Category: History

Late Abroad Again

A short letter from Samuel Pepys to John Evelyn at the latter's home in Deptford, written by Pepys on 16 October 1665 and referring to "prisoners" and "sick men" during the Second Dutch War

People thinking of their impact on others, maintaining the known health authority guidance and looking out for others as they look out for themselves.

Armada

Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 8 August 1588

The history of the Spanish Armada is a call to take care on our journey home. Although we may feel mauled by the day, we can salvage most of what we have.

Fête Nationale

Fête de la Fédération 1790

I could not let July 14 pass without a nod to that most French of occasions: Bastille Day. A celebration which marks both the anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 and the Fête de la Fédération of 14 July 1790.

The Struggle is Topic

80 years since Charles de Gaulle's Appeal of 18 June

There is no dearth of ideas, but each was pondered and rejected in turn as the research involved exceeds the allotted time for this daily challenge.

Damnatio Memoriae

The Severan Tondo, a circa AD 199 tondo of the Severan family, with portraits of Septimius Severus, Julia Domna, and their sons Caracalla and Geta. The face of one of Severus and Julia's sons has been erased; it may be Geta's, as a result of the damnatio memoriae ordered by his brother Caracalla after Geta's death.

Memory is more than the activity of an individual. It is an object, in so much as a statue or inscription reminds passers by of a person or event.

The Better Part of Valour

History by Frederick Dielman (1896)

Obama made sure to bring together the past with the present. Memory stalking the impatiently advancing future. Into the party marched the honour ghosts, the generation of the revolution. A band of colonists rising up against an empire. The generation that had fought world war II. The civil rights generation that had the courage to… Continue reading The Better Part of Valour