The escapades of the American Imperial War Faction in the Black Sea. Corruption investigation in Victoria, political patronage, branch stacking, Red Shirts and political decay. Rene Girard on scapegoating. Tennyson's temper of heroic hearts. Regenerated tradition.
But more so than the moulted carapace of governing that lies at my feet, I connected to the adventurer of the spirit, weakened by age and misfortune, that Tennyson saw in Ulysses. It was this grey spirit that I turned to this morning for the courage to continue.
The Crimean War of 1853 to 1856 is now a forgotten and neglected conflict of the century of peace in the nineteenth century. Yet it was a surprisingly fertile conflict in its unintended consequences; moreover, this war between the two titans of the Russian and British Empires has an uncanny resemblance to the events of… Continue reading A very modern Charge of the Light Brigade
