How has this not been made into a movie yet? And if it has, please send me a note and let me know.
Tag Archives: history
International Holocaust Remembrance Day
For this day, please read my post from last year.
Sanity…
…in the New York Times, of all places!
If you see only an “Israeli-Palestinian” conflict, then nothing that Israelis do makes sense. (That’s why Israel’s enemies prefer this framing.) …
The fault lines have little to do with Israel. They run between dictators and the people they’ve been oppressing for generations; between progressives and medievalists; between Sunni and Shiite; between majority populations and minorities. If our small sub-war were somehow resolved, or even if Israel vanished tonight, the Middle East would remain the same volatile place it is now.
[Emphasis mine.]
Sister Wendy
Brilliant, lovely lady. I so enjoyed this – a bit of a profile, along with her ten rules for appreciating art.
Clive James
I’ve long been a fan of the Australian critic and writer Clive James and was extremely saddened to learn that he is ill. But here’s an uplifting conversation — of sorts — between James and Mary Beard (another writer and critic I admire).
“Villanelle” for Vera Brittain
Beautiful poem written by Roland Leighton for Vera Brittain. It was April 1915 and he was serving in France. He was killed by a sniper eight months later. (I dearly wish I had some of my uncle’s poems to his fiancee, Christine, but any letters she received, of course, stayed with her. If she kept them, perhaps her children have them – I have a hope one of her kids will see my other site and contact me, but it is possible she may never have told them about Norman.)
Violets from Plug Street Wood,
Sweet, I send you oversea.
(It is strange they should be blue,
Blue, when his soaked blood was red,
For they grew around his head:
It is strange they should be blue.)Think what they have meant to me –
Life and hope and Love and You
(and you did not see them grow
Where his mangled body lay
Hiding horrors from the day;
Sweetest, it was better so.)Violets from oversea,
To your dear, far, forgetting land
These I send in memory
Knowing you will understand.
The Origins of the First World War
Very good piece by Conrad Black about the origins of World War I. I tend to agree with his general argument.
Sir Winston
Cambodia and the Academic Left
There has never been a leftist genocidal regime for which leftist Western intellectuals have not been apologists. Case in point, here.
Walter Laqueur
The great historian and writer passed away recently – read this tribute and read Laqueur’s books, if you haven’t yet.