of a nutter, to see what caused him to be like that, to reassure ourselves that something went wrong so he wasn’t just a normal man who did dreadful things? Anyway, according to Simon Sebag Montefiore, he developed a taste for violence early on, but also was into seducing women and writing poetry… which may be connected to one another…. I don’t think I’ll read the book, but it’s an interesting idea, and I think I’m glad someone has done it.
Diarmid MacCulloch’s article on Christians and Muslims today, and whether this is some inevitable (argh! anathema word!) clash of faiths or a result of the last 200 years of history, is fascinating – because I don’t know a lot of it, and he makes a compelling case. As a Christian myself, I think that there is (inevitably!) tension between the faiths because of their differences, but this doesn’t necessarily translate onto the world stage… I’m not convinced Bush makes his decisions as a Christian and nothing else, and I am also not sure about the various Islamic states – because I just don’t know enough about them. Anyway, very interesting stuff.
Finally, let me just mention the short article on ERII’s coronation. Interesting stuff about the behind-scenes events, and the stress over whether or not to broadcast it.
Not the best issue of BBC History, for my tastes, but still quite good.
I lied
Dear Reader, I am sorry, but I lied.
It wasn’t pannacotta, it was a sweet flan – I was mistaken. I do still indeed intend to try pannacotta, but this is what I was intending to make. There were some Issues… let’s just say that when I thought the muffin tray was going to fit in the big tray I had, so it could act as a water bath, I was mistaken. I discovered this when I had already put mixture into the muffin tray, but nonetheless – we progressed.
They were tasty, despite the fact that I cheated and used vanilla extract (fake, even, I think) rather than vanilla bean. I made a bit of a dark chocolate ganache with the rest of the cream I had, and some dark choc melts… it was very tasty. Just ask J!
I impress me
I just made Roasted Garlic and Goats’ Cheese Flan! Yay me! Why did I do it in the middle of the day? Because it’s the holidays, and I wanted to experiment, and when better to experiment than on a rainy Friday in the holidays, with Torchwood that J downloaded for me because I think I stuffed up the VCR? No better time!
It was really, really easy… and very tasty… I can foresee dinner parties with this as the entree, and me getting an awful lot of kudos for it. And I won’t be saying then that it was easy…. Now, perhaps, to attempt and conquer pannacotta…
Ray
We got the movie Ray for Christmas, and we finally sat down to watch it on Sunday night. I loved it. Jamie Foxx is fantastic – I understand that Ray Charles approved him, before he died, which is cool. (It was weird to hear him sing a Ray Charles song and realise that it was the bit that he, Jamie Foxx, sang in a Kanye West song that I know I should dislike and… just… cant’t.) Most of the other actors were also really good – and it wasn’t half weird to realise that the dude who didn’t look all that old and actually had hair was, indeed, Toby (or Richard Schiff (West Wing) if you want to be pedantic).
It was a lot like Walk the Line, which I guess is unsurprising: they were two of the biggest stars of the latter half of the 20th century, and they both had drug habits that they managed to kick. The difference being that Charles’ wife stuck by him, and vice versa, whereas of course the big thing in Walk the Line is the love affair with June Carter. J thought they spent an awful lot of time on the heroin issue, and then it just ends – fft. I don’t think it spend too long on the drugs, although it was a significant portion of the movie – I think it jut reflects the reality of the situation – but, again like Walk the Line – it does end abruptly, too abruptly for me. Having seen him be a bastard to his family and lots of other people, I would have liked to see him in middle and later life: did he make it up to his family, or did he continue womanising? (He had 12 children, apparently, so….) I was left feeling like he was a great singer, and not that great a person, and I’m not sure how that’s how the director and producer wanted it. I did like, though, that it showed how the drug habit affected those around him, and how people reacted, rather than solely looking at its effect on him.
The other thing that I appreciated about this film was how they did the flashbacks. I thought it was very clever – and a lot more interesting than having a whole section on his childhood would have been.
Absolutely recommended if you like his music!
Tagged!
Tagged by GJ
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4-7 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest (unless it’s too troublesome to reach and is really heavy. Then go back to step 1).
6. Tag five people.
From Shakespearean Negotiations, by Stephen Greenblatt for which AB will be so proud of me:
“The storm in the play seems to several characters to be of more than natural intensity, and Lear above all tries desperately to make it mean something (as a symbol of his daughters’ ingratitude, a punishment for evil, a sign from the gods of the impending universal judgment), but the thunder refuses to speak. When Albany calls Goneril a “devil” and a “fiend” (4.2.59, 66), we know that he is not identifying her as a supernatural bring – it is impossible, in this play, to witness the eruption of the denizens of hell into the human world – just as we know that Albany’s prayer for “visible spirits” to be sent down by the heavens “to tame these vild offenses” (4.2.46-7) will be unanswered.”
You’ll notice that’s not a full 4-7 sentences, but I thought it was enough – and it’s the end of the sentence, too.
Hatshepsut
They found her mummy! – well, they think so, and it’s not so much found it as identified it…
Hatshepsut is so cool. Her iconography is fascinating, false beard and all (although, despite how incredulous the narrator of that vid sounds, male pharaohs did the false beard thing too… and I have never actually heard someone say Thutmose. I’ve only heard Tutmosis…). I think actually one thing that makes her so interesting is the fact that her descendents tried so damned hard to erase her from history. Humans are contrary like that; tell me something I don’t want to know about and dammit, I do!
I also like that Zahi Hawass sometimes seems to be a bit of a rock star in Egypt. Not everyone likes the way he does his job, but darn he is a good front man for archaeology in Egypt.
Doctor Who
I am very excited about the new Dr Who season. Having gone out last night, I taped, and only just remembered to watch it. Squee!
As a friend of mine said, one of the nice things about this episode (and the Christmas ep, too) is that they allow the Doctor to grieve for Rose, which makes him more… approachable, if not more human. Not that I’m a really great connoisseur, but I don’t remember any particular sadness at the departure of previous companions. I think this is the function and result of having a younger and, frankly, sexier doctor: if he was completely and utterly callous (rather than just the short-term callous we all know and love), then he wouldn’t really be very much fun at all.
So the new girl looks good, although I am a little dubious at shoving the sexual tension right in your face from the get-go – and is it just me, or are they making the Doctor more come-hither as well? This first episode was quite enjoyable… especially “Look! I even brought a straw!” with which to suck your blood.
Resolution
Having gone to a very interesting seminar this afternoon, given by Stephen Knight, about Myrddin/Merlin – which I will blog about maybe tomorrow, when I feel more human – I have renewed my determination to read more academic books. I was good at this for a few years out of uni, but I have got slack recently – unsurprisingly – and while my brain hasn’t quite turned to moosh (I hope), it’s getting a bit sluggish. So I aiming to read, realistically, maybe 10 academic books a year. Some of those will be popular-ish histories, because I do so love them; some will be more academic, I hope – I plan to re-read many of my uni course readers, at least the history ones that are relevant to school and the English ones that I am interested in; I also made good inroads on this resolution by beginning Greenblatt’s Shakespearean Negotiations, this evening: it’s been on my shelf for a few years now, and I have never got past the intro. It has the best opening line ever – way better than Pride and Prejudice: “I began with the desire to speak with the dead.” And some of my 10 will also, I have vowed, include education books. Just recently I have realised that I don’t put quite the effort and love into my vocation as perhaps I ought. I am undertaking some steps throughs school to improve that, but realise that I need to spend some external time on it too, sad as that might be.
Anyway. Expect, at random intervals, posts about these academic texts. And feel free to ignore them at will.
I love Led Zeppelin
I don’t think I’ve said that enough recently.
I love Led Zeppelin.
I am doing some prep (yes, for the second last day of school… sad, eh?), so I’ve put my DVD of “Unledded” on – Robert Plant and Jimmy Page doing a concert about ten years ago for MTV. Page is so, so incredible – I love the triple-handled guitar, it’s so unnecessary! – and Plant is a glorious front man. He has a voice I just love listening to – in his newer incarnation, too, with the Strange Sensations. And their songs! – so listenable. Unlike, for example, early Beatles, which is just crap; and modern pop, or even rock, which so often sounds just the same, one song after the other. Kashmir is on a completely different planet, for example, from Rain Song.
Who, me? Biased? Pft.
Corridor of Champions
I share a staffroom with about 20 people. Basically, a cube farm, but with less room than the average battery hen. I have a desk, on which I can just fit both my elbows (when I move everything off said desk), and a four-drawer filing cabinet. When I first looked at that filing cabinet, I thought: “ha! how can they think I will ever fill that up? I’m not going to be here that long!” to which I now say: “ha! young and naive me!”
But that’s not the story.
I am in a lane/corridor/section of eight – four to one side, four to the other, backing on to each other. Back your chair out too fast and you’re likely to collide with someone. In our corridor there are five English teachers, three history teachers, one geographer, one psych teacher, one science teacher, and one art teacher.* Someone at some stage called us the Corridor of Champions, and it stuck (with blu tack and a lot of hard work from us). We decided that, since reports are over and the end (of the semester) is nigh, we should have lunch together. So we did. Got a couple of little tables, turned the chairs around, massively over-catered… it was so much fun! And people were so jealous, which was at least part of the point, of course. We even had silly hats. It will now be a termly thing, we think.
It made today – a five-out-of-six-lesson-on day, with additional yard duty to make sure kids don’t get run over – bearable.
*Doesn’t add up to eight, does it? I’m both English and history, so figure it out from there….
Randomly Yours, Alex 