Tag Archives: England

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Culture War and the Once Great Britain

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What are other people talking about?

Screwtape: Susannah Black Roberts tries her hand at Screwtape’s voice in this letter encouraging the “proper” use of culture war arguments online.

Meekness! Humility! Gentleness! Patience! Kindness! It’s a revolting brew – when someone brings those things that are called fruits of the spirit into a cultural conflict on our enemy’s side, along with stoutheartedness. There are dangers for us there.

But the opportunities – they are so rich! Only convince your patient that those fruits of the spirit are not applicable, or not manly (if he is on the right) or are psychologically unhealthy and undermine the fight for justice (if he is on the left) and you’re home free.

Culture War: A judge rules out parts of an Iowa law. “The State Defendants have presented no evidence that student access to books depicting sex acts was creating any significant problems in the school setting, much less to the degree that would give rise to a ‘substantial and reasonable governmental interest’ justifying across-the-board removal.”

British Library: The British Library was attacked by hackers last October, and its digital resources are still offline, projected to take a year to rebuild and cost £6 million. (via Purfrock)

Shakespeare: Henry IV plays and adaptations. “More importantly, the greatest flaw of Chimes at Midnight is that Orson Welles sentimentalises Falstaff, removing much of his nasty side and turning him into a harmless fun-loving old man.”

British Post Office: A TV series, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, tells the incredible true story of a massive scandal in the British postal service, one that accused hundreds of subpostmasters of financial mismanagement and avoided finding fault with the source, the computer system they all used.

“Having Jones and Dolan as our entry point to the human cost of such horrifying corporate skullduggery is the perfect choice. But there were many hundreds of people who found themselves being gaslit by a helpline, and the cast is massive, and excellent, throughout.”

Photo: Opposition, England. From the Detroit Publishing Co. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

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Death and decline in England

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The late queen.

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Queen Elizabeth II, by the grace of God Queen of England, died today at the age of 96. She was the longest reigning monarch in English history, and the second-longest reigning in any country that we know of. Old and full of days, as the Bible says.

It’s yet another melancholy landmark in the lives of us oldlings. I was alive before Elizabeth reigned, just as I was alive during the Truman administration, but I remember neither. I recall being a child, and never having known a president other than Eisenhower. Today, in my dotage, I have no memory of a world without Queen Elizabeth.

What do I think of monarchy? I’ve flirted with monarchism as a political cause from time to time in my life, but I wouldn’t want it for the US. However, I’m an anglophile and a Norgephile (I don’t think that’s an actual word, but I mean a lover of Norway), and they’re both monarchies.

There’s an old conservative argument that monarchy is a stabilizing institution, one that binds a country to its traditions.

But I’m leery of what the new generation of monarchs will do.

Ah well, it’s all in the hands of God.

Speaking of England, everybody’s talking about the new Rings of Power TV series on Amazon Plus. I’m surprised, honestly, at the number of my Facebook friends who speak highly of it, so far.

Will I watch it? No, I don’t think so.

Here’s why.

I’m willing to watch a Middle Earth movie that’s based directly on a Tolkien story. I’ll give the producers the benefit of the doubt until I learn better (as you may recall, I liked the LOTR trilogy, did not like the Hobbit movies).

But if what I understand is correct, this series is based only on general outlines of events in the Silmarillion. That – in my view – grants the filmmakers too much freedom to pursue their own agendas.

Let’s not forget, Tolkien was a Catholic writer. His whole purpose in creating Middle Earth was to recreate a lost English mythology. Because he believed that mythology prefigured Christian truth (C. S. Lewis was converted on this argument), he believed that a faithful mythology would lead hearts to the Christian faith. He and Lewis invented the concept of “mythopoeia” for that very purpose.

The Amazon Plus series has not been conceived for that purpose. Therefore, in my view, it cannot be faithful to the author’s vision.

I’ll be happy to be proved wrong.

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Photos of Gorgeous Roman Mosaic Found in London

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Earlier this year, archeologist found the largest Roman mosaic floor ever uncovered in London. It’s in the Southwark area about a couple blocks from the Shard skyscraper.

Smithsonian Magazine states, “Red, white and black stones make up the tessellated floor. Its pattern features large lotus flowers, colorful blooms and intricate twists of closed loops known as ‘Solomon’s knots.'”

Experts believe the floor was created in the late 2nd or early 3rd century.

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Heat Wave Reveals Historic Garden Outline at Chatsworth House

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The summer heat has scorched the South lawn of Chatsworth House in Devonshire so much you can see the outline of an ancient garden that once grew for 30 years.

Head of gardens and landscape Steve Porter told the Yorkshire Post, “We can clearly see the intricate patterns of the historic garden at the moment. The current heatwave is causing us issues elsewhere in the garden but here it has revealed a hidden gem not enjoyed properly for nearly 300 years.”

Those other parts of the garden are described here in an announcement of the completion of the major renovation of an area called “Arcadia.”

Chatsworth House is the one used as Darcy’s Pemberley in the 1996 BBC adaptation.

Photo: “Chatsworth across Canal Pond 1” by Ian Parkes. Creative Commons 2.0.

Non-fiction

Why Did Emperor Hadrian Build His Wall?

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For reasons that may seem clear only to some, the Roman Emperor Publius Aelius Hadrianus decided his empire could not subdue or survive in peace with the Scots, so he ordered a wall from Searius and Robuckus and had it assembled over an 84-mile stretch of gorgeous mountain property over thousands of acres of prime real estate.

Nigel Spivey reviews a book on Hadrian’s Wall, describing and explaining what can be known. And part of what is not known is the reason for the wall.

Hadrian proceeded to style himself Restitutor Orbis Terrarum, “restorer” of the lands of the world. But what “restoration” he brought to Britannia remains unclear. He made a single visit to the province in the year 122, following a tour of the Rhineland, where he had ordered the installation of a palisaded frontier-line. We presume that it was during his British visit that Hadrian developed the frontier concept further, and gave instructions for the wall and the Vallum. Arguably, then, Britannia was not restored but fractured. For that is what walls do: break, mark, and divide the earth’s surface. Britannia on the emperor’s coinage may seem the faithful subject. Once broken by a wall, however, she becomes a phantom figure—and perhaps has stayed so ever since.

(Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash)

Fiction

‘The English eerie is on the rise’

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A loose but substantial body of work is emerging that explores the English landscape in terms of its anomalies rather than its continuities, that is sceptical of comfortable notions of “dwelling” and “belonging”, and of the packagings of the past as “heritage”, and that locates itself within a spectred rather than a sceptred isle. . . . We are, certainly, very far from “nature writing”, whatever that once was, and into a mutated cultural terrain that includes the weird and the punk as well as the attentive and the devotional.

Robert Macfarlane writes about the eerie lands of England in many art forms, beginning with a good summary of a strange story. (via Alan Jacobs)

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How the Normans Ruined the British Isles for a Thousand Years

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Battle of Hastings reenactment 2006

October 14 was the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. Peter Konieczy of the University of Toronto offers three reasons why this was not a typical medieval battle. One reason was that the Normans and the English were evenly matched.

We can read some of the battle’s details in this post on a French poetic account, Estoire des Engleis – History of the English, by Geoffrey Gaimar. It includes a part about a Norman juggler who demonstrated his spear skills before the English army.

Konieczy also touches on how the Normans meddled with the Irish several decades later, never fully conquering them, and by 1180, “would leave the island unstable and divided.”

Music

Singing with English Nightingales

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NightingaleEnglish Nightingales don’t actually exist. They are migrants from Central Africa up in the north country for a bit of holiday. Most of them go to Europe, but some come from families that have always holidayed in England and they aren’t going to upset Grandma by suggesting the Black Forest or the Provence Alps (especially not after Freddie ran off with that scarlet thrush last autumn; Grandma’s barely gotten over that).

Musician Sam Lee holds special performances in the woods of southeast England where the nightingales sing around this time of year.  “Lee’s show presented an opportunity to focus, fully, on what a nightingale actually sounds like, miles from the nearest road,” writes Sam Kinchin-Smith. “Much to my surprise, its stop-starting, self-counterpointing quality reminded me of nothing so much as James Brown’s ‘get on up’ scat.”

Hear that sound and read more about nightingales in Kinchin-Smith’s LRB piece.

Religion

Church of England Shouts “He Is Risen!”

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Central panel of Titian’s "Triptych of the Resurrection"
Central panel of Titian’s “Triptych of the Resurrection”

Beginning with words from Psalm 22, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me,” a new video from The Church of England puts Jesus’ words in the mouths of today’s rejected people before turning to celebrate our Lord’s resurrection.

“What this film shows is that God is with us in those struggles and Easter represents the triumph of Jesus over those struggles,” says the Church’s Director of Communications.

Here’s hoping all of England will hear the full meaning of the gospel this year and be transformed, not by their good wishes and sentimentality, but by the Living Word of God. Because Christ didn’t come into this world to merely sympathize with us and tell us to keep our hopes up and be nice to each other. He came to deliver us from bondage, from the hatred and lies that come from living on our own. He came to give us new life, which is literally new life, not some tired, exaggerated metaphor.

What we have on our own doesn’t work. Both subtly and overtly, we’ve earned God’s condemnation. We’re like filthy farmhands crashing an upscale wedding. We think the wedding host and guests are supposed to be loving, accepting people, so we should be able to walk in off the field and be ourselves. The doormen said if we washed up and put on the formal apparel they would give us, we could join the party, but we said we didn’t need that. We were kicked out.

Now, it might take a while to talk through the reasons we were kicked out, but Easter celebrates the fact that we will be accepted, if we will accept the washing and clothing the host offers. No one will be turned away if he is willing to be made clean.

To paraphrase Tim Keller, the problem many churches have is that they say add a little Jesus to your life and everything will be good in the end. No need to change your life. Just keep your hopes up. But such a message short-changes the gospel, which is intended to change us completely. New life is totally new, beyond our old expectations. Just as Jesus went into the grave dead and returned alive, so he wants to take our old lives into the grave and bring us out gloriously renewed.

(Image: Iconography of the Resurrection – Bursting From the Tomb)

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The headless norsemen

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I’m low on ideas tonight, so I’ll just pass on the most recent big discovery in Viking studies.
Last summer, a collection of skeletons were excavated at Weymouth, in Dorsetshire in England. They had clearly died violently, and were judged to be victims of a mass execution. The bones were determined to be about a thousand years old
At the time of the news I suggested, on the Viking discussion board I frequent, that the bones were probably those of Vikings. My reason was that we know of only one attempt at genocide in England during the period in question, and that was King Æthelred the Unrede’s massacre of Danes in England, on St. Brice’s Day in 1002. (You’ll know about this if you’ve read West Oversea. You have read it, haven’t you? If not, click on the yellow cover in the carousel to the right. I’ll wait.)
I am so rarely right that I feel I need to preen a little here. According to National Geographic:

Analysis of teeth from ten of the dead—who were mostly in their late teens and early 20s—indicates the raiding party had been gathered from different parts of Scandinavia, including one person thought to have come from north of the Arctic Circle.

I think some Viking enthusiasts are a little embarrassed by this news, as it casts the Norse as victims. This in spite of the fact that many recent books have in fact openly portrayed the Norse as victims (of those nasty Christians).
I, on the other hand, have tried to dispute that victimization meme in my own writing.
But of course anyone can be a victim under certain circumstances. Hell hath no fury like a bunch of villagers who get the upper hand on a raiding party.
And the St. Brice’s Day Massacre is an undisputed historical fact.
More as the story develops.
Or not.