Harry Guest: ‘One of the reasons why I took early retirement ̶ with sadness, really, because I had very much enjoyed 37 years sharing what I had discovered with eager pupils (hordes of whom were far more intelligent than myself) ̶ was seeing a test paper for the replacement of O Level by GCSE. There was a photograph of a French square. The candidates had to find “where your father would get
petrol and where you would go for lunch” so that the examiner could see they knew the French for “Garage” as well as “Restaurant”.’
Michael Blackburn: ‘In the event of a scrap, therefore, my money would be on Vlad, despite the fact that he cedes the best part of twenty years to young Justin. Trudeau may have the extra height, and the quicker reflexes and energy of youth but Vlad has cunning and a finely-developed streak of viciousness in him. And he’s Russian. And he’s ex-KGB. Justin may land a few wallops on him but Vlad would bite his ears off and turn his model’s face into a moonscape before he knew what was happening. ‘
John Ruskin: ‘Over [the] three kingdoms of imagination, art, and science, there reigns a virtue or faculty, which from all time, and by all great people, has been recognised as the appointed ruler and guide of every method of labour, or passion of soul; and the most glorious recompense of the toil, and crown of the ambition of man. “She is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Lay fast hold upon her; let her not go; keep her, for she is thy life.”‘
Denis Boyles: ‘European unification is a constant thread running through all our postwar decades. Reading accounts of twentieth-century Europe, you can’t help notice how little the Continental political class has been affected by the massive storms that have broken over her. The worldview of the European political elites is the same now as it has always been. The growth — usually predicated on various claims of urgency and necessity — of government and the inevitably consequent centralization of power have a persistent gravity all their own. ‘
Alan Wall: ‘What terrifies about Satan and the demons is intelligent cunning and damnable determination, not the multi-coloured yawns of the possessed. It is that which makes them uncanny and terrifying, and it is that quality of hellishness which connects them with the goings-on in From Hell. This quality of transcendent and merciless intelligence is what intrigues us about infernal agents. ‘
Brent Ranalli: ‘To delegate the function of a governing class to the masses is one thing. To impute the virtues of a governing class onto the masses is quite another matter, and here it takes concerted effort to make reality conform to doctrine. Public schools are the engines that turn children into citizens, citizens putatively armed with enough knowledge of history, art, music, grammar, science, mathematics, social studies, and gymnastics to be passible Whole Men and Whole Women, capable of taking a broad view and intelligently directing the affairs of a nation in the few waking hours that aren’t devoted to making a living.’
Michael Blackburn: ‘Brought together for this portrait the group forms a rough triangle whose longest line slopes down from the left to the right, replicating the mirrored mirrors behind them. The most noticeable object that stands in the reflections is a clock. It is there to one side above the Queen’s head. Time is there always, the moments passing irrevocably; but in a continuum, linking past, present and future. This is how the monarchy has survived: accepting the change of tradition, and the tradition of change, cardigans and all.’
Ben Voth, in American Thinker: ‘At issue here are our paramount civil rights found in the First Amendment. Colleges and universities are creating intellectually stifling environments comparable to Jim Crow America. Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition must flow from the citadels of critical thinking that should be American colleges and universities.’
Ed Simon: ‘The emancipatory potential of Barnfield’s verse is that the possibility of consummated same-sex love is implied, the poignancy is that it requires the almost supernatural to be made possible. Without further historical evidence it’s impossible to know if like Edward with his Gaveston, Barnfield himself had romantic companionship, or if these thoughts were all theoretical. But if we’re to celebrate Shakespeare for turning the conventions of Petrarchism on its head when he celebrated the Dark Lady as opposed to the standard fair woman of lyrical convention, than Barnfield equally deserves to be celebrated for the still-more radical attempt to write love poetry to a man, as a man.
‘
James Gallant: ‘Richard Hodgson’s apparently authoritative report on Blavatsky on behalf of the Society for Psychic Research, published in 1885 in the Proceedings of the Society had probably contributed significantly to the common view of Blavatsky. He represented her as an imposter, forger, Russian spy and instigator of frauds. ‘
Stephen Wade on A Philosophy of Rejection: ‘I exist as a general non-fiction writer, my most detailed specialist subject, should I ever be called to appear on University Challenge, is literary failure. Hence this series. Rejection is many things, if we search for images to explain it: like being hit by an iced-water spout; being slapped in the face by a wet haddock; being pole-axed by a thump to the midriff; being told to get off the pitch and have an early bath.’
By JOSEPH EPSTEIN [Wall Street Journal] — [Ronald] Syme was a master of the brief character sketch, not infrequently followed by a sharp observation. The mixture of good and evil in the same people fascinated him. After toting up Marcus Antonius’ many flaws, he writes that “a blameless life is not the whole of virtue, […]
Michael Blackburn: ‘You know when you talk about Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet Union and the Cold War, for instance, nobody under the age of fifty has any real understanding of what you’re talking about. If it’s anything to do with politics in general, forget it. The same with history unless it involves Hitler. He’s the one permanent fixture in history teaching these days, it seems. Not Stalin, not Lenin, not Mao. If it’s British history perhaps Churchill. But Pitt, Gladstone, Disraeli, Nelson, Wellington — blank. Hitler trumps all. He sticks as permanently as the words of that awful pop song…’
Winétt de Rokha: ‘The word becomes a butterfly of the night,
bats its wings, stops, opens itself to unforeseen pearls —
catches at an echo that rolls slowly
away, dividing and dividing again, and chases after its own flight
like the mane of a comet as it dissolves.’
Of wisdom and folly in art.
John Ruskin: ‘Over [the] three kingdoms of imagination, art, and science, there reigns a virtue or faculty, which from all time, and by all great people, has been recognised as the appointed ruler and guide of every method of labour, or passion of soul; and the most glorious recompense of the toil, and crown of the ambition of man. “She is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Lay fast hold upon her; let her not go; keep her, for she is thy life.”‘