In Search of Ireland (1930)

In Search of Ireland ISBN 0413548503 was re-issued by Methuen in 2000

Rating: ★★★★☆

A Fleet Street reporter, H. V. Morton (1892-1979) fought in the First World War and was in Egypt in 1922 at the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb. One of the century’s most popular travel writers, he wrote books about Spain, Italy and the Middle East as well as the famous ‘In search of..’ series on the British Isles.

Something to remember about Morton’s book on Ireland is its historical perspective. In Search of Ireland was first published in 1930, which was a few years after Ireland had become a Free State in 1922. Morton is seeing Ireland in the early stages of independence separated from  Britain. He warns the English in his introduction, “We must forget the hosts of prejudiced ideas about her which have accumulated during centuries of strife and misunderstanding…I must stress the point that the new generation of travellers must approach Ireland with the feeling that it is a foreign country.” I could not help but reflect on the history he refers to, when England was so often the aggressor, and Ireland the betrayed. Sometimes it seems he relates the events connected with a place without examining the underlying issues, he observes the empty cottages with hardly a mention of the famine or the forced evictions, or that emigration was so often not a choice, but a matter of survival.  Nonetheless, Morton’s humorous and insightful observations about Ireland, as a traveller in a foreign land, are worth reading and re-reading.

Dublin in the early morning, with the sun shining, is a city the colour of claret. The red-brick Georgian mansions, with fine doors, fanlights, and little iron balconies at the first-floor windows, stand back in well-bred reticence against wide roads, quiet and dignified, as if the family has just left by stagecoach.” Prose of this quality is what raises travel writing to literature, and Morton’s skill as an evocative writer is worthy of the best of his era. In explaining about the Book of Kells, which is kept in Trinity College, Dublin, he says that during the three darkest centuries of English history it was Ireland that was saving Greek and Latin for Europe..

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Robert Louis Stevenson 1850- 1894

Robert Louis Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh, Scotland. His mother, Margaret Balfour Stevenson, was a minister’s daughter, and his father, Thomas Stevenson, was a civil engineer, and with his grandfather, a famed lighthouse builder.

Stevenson was a sickly child, born with a lung disorder, and spent much time in his bedroom drawing or painting, playing with toys, and making up wonderful stories of faraway lands and exciting adventures. He always yearned to go that “somewhere of the imagination where all the troubles are supposed to end”. His formal education started at the age of seven, but his studies were undertaken with great irregularity. What he loved most about school were the magazines he initiated: miscellaneous collections of ‘fact, fiction and fun’, titled Sunbeam Magazine and The Schoolboy Magazine. At his father’s insistence, he entered Edinburgh University to study Engineering. He then went on to study Law, although he was much more interested in Literature and writing.

In 1878, his first book, An Inland Voyage, was published, closely followed by Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879). This was a fascinating account of a romantic hike through the forests and hills of central France, with unforgettable scenes of Stevenson sleeping under the stars, with the strong-willed Modestine tethered by his side. His love of the people he encountered shines throughout. With such a strong visual sense, it is hardly surprising that Stevenson’s stories remain ever popular with successive generations of readers.

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Tyranny- A Study in the Abuse of Power

Rating: ★★★★★

Tyranny: A Study in the Abuse of Power by Maurice Latey (1969)

”Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny; they have only shifted it to another shoulder” (George Bernard Shaw, 1903)

This is a very useful 310 page study by political commentator Maurice Latey for those interested in the factors that breed tyranny. He is particularly concerned with the psychological factors, what motivates these men to behave in the way they do. Although of necessity taking a broad historical approach, he concentrates on the twentieth century after World War One, arguably an ‘age of tyranny’, with Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung foremost amongst others.

In ancient Greece, a tyrant was a ruler who seized power unconstitutionally or inherited such power. In the 10th and 9th centuries BC, monarchy had been the usual form of government in the Greek states; the aristocratic regimes that had replaced monarchy were by the 7th century BC themselves unpopular. Thus the opportunity arose for ambitious men to seize power in the name of the oppressed. Tyrants eventually came to be considered oppressive. Latey’s more refined definition of a tyrant is ‘a ruler who exercises arbitrary power beyond the scope permitted by the laws, customs and standards of his time and society, and who does so with a view to maintaining or increasing that power’.

He examines the tyrants of Greece and Rome, and the authors of that era. Aristotle said that tyranny aims at three things- firstly to keep the subjects in humility, secondly to have them distrust each other, and thirdly to render them powerless for opposition. These principle features of a tyrant can be discerned in the many historical examples, but also, underscoring their validity, in the leadership struggles of today, in settings as diverse as party politics, the church, the office and the company boardroom..

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The Grand Design

The Grand Design published on September 9th 2010, these are some pre-launch comments.

Tap Grand Design’ into Amazon currently, and it will show you books and DVD’s associated with the TV series. Tell any of the architects or designers that feature on that programme that their efforts in renovating or creating new buildings were a product of chance, or ‘self- creation’ and they might rightly feel insulted. They might also feel their intelligence had been insulted too. My point is the same as that of the apostle Paul, ‘Of course, every house is constructed by someone, but he that constructed all things is God’ (Heb.3:4). The Athenians of the time held diverse views, only one of which was that the Creator was unknown, or unknowable (Acts 17: 23).

Professor Stephen Hawking has claimed that no divine force was needed to explain why the Universe was formed. In A Brief History of Time , he differentiated between partial theories that help explain aspects of what we observe about the Universe, and the ‘holy grail’ of science, a single theory that explains all phenomena, or if you like, a ‘Theory of Everything’.  He appears as far from this goal as ever.

The sub-title, ‘New answers to the ultimate questions of life’,  inevitably reminded me of the scene in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when the central characters meet Slartibartfast, a planetary coastline designer who was responsible for the fjords of Norway. He relates the story of how a super-race built a computer named Deep Thought in order to calculate ‘The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything’. When the answer was revealed to be 42, Deep Thought predicted that another computer, more powerful than itself, would be necessary in order to calculate the question for the answer.

In his latest book,The Grand Design, an extract of which was published in Eureka magazine in The Times , Professor Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.” He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.” He concludes: ‘The Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe’..

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John Milton 1608- 1674

John Milton was arguably one of the greatest writers in the English language. He also was a noted historian, scholar, pamphleteer, and civil servant.

Milton ranks along with William Shakespeare among English poets; his writings and his influence are an important part of the history of English literature, culture, and thought. He is best known for Paradise Lost, which is generally regarded, as he intended, the greatest epic poem in the English language. Milton’s prose works, however, deserve their place in modern histories of political and religious thought.

According to one biographer, Milton “was loved by many, hated by some, but ignored by few.” How did John Milton come to have such influence? What made his last work—On Christian Doctrine—so controversial that it remained unpublished for 150 years? (John Milton: A Biography)

John Milton was born into a financially secure London family in 1608. “My father destined me in early childhood for the study of literature, for which I had so keen an appetite that from my twelfth year scarcely ever did I leave my studies for my bed before the hour of midnight,” Milton recalled. He excelled scholastically and received a master’s degree at Cambridge in 1632. Thereafter, he continued to read history and classical literature. By his own account, his early enthusiasm for the sensual poetry of Ovid and other Roman writers gave way to an appreciation of the idealism of Dante, Petrarch, and Edmund Spenser. He then moved on to Platonic philosophy and finally came to hold the biblical Book of Revelation in the highest esteem. Milton’s scholarly and literary gifts had from childhood marked him out in the minds of his family and teachers for the ministry, however  Milton wanted to be a poet. England in his day was in the throes of revolution. Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell, appointed a court that had King Charles I executed in 1649. Using persuasive prose, Milton defended this action and became a spokesman for the Cromwell government. In fact, before attaining fame as a poet, John Milton was already well-known for his tracts on politics and morals..

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Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings

Rating: ★★★★★

Guest Review written by Paul F. Hoye and Paul Lunde,  originally published by Saudi Aramco World Magazine in 1980

Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age”  ISBN:0932813429

Charles Hapgood, after exhaustive research and imaginative mathematical and cartographic experiments, came to some remarkable conclusions and eventually published them in a book called ‘Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings’. Briefly these are the conclusions:

  • That the Piri Reis map, dated to 1513, the Portolano charts and many other ancient maps include information supposedly unknown in the 16th century and, in some cases, information that was not confirmed until the middle of this century.
  • That the Piri Reis map and other maps were inexplicably accurate, particularly with regard to longitudes, which neither mariners nor cartographers could calculate until spherical trigonometry was developed in the 17th and 18th centuries.
  • That some civilization or culture still unknown to archeology — and pre-dating any civilization known so far — had mapped North America, China, Greenland, South America and Antarctica long before the rise of any known civilization — and at a time when Greenland and Antarctica were not covered with their millennia-old ice caps.
  • That to have done this, the ancient civilization had to have developed astronomy, navigational instruments — such as the chronometer — and mathematics, particularly plane geometry and trigonometry, long before Greece or any other known civilization.
  • That the advanced cartographic knowledge appearing on the Piri Reis map, the Oronteus Finaeus map and other maps came down in garbled and incomplete fragments that somehow survived the destruction of the unknown civilization itself and the repeated destruction of such ancient repositories of knowledge as the library at Alexandria..

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Galileo Galilei 1564– 1642

Born in Pisa in 1564, Galileo studied medicine at the university there. Showing little interest in that discipline, he abandoned it for the study of physics and mathematics. In 1585 he settled in Florence without obtaining any academic qualification. Yet, he gained the esteem of the greatest mathematicians of his day, credited with the discovery of certain principles of inertia, and winning the post of mathematics lecturer at the University of Pisa. After his father’s death, economic difficulties forced Galileo to move to Padua, where he was appointed to a more lucrative position, the chair of mathematics in that city’s university.

During his 18 years in Padua, three children were born to Galileo by his mistress, a young Venetian woman. In 1610 he returned to Florence, where he obtained a better economic situation enabling him to dedicate more time to research—but at the expense of the freedom he had enjoyed in the territory of the powerful Venetian Republic.  (The Library of Original Sources, Vol. VI, 1915)

A step leading to the confrontation between Galileo and the church occurred back in the 13th century, and involved Catholic authority Thomas Aquinas (1225-74). Aquinas had a profound respect for Aristotle, whom he referred to as The Philosopher. Aquinas struggled for five years to fuse Aristotle’s philosophy with church teaching. By the time of Galileo, says Wade Rowland in his book Galileo’s Mistake: A New Look at the Epic Confrontation Between Galileo and the Church, “the hybridized Aristotle in the theology of Aquinas had become bedrock dogma of the Church of Rome.” In those days there was no scientific community as such. Education was largely in the hands of the church. The authority on religion and science was often one and the same.

The next step became the confrontation between the church and Galileo. Even before his involvement with astronomy, Galileo had written a treatise on motion. It challenged many assumptions made by the revered Aristotle. However, it was Galileo’s steadfast promotion of the heliocentric concept and his assertion that it harmonizes with Scripture that led to his trial by the Inquisition in 1633.

In his defence, Galileo affirmed his strong faith in the Bible as the inspired Word of God. He also argued that the Scriptures were written for ordinary people and that Biblical references to the apparent movement of the sun were not to be interpreted literally. His arguments were futile. Because Galileo rejected an interpretation of Scripture based on Greek philosophy, he stood condemned! Not until 1992 did the Catholic Church officially admit to error in its judgment of Galileo.

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Taking Flight Theatre Company; Romeo and Juliet, Monday August 9th, Kidwelly Castle, Wales

Rating: ★★★★★

www.takingflighttheatre.co.uk/

For the Americans in the audience at Kidwelly Castle, it was a night of the three things they immediately associate Britain with; a historical building, Shakespeare and rain!

Summer 2010 production

After two hours everyone was soaked, but at least we had coats and umbrellas, the cast did not. Awnings, or even patio umbrellas, might have helped save the players catching pneumonia, or at least in some scenes, but we appreciated how difficult this might have been in a production outstanding for its freedom of movement. The show must go on.

The show! Well-paced and professional, a blend of the familiar lines and a refreshingly light approach, they achieved so much in two hours. It left me feeling determined not to miss the next production. Not every company lives up to such superlatives, but Taking Flight deserves these and more. I shall continue to describe the strengths of this performance before mentioning minor weaknesses, at the risk of sounding, and feeling, churlish.

The major advantage of an outdoor setting has to be the informality, ‘Shakespeare in wellingtons’, and from the beginning you felt part of what was happening, identifying and empathising with the characters and their predicaments. One minor risk at first, is losing the thread of the story between scenes, as we followed the players, and reassemble to watch after costume or setting changes, but you soon adjust to this.

The castle yard setting lent an air of authenticity to the production, I was several times reminded of the replicated Globe theatre at Southwark, the Elizabethan theatre was open to the elements, but with its galleries and awnings, in Shakespeare’s time, itself represented modernity. In provincial settings, the plays must have been performed in similar fashion as tonight at Kidwelly. Would travelling players have made use of a horse-drawn wagon, as alluded to (Act 1, Sn.4) in the play? Quite possibly, and this gives an indication there would be few elaborate props, and these are often unnecessary, as here demonstrated so ably.

‘Romeo and Juliet’, with its well-known tragic theme , is nonetheless associated with Shakespeare’s earlier comedies, and the bawdiness of the earlier acts was well shown, to the point I wondered how the mood was to change upon the brawl and deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt. I need not have worried. The fight scenes were admirably directed (by Michael Aubin), spontaneous and natural, not stilted, including a stylish slow-motion sequence..

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The Cholesterol Myth that is Harming Your Health

This is such an important subject for anyone diagnosed with high cholesterol, or prescribed statins, I have publicized it here.
Dr. MercolaDr. Mercola is the founder of the world’s most visited natural health web site,www.Mercola.com. You can learn the hazardous side effects of ‘over the counter’ remedies by getting a FREE copy of his latest special report The Dangers of Over the Counter Remedies by going to his Report Page.

Cholesterol could easily be described as the smoking gun of the last two decades.

It”s been responsible for demonizing entire categories of foods (like eggs and saturated fats) and blamed for just about every case of heart disease in the last 20 years.

Yet when I first opened my medical practice in the mid 80s, cholesterol, and the fear that yours was too high was rarely talked about.

Somewhere along the way however, cholesterol became a household word — something that you must keep as low as possible, or suffer the consequences.

You are probably aware that there are many myths that portray fat and cholesterol as one of the worst foods you can consume. Please understand that these myths are actually harming your health.

Not only is cholesterol most likely not going to destroy your health (as you have been led to believe), but it is also not the cause of heart disease.

And for those of you taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, the information that follows could not have been given to you fast enough. But before I delve into this life-changing information, let”s get some basics down first.

What is Cholesterol, and Why Do You Need It?

That”s right, you do need cholesterol.

This soft, waxy substance is found not only in your bloodstream, but also in every cell in your body, where it helps to produce cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile acids that help you to digest fat. Cholesterol also helps in the formation of your memories and is vital for neurological function..

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Thomas Babington Macaulay 1800-1859

The History of England

What a marvellous name! The family of Macaulay belonged originally to the Scottish highlands. His mother was a brilliant woman of Quaker descent; his father was a business man who was very successful in trade, and appointed at one time governor of the Sierra Leone Colony in Africa, and he spent the whole of his fortune in helping to free the slaves. In consequence, when Macaulay left college he faced the immediate problem of supporting himself and his family.
We should take note of Macaulay’s personal qualities. He read everything from Plato to the cheapest novel, and after reading a book, could recall practically the whole of it after a lapse of twenty years. To this photographic memory we are indebted for the wealth of quotation, allusion and anecdote which brightens every page of his writings. Probably a few of his errors too!

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