Monthly Archives: June 2018

England’s kulturkampf

Posted on 30th June 2018 by Ian

Mr Buchanan’s history classes at Strode College forty years seem now to have been instilled with a prescience that could not have been imagined at the time. His teaching on how the authoritarian regimes of the 1930s developed through middle … Continue reading →

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A taboo word

Posted on 29th June 2018 by Ian

Wandering in the churchyard at Street in Somerset, one inscription on a headstone seemed particularly blunt, “set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live.” The deceased had been buried in 1895, his frank acknowledgment of mortality … Continue reading →

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Franz Ferdinand and the men from Somerset

Posted on 28th June 2018 by Ian

In the summer of 1914, Arthur Latcham would have had no inkling of how the future would unfold, nor had anyone else. The events on this day in 1914 would have seemed a remote irrelevance to a young man in … Continue reading →

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A polite society is needed

Posted on 27th June 2018 by Ian

Following the Twitter feed of David Lammy, the member of parliament for Tottenham, there is a sense of astonishment at the abuse he suffers. Racism, profanities, semi-literate rants, the ramblings of angry and violent minds seem the stuff of everyday … Continue reading →

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We will not remember them

Posted on 26th June 2018 by Ian

Going to Huish Episcopi churchyard, I took a picture of the gravestone of Private Arthur Edward Roussell and posted it online, along with words from Binyon’s Ode to the Fallen, “At the going down of the sun and in the … Continue reading →

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