#OnThisDay in 1381, Wat Tyler is beheaded following a skirmish during the Peasants' Revolt.
But the tale of the revolt begins some months earlier and ultimately had its roots in the socio-economic dislocation which resulted from the Black Death pandemic some forty years before in the 1340s.
The other week I marvelled in the joy of the website Letters of Note. Today, I celebrate the stationary on which letters are written. Wonderfully brought to your screen by the site Letterheady. The site is an absolute treasure trove of stationary from some of the world's most famous, and infamous, people.
Today was quite the red letter day. For the first time since gyms shut due to the Covid pandemic, my local reopened and I was able to train again. Though vowing to take things easy as I pulled on my sweats, it seems my body has so violently lost what little fitness it had that doing nothing more than going through the motions of a workout was enough to provoke bucking hysteria from my muscles. The other thing which took me by surprise, the way in which my local community seems to have completely forgotten about Covid.
Today was a day in which, if you'll forgive this writer a reification, my thoughts have been battling in my mind. The main cause is that while the 100 days challenge is a great way to force a level of writing discipline, it creates challenges when life is provoking thoughts which are deep, need tremendous research to present a nuanced argument and time is short after a long and tiring day.
Damnatio memoriae is a Latin phrase which loosely translates as 'condemned to oblivion.' It was, or given the modern cancel culture perhaps I should say it is, the practice of removing a person's name from history. Like many Roman practices, it originated in another culture. One of the earliest examples is to be found in the reign of Hatshepsut, who reigned as pharaoh of Egypt in the fourteenth century BC. As ever with modernity, it is seldom that modern.
The purpose of damnatio memoriae was, much like modern cancel movements, to remove every trace of an individual from the record, to make it as though they had never existed. For the Romans, who were by and large obsessed with memory, it was a fate far worse than death.
If [journalists] have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? It hardly ever happens because it would damage sales. – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn, a long standing critic of he Soviet Union and communism, knew much about the use and abuse of public opinion. After serving in the Soviet Army during World War II, he was sent to a labour camp for eight years after criticising Stalin's policies in a private letter.
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 sit at the lunch counter and brave fire houses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedoms cause. Everything contemporary seemed infused by history to reach out and back to History for a sense of its own future purpose. – Simon Schama
I wrote a long blog post today in which the past stalked the future. Though a common occurrence for those who follow this blog, it differed as it strayed firmly into the present. A dangerous endeavour at the best of times, but in the current climate – positively suicidal. Not because of the inevitability of trolls or even the wide-eyed acolytes who, with a frenetic rage, seek to burn anything which doesn't bow to their outlook. But because in times such as this, important discussions become subsumed by an emotion which prevents meaningful agonism. And this is largely why I write, to spark discussion. In a climate which largely prohibits this, it is time for this writer to retire from the field and live to post again another day.
I learn today that a poll, of over 30,000 students from around the world who are intending to study abroad, has showed 57% are experiencing disruptions to their study plans. This number is up on the 46% returned when QS ran a similar survey in April. Given the effect Covid is having on day to day life, the only surprise here is that the number facing disruption isn't higher.
Writing in 1821, Sydney Smith railed that:
The country belongs to the Duke of Rutland, Lord Lonsdale, the Duke of Newcastle, and about twenty other holders of boroughs. They are our masters!
He was writing in protest of a practise, too often forgotten in our age, of the 'pocket borough.' These were areas of England and Wales which returned MPs to parliament who was not freely voted for by the people, but put in office by the pressure of a powerful landowner or rich merchant. 'Pocket,' because the boroughs were said to be in the pocket of their patrons. In this book The Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland, Thomas Oldfield (1755–1822), an English political reformer, opined that of the 514 members, 340 were selected by their patrons – a mere 180 benefactors.
Though born more than thirty after the end of the Second World War, the global conflagration suffused my childhood. My father served in the War and carried the scars throughout his life. He was one of the lucky ones. As a consequence, every year I take a moment to remember those who put their lives on the line to secure the freedoms I have enjoyed all my life.