In September last year I delivered a paper to a conference sponsored by a major research centre on the history of emotions. It was a step away for me from the hidden bureaucrat who never speaks in public or who does not share the depth and range of his thoughts. Perhaps I hoped it might... Continue Reading →
On tyranny or terror?
The American historian of the holocaust in Eastern Europe, Timothy Snyder has delivered in On Tyranny: 20 lessons of the twentieth century a best-seller by combining seemingly wise apothogems - be ascourageous as you can, be calm when the unthinkable arrives - with a wailing cry for help from the soul of liberal America in... Continue Reading →
The hope of none
In reading Austerlitz last night, I stumbled on the passage in which the relayed memories of Austerlitz tell of his ambling into the strangely desolate town in which lie the ruins from which he has averted his attention for four decades. Here he finds the reason for his long avoidance of his personal and national... Continue Reading →
Massacres in history
As the violence and brewing disorder of our times disturbs us, we can readily fall into a comforting delusion: either our liberal minds have conquered the violent instincts of the human animal, or our modern ideologies (whether Nazism, Marxism, Imperialism, Neo-Conservatism or Islamism) or our powerful nation states have a peculiar talent for blood-curdling murder... Continue Reading →
The unravelling of empires
US and western leaders have to find better ways to satisfy their people’s demands. It looks, however, as though the UK still lacks a clear idea of how it is going to function after Brexit, the eurozone remains fragile, and some of the people Mr Trump plans to appoint, as well as Republicans in Congress,... Continue Reading →
The Tiger’s Eye closes for the last time
The great Australian historian or writer, Inga Clendinnen has died. Image Source: http://www.smh.com.au/national/people/warrior-of-the-mind-20140810-3dha8.html There is a moving obituary by her publisher at Text, Michael Heyward, over at The Australian. There Heyward quotes Clendinnen saying that her turn to writing in response to her life-threatening illness "liberated me from the routines which would have delivered me, unchallenged and... Continue Reading →
Ivan’s Singer
Image Source: Franz Riss Skomorokh in a village, wikipedia Noone knows for sure how Ivan the Terrible died. The Tsar of all Russia, Grand Prince of Vladimir and Moscow and all the rest, died in 1584, but how we do not really know. The uncertainty, together with the availability of scientific methods, led to the exhumation... Continue Reading →
The many cradles of civilizations (list)
Civilizations and natures From time to time, I am tempted to be a prophet of a doom, and like Cassandra abandon myself to "the awful pains of prophecy... maddening as they fall" (Agamemnon); but something in my temperament, holds me back to a more tempered and sane view. History is neither progress nor complete decay.... Continue Reading →
Coming back late from the Hyacinth garden
Image source: Böcklin: In der Gartenlaube, ~1891, By Arnold Böcklin - "Von Anker bis Zünd, Die Kunst im jungen Bundesstaat 1848 - 1900", Kunsthaus Zürich, 1998, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5543414 Is there a muse more poorly treated in modern culture than Clio? We forget. We lose the art of telling the stories of history in all... Continue Reading →
Quotes to write by 1.
From Niccolo Machiavelli's letter to the magnificent Lorenzo de Medici in presenting his The Prince: Nor I hope will it be considered presumptuous for a man of low and humble status to dare discuss and lay down the law about how princes should rule; because, just as men who are sketching the landscape put themselves... Continue Reading →
Madness & History
I am reading Andrew Scull's Madness in Civilization: a cultural history of insanity from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine (Thames & Hudson, 2015). The title is a wink to the English translation of Foucault's Folie et Déraison, that is Madness & Civilization: a History of Insanity in the Age of Reason.... Continue Reading →
A song of sorries
The Parliament of Victoria recently voted an apology for laws that criminalised homosexuality. It followed a more substantive act - at least on paper - that had expunged (word rarely used and now given new life for this purpose), that expunged the criminal records of people convicted under these laws. This act, however, was not... Continue Reading →
The Burning Archive 