Thousands of venerable, even ancient jokes lie festering in every corner of an English house. The language seems to connive with the typically British sense of humour. Every weekend I dig up some hoary old tales that have kept people chortling for centuries. (more…)
Almost too much printer’s ink and telecaster’s saliva has already been spent on this subject. A few days ago Juan-Carlos I, a Spanish Borbón to his fingertips, left the hospital where surgeons had replaced half of his hip. He looked tired, much older than his seventy-four years, more than a bit depressed. He also looked like a guilty schoolboy owning up to some frightful misdeed at his Prep School. He said he was sorry and that it would not happen again.
What had don Juan-Carlos I done to merit a King’s apology to the people, if such a thing exists? He had gone off to Africa to shoot elephants while his wife the Queen was in Greece with her family, his grandson Froilán was surrounded by anxious doctors trying to mend a foot he had shot almost off with his divorced father’s shotgun. ‘It was an accident’ the boy told newspapermen. (more…)
Thomas Arnold, Headmaster of Rugby School and father of Matthew / ctwsearch.wesleyan.edu
Thomas Arnold is probably the most celebrated real (as opposed to invented) headmaster in history. He is the lynch-pin of a book called Tom Brown’s Schooldays written by Thomas Hughes about the experiences of schooling under Arnold at Rugby. The book, still in print, launched the career of another massive literary creation, Flashman the Rugby bully (by George Macdonald Fraser) running to twelve volumes. The school itself launched into the sporting world its third most popular team sport (played in over thirty countries) – Rugby Football. (more…)
I feel a degree of sympathy for the ex-President of the Government in Spain. What can he do on Sundays? His agnostic wife Sonsoles goes off to sing with her church choir, perhaps returns to lunch? I assume his gothick daughters have their own agenda on the Day of Rest: there are cauldrons and incantations; blasted heaths can be found near Madrid. After nearly eight years of solitary power in one of the most important member/countries of the European Union, to be shoved off the throne by a resurrected Rasputin must be, to put it simply, an Ishoo. (more…)
University students and high school seniors always come across these two words ‘Carolingian’ and ‘Caroline’ – the latter in reference to some remote islands – not to Queen Caroline of Somewhere. Let us delve a bit and find out more about both.
The Carolingian Empire refers to a mass of territories in Western Europe, ruled by the family of Charlemagne (q.v.) who lived from 768 – 814. Believe it or not the word ‘Carolingian’ derives from Charlemagne, and the complete phrase refers to a dynasty.
Ancestors of Charlemagne, Frankish aristocrats all, fought their way to supreme power under the Merovingian Kings – and from this we discover the origin of the term ‘Carolingian’. It was Charlemagne’s father Pepin III (son of Charles Martel q.v. and also known as ‘The Short’ who deposed the last of the Merovingians, Childeric III. (more…)
The Sun King / biography.com
Louis the Fourteenth (XIV) was the King of France for seventy-two years, from 1643 to 1715. He is the great monarch who still startles lighter-minded history students by his best-known quote; “Après moi, le deluge”. He was quite right. The Flood in the form of wars, famine, bloodshed, the French Revolution (q.v.) – all kinds of unrest, came after him. It would not be unfair to state that most if not all of these could have been avoided if Louis had been a different kind of king. (more…)
Yesterday March 25 regional elections took place in two autonomous communities in Spain – Andalucía and Asturias. The results were more or less what were expected, in that the Andalusians voted slightly more for the Popular Party and J. Arenas than the PSOE led by Griñan. Arenas need fifty-five seats in the Andaluz parliament for the all-essential absolute majority. He did not achieve this, winning fifty to the forty-seven won by the PSOE. (more…)
Three enormous ocean liners, built well before the Second War when trans-Atlantic travel was best made by sea, not by air, suffered ends which none of them deserved. They were Lusitania, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary. All were British, though Lusitania’s strong association with the United States was in the end (partly) instrumental in bringing America into the First or Great War. (more…)
I am greatly indebted to Dr. M, an acquaintance, for using his eagle eye to spot a superfluous ‘of’’ in a line occurring in one of my posts. I suspect it was an impertinent and ambitious ‘of’, escaped from an English lexicon, and managing to insert itself, like a leech, beneath the skin of my article. (more…)
It is something studious people have been asking for centuries: what relation does the city of Rome (for one thousand four hundred years in the ‘temporal’ possession of the Catholic Pope) have with any movement that might demand Italian unity?
Pope Pius IX (Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti) was obliged to get out of Rome fast when a popular uprising drove him out of the Vatican. A Roman Republic was set up, mainly by the cleverness of Giuseppe Mazzini (politically) and Garibaldi (militarily). It was recognised officially in 1849. (more…)