85
In Erewhon, apologise by saying you have the socks and everyone will understand.
You would be forgiven for thinking that our politicians today seem more sympathetic towards criminals than they do towards the sick and unemployed. In Erewhon, Samuel Butler’s dystopian Utopia, this had been enshrined as policy — which involved the Erewhonians in some ingenious evasions in order to avoid prosecution for a cold.
Picture: © Ian Capper, Geograph. CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted October 21 2024
86
A little fable about a cat, a chicken and some wasted words.
Russian fabulist Ivan Andreyevich Krylov published his first collection of tales in 1809. More fables followed, and he became something of a celebrity, who was friendly with Emperor Nicholas I. Krylov was one of a handful of literary figures honoured with a place on the Millennium of Russia monument in Veliky Novgorod, unveiled in 1862.
Picture: © DrPete (Pete Coleman), Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted October 20 2024
87
In August, 1775, King George III responded to the news of rebellion in the American colonies.
On April 19th, 1775, British troops confronted an uprising of American colonists in Lexington and in Concord, Massachusetts, and the American War of Independence began. Many at home urged the Government to come to some mutually acceptable compromise, but on August 23, King George III of England issued orders for a clampdown on all support for the rebels.
Picture: By William Barnes Wollen (1857–1936), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.. Source.
Posted October 19 2024
88
If he is going to drop him, the embattled poet would prefer his friend to get on with it.
Sonnet 90 finds the narrator expecting that ‘the fair youth’, a rather worthless young man whom he nevertheless idolises, is going to drop the acquaintance. His only concern is to make his thoughtless friend understand that, given the other pressures the poet is under right now, if it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.
Picture: © Karl and Ali, Geograph. CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted October 18 2024
89
We all want our politicians to be clever men, but being cunning isn’t the same as being wise.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, declared himself one of the Country Party, a loose and cross-bench federation of MPs speaking up (so they said) for the country as a whole, and not only for the elite only. In 1738, he wrote The Idea of a Patriot King for the benefit of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in which Bolingbroke distinguished between two kinds of politician.
Picture: © Number 10, Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted October 15 2024
90
The best holidays are the ones that make us long for home.
A. G. Gardiner was a columnist for the Star (later absorbed into the Daily Mail) during and after the Great War, under the pseudonym of ‘Alpha of the Plough’. The following extract opened a piece titled “On Coming Home”, in which he reflected on what it is that makes for a really good holiday.
Picture: © Tom Parnell, Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.
Posted October 13 2024