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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.
Posted October 15 2024
62
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.
Posted October 13 2024
63
Thomas Huxley believed that if schools did not ground their pupils in common sense, life’s examinations would be painful.
In an address to the South London Working Men’s College in 1868, new Principal Thomas Huxley attempted to define a liberal education. As befitted a friend of Charles Darwin, he spoke in terms of Nature’s university. She has enrolled us all in it, but she provides no lectures; so if we want to pass her stern examinations, we had better find out what to expect.
Posted October 11 2024
64
As penance for involuntary manslaughter, Heracles was sentenced to slavery under the playful rod of Omphale, Queen of Lydia.
After completing his Twelve Labours for King Eurystheus, Heracles gave his wife Megara a divorce, since he had killed their children in a fit of madness, and turned his attention to Iole, daughter of King Eurytus. Eurytus was not keen for Iole to suffer Megara’s fate, but Iole’s brother Iphitus backed the hero; which made it all the more unfortunate that Heracles then accidentally killed him.
Posted October 8 2024
65
Sir Philip Sidney reminded comedians that when the audience is laughing they aren’t necessarily the better for it.
In 1579, Stephen Gosson wrote School of Abuse, accusing Elizabethan theatre of being a frivolous and bawdy distraction from England’s serious social problems. Some three years later, Sir Philip Sidney replied with An Apologie for Poetrie, a gentle defence of the drama; but even he could find little to say for comedians who thought that anything that raised a laugh was entertainment.
Posted October 8 2024
66
Persian scholar Al-Ghazali feared for any country where morals were lagging behind brains.
Al-Ghazali, known in Medieval Europe as Algazel, was a Persian scholar roughly contemporary with Anselm of Canterbury. In 1095, feeling compromised by political and academic expectations, Ghazali abruptly left his prestigious teaching post and embarked on a ten-year pilgrimage to Damascus, Jerusalem and Mecca. The Revival of the Religious Sciences was the fruit of his soul-searching, and one of the most important Islamic works after the Quran itself.
Posted October 5 2024