Thurifer is reading history
There has long been a worrying trend that whatever fad or tin-pot idea grips the American imagination will, with tedious regularity and inevitability, end up on these shores. The tearing-down of status was one example in the madness of last summer. Now it seems that Homer has been removed from the curriculum of USA Classical departments in universities. The San Francisco Board of Education has declared that historical accuracy (or nuance) does not matter, that facts are racist. Here, museums that feature Captain James Cook are to be “re-imagined”. History, and certainly its characters, cannot be judged from a modern liberal, or any other point of view. The historian ought not to be a partisan. The historian observes the past, seeks to understand it, hopes to explain it. Explication does not require moral opprobrium nor today’s knee-jerk, virtue-signalling values.
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Facts in history can be a problem. The writing on the wall might be a forgery. Public and private statements might diverge. A romantic myth is more appealing than sober, dull reality. The heroic and the duplicitous may exist in the same person. A villain might have a redeeming feature, a saint might have feet of clay. How to chart a course between Scylla and Charybdis is no easy feat. History is very rarely black or white but is usually many shades of grey.
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The Whig view of History, has long been a busted flush for contemporary historians, but it seems to continue its hold on the national consciousness. It sees history as the story of progress rather than an examination of change. Change can be good or bad, or, more usually unnecessary, but progress has a moral connotation. The present is better than the past. And, while it is true that I would rather live in a world with central heating, I would not regard that as somehow morally better. History is not linear, and certainly not onward and upward. The Whig view of history surely perished in the mud of Flanders. The fall of the Tsar and an absolutist regime in Russia was replaced by the secular paradise that was the Soviet Union.The extirpation of what was characterised as a corrupt, monarchical oligarchy was replaced by a regime as elitist, as repressive, as authoritarian, if not more so, as that which went before. Scientific progress may have resulted in life-saving vaccines but it also landed us with atomic bombs. Many lives in the Middle Ages were nasty, brutish and short but it was an age that produced a number of cathedrals that stand at the apex of human skill and artistic endeavour. Human society is always muddy and messy, virtuous and vicious, vengeful and forgiving. It is salutary to remember that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.
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Notting Hill benefited from immigration from the West Indies, not least from the Windrush generation. That in recent years bureaucratic and political ignorance and myopia resulted in the deportation of citizens of that generations who could not provide sufficient documentation to satisfy a purblind government will remain a shameful stain on those responsible. Such an occurrence can only happen when born out of ignorance and when, dispiritingly, a nation ignores its history.
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Jackson Lamb is one of the great characters of modern fiction, a hero, or anti-hero, of our times. He is the central character in a series of spy-novels by Mick Herron. Large, slovenly, unkempt, dishevelled, a minimum of personal hygiene, chain-smoking, filthy, sarcastic, never misses an opportunity for a denigrating insult. A rag-bag, tramp-like exterior conceals a razor-sharp mind, a sophisticated and calculating insight, usually a step or three ahead of his opponents, among whom are his superiors. He presides over a branch of the Secret Service that is for those who have failed at some vital mission or task but cannot be sacked or, given their inside knowledge, be released into society. They end up in Slough House, near the Barbican, an assembly of misfits and failures. From that material Mick Herron has crafted some of the best spy-fiction, and the funniest, that you are likely to encounter. Although each book can stand alone and be read without reference to others, my recommendation, however, is to read them in order. Slow Horses, Dead Lions, Real Lions, Spook Street, London Rules, Joe Country, Slough House. I trust that like me you will not be disappointed.
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Had I been fit enough and good enough, I could have played Rugby Union for England (born to English parents), Scotland (Scottish – Lowland Scot – Grandmother), and, my preferred option, Wales (Welsh Grandfather). Wales won the Triple Crown but I cannot say that I thrill to the modern game as once I did. Professionalism and changes to the Laws have altered its nature. The sin bin is a woeful development. It has lost some of its cavalier spirit and flair. Occasionally, it can be seen and a rare treat it is. The demands of television and the marketing directors mean that you have to search the schedules to find the games. No longer 2pm in the depths of winter and 3pm when lighter. And the commentators have to fill every moment with cliché and fatuous comment. Oh how we miss Bill McLaren. At least and at the last I will be able to say that “I saw Barry John”.