Ah, the Dark Ages. That period in British history after the Romans went away where everything just stopped, or seemingly so. It didn’t of course. The record petered out. The accepted wisdom is that because people built in wood, drank from horn and worked in leather our archaeological tools to discover their civilisation become useless.… Continue reading Have our Romans already departed?
Tag: culture
The piratical eyes of the magnetic healer
Leamington is a quiet little spa town in Warwickshire near Stratford upon Avon. In the late 1880s it is not difficult to envisage how very Jane Austen it still must have been, with its Pump Room and all, though visitor numbers “taking the waters” had declined drastically. Nearby big city newspaper the Birmingham Post really… Continue reading The piratical eyes of the magnetic healer
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled
Here’s a note of despair from, of all places, the Grauniad, that is to say an English Liberal newspaper, The Guardian, (once famed for its consistently poor proof reading hence the epithet). It ran a story yesterday that proves Western civilization is indeed collapsing. For the Romans it was lead in the water; for the fall… Continue reading I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled
They walked on water
You know nothing about progress if you do not know the 19th century. In 1818 the first tiny 90 ton steam powered vessel, The Rob Roy, began using its 30 horse power engine on regular trips from Greenock in Scotland to Belfast in Ireland. Subsequently it became the first international non-sailing ship when it went… Continue reading They walked on water
What are zoos for?
That page of The Graphic from 1895 just keeps on giving. Looking across from the pheasants shocker is another piece of news that has echoes today. Right now there is a half-hearted debate about what economists might call the moneytisation of cultural assets. As the first world (yes I know, we’ve discussed this phrase), falls… Continue reading What are zoos for?