via 3 Quarks Daily: William Boyd at The New Statesman
It must be difficult to write the life of a man who is still very much with us, and in the public eye, no matter how much liberty the biographer has been given to tell the story, warts and all. Sisman – a very fine and astute biographer – has done an excellent, not to say exemplary, job under the circumstances. Only rarely is one aware of a veil of discretion being drawn, of names not being named, yet it is impossible to imagine this Life being bettered – though le Carré’s own memoir, to be published in 2016, may add some gloss.
Continue reading
===================================
Arabia: ancient history for troubled times
via OUP Blog by Greg Fisher
In antiquity, ‘Arabia’ covered a vast area, running from Yemen and Oman to the deserts of Syria and Iraq. Today, much of this region is gripped in political and religious turmoil that shows no signs of abating. In addition to executions, murder, and a bloody war against the security forces and other armed groups, the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) is also waging a relentless assault on the culture and heritage of Syria and Iraq. This represents a savage attempt to impose its own narrow view of history on the region, as well as to plunder artifacts for sale on the black market. But while contraband dollars support its operations, it is also the suppression of diversity that drives ISIS; the group is particularly devoted to the eradication of any inconvenient reminder of the pre-Islamic past, where communities of Jews and Christians flourished and pagan deities were worshipped. The conquering Muslim armies of the seventh and eighth centuries may have swept past the now-endangered archaeological sites of Syria and Iraq, but the Islamic State sees the destruction of such places as key to its core mission. This line of thinking explains their destruction of the Temple of Bel at Palmyra, parts of Hatra in Iraq, and countless other structures and sites. Elsewhere, the war in Yemen is causing a great amount of damage to the country. Even without war, Middle Eastern heritage finds itself in danger; in Saudi Arabia, for example, building work has claimed parts of ancient Mecca, erasing alternative narratives of the past.
Continue reading
===================================
National Registration – what happened next?
via National Archives by Audrey Collins
On the night of 29 September 1939 details of civilians in England and Wales were entered on forms delivered to them earlier in the week.
The completed forms were ready and waiting for an enumerator to call back over the weekend and issue identity cards for everyone in the household. This was what actually happened in most cases, but there were some exceptions – there always are.
Continue reading
===================================
Cockney rhyming slang “dying out”
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza
The “old, confusing tradition” is on its way to the history books, should the newspapers be believed.
Continue reading
===================================
Military radiology and the Boer War
via OUP Blog by Arpan K. Banerjee
The centenary of the Great War has led to a renewed interest in military matters, and throughout history, war has often been the setting for medical innovation with major advances in the treatment of burns, trauma, and sepsis emanating from medical experience in the battlefield.
X-rays, discovered in 1895 by Roentgen, soon found a role in military conflict. The first use of X-rays in a military setting was during the Italo-Abyssinian war in 1896. The Italians lost the battle at Adoa and casualties were taken to the military hospital in Naples where X-rays were performed under the leadership of Colonel Alvaro.
Continue reading
===================================
Upon This Rock: What the stone edicts of Ashoka tell us about India’s great Buddhist ruler
via 3 Quarks Daily: Nayanjot Lahiri in Caravan
Bilingual inscription (Greek and Aramaic) by king Ashoka, from Kandahar. Kabul Museum.
Thanks to Wikipedia
There is nothing especially striking about the cluster of rocks which crowns the edge of a low hilly ridge near the village of Erragudi in the Andhra region. From a distance, the cluster appears unremarkable, while the ridge on which it sits is somewhat bare, rising out of a patchwork of cultivated fields and sparsely dotted with vegetation. The rocks on it stand a mere 30 metres or so above the plains.
Continue reading
A fascinating story
===================================
A baptism of fire, steel and stone: Henry V's army and the siege of Harfleur
via National Archives by Benjamin Trowbridge
French fishermen casting their nets in the open sea off the Normandy coast on 13 August 1415 would have witnessed a horrifying sight: There was a vast array of ships sailing south across the English Channel for the French coast. The anticipated English military invasion had finally come.
Continue reading
===================================
Istanbul, not Constantinople
via OUP Blog
Throughout history, many cities changed their names. Some did it for political reasons; others hoped to gain an economic advantage from it. Looking at a modern map of the world, you’d probably have a hard time finding Edo, Istropolis, or Gia Dinh. That is because these places are today known as Tokyo, Bratislava, and Ho Chi Minh City respectively. With this interactive map, you can explore a few notable examples of city name changes, and the history behind them.
Fascinating
===================================
The secret diary of Stalin’s man in Churchill’s London
On Chamberlain as the ‘accountant of politics,’ Joe Kennedy’s ‘gloomy view’ of British prospects
via Arts & Letters Daily: Gabriel Gorodetsky in the Boston Globe
Stalin’s bloody terror of the 1930s discouraged any Soviet official from putting pen to paper, let alone keeping a personal diary. The only significant exception is the fascinating, rich journal kept by Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London between 1932 and 1943.
Continue reading
===================================
The Magical Dimensions of the Globe
via 3 Quarks Daily by Charlie Huenemann
There’s a particularly good episode of Doctor Who (“The Shakespeare Code”) wherein the Doctor and Martha visit Shakespeare and save the world from a conspiracy of witches. The witches’ plan is to take possession of Shakespeare and force him to write magical incantations into the (now lost) play Love’s Labours Won. (It’s not really magic, of course, but some quantum dynamical dimension of psychic energy… well, whatever.) When the play is then performed in the Globe Theater and the psychic words are spoken, a transgalactic portal will open up, through which an entire population of witches - really, in fact, members of an alien species known as the Carrionites - will march through and take over the world. Luckily, the Doctor is wise to the plans, and he and Martha improvise a counter-spell on the spot and disaster is thereby averted.
Continue reading
No comments:
Post a Comment