Tag: history

The history

Why are we cancelling everything?

What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?

In respect of my heritage, history has always fascinated me, and now it annoys me in equal measures.

What fascinates me as it always has, since back in my childhood days, is that I love to know how people worked, lived and managed to survive in a period of time when just one random off the cuff comment could have you accused of many a crime. God forbid if you said anything about the establishment as you’d probably be missing your head before too long.

And the annoying part is that we are in a society where groups of individuals are wanting to cancel everything. People are wanting to wipe out history because they disagree with what happened. That’s history folks! The fact that we don’t (in general, good society, anyway) go around inflicting on the populace accusations of “Witchcraft” “Heresy” and whatever, means we have learned something from that history. We generally don’t make the mistakes of the past as we have become better people and learned from that horrific history that pre dates us all.

She’s right….

I can’t get enough of history, it’s potentially my favourite subject and I will gladly overdose on it in either book or film format. I just love it.

I don’t feel the urge to go and lop off someone’s head, or to take part in hanging, drawing and quartering anyone (not today anyway….) and that’s because we have all learnt, and moved on from those terrible times. We learn from the mistakes of the past, and to wipe out history leaves us in the unenviable position of not knowing the difference between right and wrong, we might as well all go and bury our heads in the sand and just imagine it never happened.

I have news for you Sherlock, it did happen, and as long as we learn, develop and make better then we are being taught by our historical misdemeanours, hopefully to never venture back to those dark old days.

Cancelling solves nothing. In the words of the Jamaican activist- Marcus Garvey,

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots”

And he isn’t wrong, I used to have a tee shirt with that on it in my teenage years..

History, it shapes our futures. Don’t cancel it.

Have a superb day…

Henry the eighth

If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?

The Tudor era fascinates me, I’d love to meet Henry the eighth, to hear him, to see him and just to find out if he is exactly as he is portrayed in pretty much every book or programme I have ever viewed about him.

His wives fascinate me, their stories and their upbringings.

His subjects such as Wolsey and Cromwell also fascinate me, the whole Tudor period is just like one big soap opera, really gripping stuff.

Though if Henry’s anger is as bad as they have portrayed then maybe I’d like to meet him from a distance. Maybe a bit more than an axe swing distance.

Have a super day.

Napoleon – a life, by Andrew Roberts

What book are you reading right now?

Nice and simple. I am currently reading this 900+ page book by the author Andrew Roberts. I have an absolute thirst for history, and as a child at school history lessons touched on people such as Napoleon but that was it, they never really delved deep into the characters of these individuals and you only ever heard about particular successes or failures. In this case Napoleon was only ever mentioned as someone that the Duke of Wellington defeated. However the real story is very different.

Napoleon was very much an old style Micro manager if you like, a very complex and fascinating individual who was an extremely talented military and social tactician. Winston Churchill looked upon him as one of the most influential tacticians and military leaders of modern history, he was an extremely talented individual. The book covers his entire life and not just the battles, and that is what is different. You get to read what encouraged and influenced him and how his humble upbringing shaped his life. A great book, for lovers of history.

Rockets & Sinking boats

What major historical events do you remember?

There are a few historical events that have featured throughout my life so far, there are some such as the Apollo 11 landing, I guess I must have watched it if we had a tv then, however I’d have only been a few years old so I don’t quite remember it.

I remember the first shuttle launch in April 1981, I was at work and bunked off for about 30 mins with half the workers there to watch it on the company TV.

I’ve witnessed many high profile weddings and funerals, prison releases and successful / non successful legal cases. The one thing that really sticks out is the 9/11 attack in September 2001. We had only been there 9 months earlier and we had even seen the remnants of the last attempt when someone had attempted to detonate a car or lorry bomb at the foot of one of the buildings.

Of course for all of these memorable and historical occasions you did one thing, you collected the headline news papers of the day and I still have a number of these stored away in my home. I used to even have a copy of a paper that was issued the day the Titanic was sunk, this was my fathers and I used to take it to school for show and tell, this however disappeared when he passed away. I suspect it was foolishly recycled or disposed of.

Buying the newspaper today just doesn’t really occur as the news in its majority is now online. We’ve kind of lost a traditional way to pass on these nuggets of history as we used to do in the past.

Peace to all. Have a great day.

Raw emotions

What do you enjoy most about writing?

Recently it’s been a great release for me. I have been able to express myself with raw emotion, writing through tear stained eyes and a pain in my heart that seems to grow day by day.

With writing you can capture the moment, whether good, bad or indifferent, it’s truly your personal history being documented.

For me, it’s my journal, it helps me get things in perspective. And due to the trauma of recent days, when people make contact it’s good to be able to send a link : Is there a cure for a broken heart 💔 and then they can read the post and instantly know how you are feeling. It’s hard to talk when emotions are so raw.

That’s what I enjoy about writing.

Be nice all, make someone’s day.

Peace.