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#OTD 9 November – The benefit of the exchequer

Money and the Jew is a dark trope pervading western thought. The Anglophone world celebrates Shakespeare, whose moneylender Shylock seeks his pound of flesh, and reveres the Magna Carta, whose original clauses included relief from Jewish moneylenders. Intertwined with the trope is the recurring theme of rulers exploiting popular suspicion in order to shore up… Continue reading #OTD 9 November – The benefit of the exchequer

#OTD 8 November – Grandeur as glory’s redux

The new doesn’t always shake off the old. That the Hellenic world yielded to rising Rome at Actium, that Great Britain yielded to the nascent US at Yorktown, or that France yielded to the insular Great Britain at Waterloo, did not mean that the old disappeared. Roman nobles still sent sons to study in Athens,… Continue reading #OTD 8 November – Grandeur as glory’s redux

#OTD 7 November – The enigma of Russia

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. This was the theme of Winston Churchill’s first wartime broadcast on the BBC. Ideological enemies Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia had just signed… Continue reading #OTD 7 November – The enigma of Russia

#OTD 6 November – Prison is not a good place

6 November is the feast day for not one but two saints whose patronage includes prisoners. St Demetrian of Cyprus died around AD 912 but is well remembered in his land for pleading desperately and successfully to Saracen invaders who were removing Christian captives to lives of slavery in Baghdad. St Leonard of Noblac died… Continue reading #OTD 6 November – Prison is not a good place

#OTD 3 November – The silent majority

… he joined the majority! Too many doctors did away with him, or rather, his time had come, for a doctor’s not good for anything except for a consolation to your mind! The Satyricon, Petronius Arbiter, ch 42 For centuries writers have referred to dying as “joining the majority” or “joining the silent majority”, the… Continue reading #OTD 3 November – The silent majority

#OTD 2 November – Being on air

According to UNESCO, over 1,600 journalists were killed between 2006 and 2023, with almost 90% of the killings “judicially unresolved”. The UN’s “International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists” was established after the death of two French journalists in Mali on 2 November 2013. Journalism’s move from the written to the audiovisual is… Continue reading #OTD 2 November – Being on air

#31 October – The hallow of death

Making holy – hallowing – and death have long marched together. As President Lincoln observed: But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. An… Continue reading #31 October – The hallow of death