Mary Beard, author of SPQR A History of Ancient Rome (2015) has made a number of documentaries, some of which can be watched on youtube. Currently there is "Ultimate Rome : Empire without limit" (2016) which starts of with interesting digressions on Romes early history & mythology.

02/02/2020
And here she is debating Greeks vs Romans with Boris Johnson, British PM (Pro Brexit), "I'm afraid in many ways the Romans were barstards". Part of her debate is a rather pointed (jugular) example of a letter to Cicero pertaining to election, Commentariolum Petitionis.

Sharp Ends : Stories from the World of First Law.

Currently reading, in an intermittent way, Joe Abercrombies Sharp Ends : Stories from the World of First Law. Published 2016 and is 372 pages in length. Its an anthology of short stories that are typically postmodern westerns in a fantasy setting, that could be called scenes composed of character studies with violence. Practically the composition of a wrestling match in literary form. Because they are westerns in a fantasy setting the typical ranged weapons are longbows and crossbows (what I assume the union "flatbows" are) which are described as more impersonal weapons and often in the same equalising point and shoot theme a firearm would be described in a western novel. The short story "Some Desperado" has one character begging another character not to "shoot" (188 : 2016), with the description "In fact, once you've got it drawn and aimed it's easier to let fly than not to." (188 : 2016), described in a way comparable to a firearm. Of course shoot is derived from old english sceotan which is the transitive verb of throw a missile, so to assume it would be used exclusively for firearms is incorrect. Even if it was this is still a fantasy setting and I am not High Lord Pedantic. Although perhaps because I point this out, maybe I am. The close combat tends to be more personal, akin to the build up in a wrestling match, although acting without thinking seems to be a theme and Abercrombie tends to build up then oppose the readers expectations. So, the literary equivalent to a wrestling match in a fantasy western setting. Perhaps a better analogy would be to compare it to a Tarantino movie. I wonder if Abercrombie just wrote these to keep in practice and develop ideas and eventually decided to collect them into an anthology. Still, great if you are looking for a series of engaging and concise reads.

Link to online example at Sharp Ends : Stories from the World of First Law. 

Abercrombie, Joe. (2016) Sharp Ends : Stories from the World of First Law. Published by Gollancz, Great Britain.

Crash Course covers the French Revolution in 15 minutes.

Well, crash course finally covered the "French Revolution" (9th October 2019) in its sequential series of documentaries "Crash Course European History" and managed to have an interesting take on it to provide coherence to a historical narrative covered in 15 minutes. And yes, watching it was special for me and I did drink a cappuccino while I watching it. I'm going to work on jokes about tennis courts for a while.

Michael Palin "North Korea Journal"

Currently reading  Michael Palins "North Korea Journal" (September, 2019) published by Hutchinson, Penguin Random House. I was worried that Palin might end up writing a gumby tourist guide to North Korea circa 2018, such as "lovely people.. oh look at all the colorful kimchi! Delightful" but this is not quite the case. Of course there is a picture of Kimchi on page 28 but it's probably mandatory, in the same way as if I went to America it would be mandatory to take a picture of a Hamburger, or a picture of Scones & Tea if I went to Britain. That reminds me I should probably take a picture of a Meat Pie & Tomato sauce sometime.

Palin is suitably observant and sceptical about the various staged scenes/ tourist spots the group visits and the managed nature of the 15 day guided tour but also attempts to remain respectful, the locals refer to their country as the "Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea - the DPRK" (pg 7) and there is advice going in "Remember that you could place North Koreans and their families in a difficult situation if you attempt to initiate contact with ordinary citizens" (pg 15).

In the chapter titled "Day 11 Sunday 6th of May" there is an excerpt of a dialogue between Palin and the guide "Hyang", the books back cover quotes it and I suspect that this dialogue has the misfortune to be evidence of a rather central thesis of the book, which could be described thusly "mutual incomprehension and shared humanity are constantly intermingled" (inside cover).

The quoted dialogue, Palin speaking to Hyang (pg 123), goes like this,
"My hope is that if I'm open about the foibles of our leaders she will open up about her own.
'Our way of life is based on freedom of speech' I say.'People can be as rude as they like about their leaders. In my country we are able to criticise our leaders if they do something wrong, and like any human beings they frequently do make mistakes.'
So Hyang plays it straight back to me.
"That's what makes us so different,' she replies. 'Our leaders are very great. They are not individuals. They represent the masses, so we cannot criticise ourselves, can we?'
I don't really know where to go with this.
'Criticising our leaders is like criticising ourselves.' she persists.
We fence with each other in this sublime landscape. I'm trying to break down the barriers between us which, frustrating are not human but ideological. I know So Hyang to be bright and intelligent. She tells me she has read Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens, so she must know that other cultures do things differently and that Dickens of all people found much about his country to criticise. But it's no good, she won't be lead. It's as if the only thing she'll criticise is criticism itself. (pgs 123 to 124).

Well to be fair put yourself in Hyangs position, her function is to guide a foreign media team, there are consequences, and their all important star comes up to you and begins a conversation with "Our way of life is based on freedom of speech", am I wrong to point out that this is an ideological statement in itself? At least Palin shows her the "Fish Slapping Dance" sketch from Monty Python (pg 130). Her question "The fish, she asks with concern, 'is it alive?". Damn straight.

The greater context of this, guided tour is the understanding that tourism to the DPRK is a source of considerable revenue, North Korea has tourist zones, mostly catering to Chinese tourists (80% of DPRKs tourists) but would like to cater to South Koreans and also the British by the way (pg 107). So anyway, I am still reading this 170 pg book and looking at its pictures.

Michael Palins "North Korea Journal" (2019) is composed of 16 chapters with many accompanying pictures, and has Michael Palins voice with its wry humour on a 15 day journey, describing being mostly waken by "Where are you, Dear General?" a patriotic anthem, as a guided tour, through North Korea (DPRK).

Finished reading Michael Palin's "Erebus". It is a novel about the successful Antartic expedition under Ross  (1841) and the unsuccessful Arctic expedition under Franklin (1845). He tends to focus on the personalities and absurdities of the situation, which thanks to daguerreotying and the naval penchant for journals Palin has been able to research from the records of the time, it is quite detailed. The Arctic expedition under Franklin was significantly covered by the Victorian Press and became a national tragedy. It isn't written as a comedy but Palin does have the advantage of hindsight and so the facts have Palin's voice, so to speak.

October 2019 (13/10/2019)

Also watched the TV series "The Terror" released by the AMC network and based on the Dan Simmons novel. It was emotionally harrowing to watch, but managed to binge watch it over several days (when I was in the mood, and man, that mood was dark). I liked its attention to detail and having read Michael Palins "Erebus : The Story of a Ship" I certainly got more out of it. There are significant fantastical aspects to it that when watching the TV series, seemed to me symbolic features of a narrative, but when reading about the Dan Simmons novel are in the context of the novel supernatural elements. In the context of the TV series these supernatural elements are for the most part low key, various sailors superstitions and so forth, but escalate as the series progresses until the story definitely sheds its grounding in the researched history of the Franklin Expedition, while still conveying the sense of organised Victorian Naval explorers in a stark Artic survival situation.

Peter Ackroyds (2018) The History of England : Volume 5, "Dominion"

Reading  Peter Ackroyds (2018) The History of England : Volume 5, "Dominion" as a way to pick up the thread where Mike Rappaports " Rebel Cities : Paris, London & New York in the Age of Revolution " (2017) ends.

The French Revolution left its mark on reform and radical movements within Britain during the early half of the 18th century. In March 1815, a Corn Law was enacted, prohibiting the import of foreign Corn until the domestic product reached 80 shillings per bushel, it was enacted at the behest of wealthy land owners and did not reflect an adequate understanding of economics and the price of Corn overshot, it was protested in legislation and riots in the streets of London in the 1830s & 1840s. It took the the Irish Potato Famine, which can be likened to a genocide and adoption of a free trade ideology to suspend and repeal the Corn Laws in November 1845 by Robert Peel. It cost Robert Peel his career but once through any remaining talk of revolution according to the French model was put aside. Reform and the liberties that we take for granted were gained during this period and were generally opposed by the landed gentry. The terms we use to describe eras of time are problematic, they mean different things to us than to the people described. The people we describe as "the Victorians" started to call themselves Victorian around 1851 with the Great Exhibition, as the name suggests, an exhibition of technology and art to show the British Empire's material progress, it was a kind of looking glass, allowing them to see their difference from the past, Victorian meant progress in natural philosophy, technology and morality, the term scientist was first used in 1833, an adaptation from the word artist. It was describing an awareness of something new and probably meant something similar to the term "modern". Revolution along the French model was not going to happen because the middle class concerns were addressed, they were "in times when reform bills, steam boats, rail roads, penny postage and free trade, to say nothing of the ratification of civil and religious liberties have been possible facts" (147 : 2017). It is significant to remember how quickly the radical utopian ideological factions of the French Revolution became subsumed by the emerging professional middle class, Robsperrie's faction managed to send the radical Herbertists to the guillotine and the Jacobins, for all their use of capital punishment as a means to maintain a constant state of revolution did, compared to the Herbertists represent a less radical government. At least this is how the histories read anyway.

The initial attempt by the French to form a constitutional monarchy with Louis XVI as represented by the Legislative Assembly was viewed with sympathetically, after all, Britain had already gone through its "Glorious Revolution of 1688" and came out with a Parlimentary system, but with the breakdown of diplomatic relations and the bloodthirsty radicalism of the Convention the government of William Pit and the National Convention were at war. Indigenous British attempts at reform became unpatriotic.

The authorities tolerated Thomas Paine's Rights of Man in 1791 which was surprising given the role his book Common Sense (1776) played in inspiring the American Revolution. The Rights of Man  became a best seller but with the publication of part 2 in May 1792,  Louis XVI had been executed in September 1971, the reaction of conservatives was more pronounced. A royal proclamation against seditious  writings was issued on the 21 of May 1792, which held that loyal subjects were to resist subversion and magistrates were to uncover all who wrote, published and distributed seditious works (304 : 2017). Consequently Thomas Paine fled to France on the 14 of September 1792, to be welcomed by Girondists and elected into the National Convention, which had its own subsequent political consequences as the Jacobins gained ascendancy.

By the 6th of December 1792 a loyalist organization called the "Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property Against Republicans and Levellers" had been endorsed by the Lord mayor of London and associated livery companies. It had been established by John Reeves (306 : 2017) and with the endorsement of the authorities had spread into taverns and overtime became a nation wide network, disseminating antiradical propaganda including Hannah Mores work Village Politics (1792), a journal that appealed to peoples religious attachments and ideas of Britishness (309 : 2017).

Reform became a reality in Britain during the 1830s and 1840s, it was a back and forth process, Tories such as Robert Peel became reformers and Whigs sometimes opposed reform till in the end the terms became meaningless, there were factions and from the 1870s people started using the terms conservative and liberal. Peter Ackroyds (2018) The History of England : Volume 5, "Dominion" covers the period from the end of the Regency to the end of the Victorian period, starting with the Tory government of Lord Liverpool with George IV as monarch in 1815 to the end of the Victorian era, January 1901 with the death of Queen Victoria and in power a Conservative government lead by Robert Gascoyne-Cecil. It is a time where government was done by "pen & ink" (115 : 2018) and the names of the elite and powerful  are etched on the maps of the English Commonwealth. Ackroyd manages to impart some personality to these figures while giving a sense of the volatility of the cabinets formed. Examples of esteemed personages of this period include Arthur Wellesley who had a Tory political career post Field Marshal at the Battle of Waterloo (1815) or Viscount Palmerston who as a Whig/ Liberal influenced British foreign policy, was involved in ending the Crimean War, oversaw the execution of gunboat diplomacy in the Second Opium War, passed the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 and is considered the first Liberal Prime Minister from 1859. The books last chapter describes the significance of Oscar Wilde, the author of those occasional risque plays and books that one would find in university libraries and the book examines the virtues and hypocrisies of the period. The book ends on a small sombre page describing the death of Queen Victoria (1901) and the passing of an age.

Review of Max Hastings "Vietnam : An Epic Tragedy 1945 - 1975"

October 2018.(22/10/2018)

Finished Reading Max Hastings "Vietnam : An Epic Tragedy 1945 - 1975". The Cold War was a curious time, an interventionist conflict between superpowers, I was a kid during its last decade and had internalized its assumptions and world view. In the 1960's the American political leaders and their advisers had the recent experience of the Korean War (1950 - 1953) and many had personal experience in World War II and these experiences guided their thinking and presented scenarios that they wanted to avoid. The Korean War had demonstrated the strategic effectiveness of Communist China's military and an initial comparative operational weaknesses in the American military and established the idea of a limited war to the United States military, government and people. These terms reflect a very reasonable fear concerning the use of  nuclear arms in military conflict, which during the Cold War period would have been part of the escalation in a conventional war between the superpowers. It was a spectre. Thus alternative solutions for issues were sought to avoid outright conventional war, yet the tools of state remained the various branches of the military and the intelligence services. Also I am not that sure to what degree things are better now. Feel free to explain that to me, I guess. Generally the CIA, as a intelligence service, had a better track record for actual intelligence than branches of the military but with the benefit of hind sight, was involved in projects and solutions that you only get with a faith in the ideal of modernity and "the American Way", but to really understand something like that you would have to have lived it, I guess. Symptoms of this search and faith lead to John F Kennedy in the 1960's authorizing the Bay of Pigs and an escalating involvement in Vietnam. Involvement in Vietnam was argued as a way of avoiding a conventional war. Avoiding outright conventional war with China was one of the reasons why the United States and its allies did not conduct ground operations in North Vietnam and chose instead to engage in strategic bombing. A decision Max Hastings discusses as having unintended consequences that included stablising the Hanoi regime through increased militarization of North Vietnamese society and  built increased active defenses such as MIG fighters and Soviet trained SAM installations. This logic was discussed in the highest echelons of power with various degrees of sincerity and used to garner support for the "police action" to the general American public. The book refers to presidential discussions from Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson to Robert Nixon with advisors such as Robert McNamara which established the official aims of American involvement in Vietnam. The book also provides a number of narratives at various levels of involvement, the experience of Soviet SAM advisor crews in North Vietnam is particularly interesting, with geopolitical maps, tactical maps and photos of events of the time, including the classic images that have come to represent America and its allies involvement in the Vietnam War 1961 to 1975 (2nd Indochine War).

There are a number of themes Hastings discusses with the increasing involvement of American military advisers under John  F Kennedy's (1961 - 1963 November) and Lyndon Johnson's (1963 to 1969) presidencies and continuing involvement and withdrawal under Nixon (1969 to 1974) which has been covered by a considerable amount of literature. The bulk of the books argument is practically a classical statement about the failure of American policy of "Vietnamisation" due to a lack of credibility of the governments backed by the American military. The books point of difference from the mass of other literature on the subject is that it discusses the dominant figures in North Vietnam such as  Ho Chi Min and Le Duan and argues that the lack of transparency and increased control of information in Communist Vietnam obscures the misuse of the Vietcong by the North Vietnamese military and the cost of victory to the  Vietnamese people. The society that was formed after the war was not the utopia they had hoped for although there is a quote that "any dirty peace is better than a war". Hastings conjectures that the values represented by the idea of a communist society were more comparable to the  Buddhist village in an agricultural setting and familial networks of traditional Vietnamese society, as compared to the ideals of an modern urbanised American democracy. This is a satisfying statement that can be made only in hindsight, and anyway, the Diem government wasn't too thrilled with voting when it was apparent that most of the South Vietnamese would vote for a communist government. But even that conjecture is not without apriori criticism after all the Korean War (1950 - 1953) produced a military junta that increasingly adopted democratic features, South Korea, referring to South Korea here, if there are any misunderstandings. Experience is useful to operational success, the Americans were not going to repeat the mistake of Dien Bien Phu (1954), helicopters were extremely mobile and facilitated rapid deployment and concentration of artillery, the Americans could "leapfrog" over valleys. So you know, there was evidence they had learned some things. One of the themes running through the book was that the failure of the American military in Vietnam was to not associate itself with a credible political and social order, believing operational success would compensate for lack of political credibility. The books description of the assassination of Diem and the Tonkin incident were quite frank compared to other sources. There was a horrible symmetry to the assassination of Diem and then Kennedy weeks later in 1963. To his credit Kennedy rescinded the order but it got carried out anyway. Vietnam cost America a lot in terms of its moral and political  leadership during the Cold War. Then again.

As a New Zealander, thus not an American, what I find interesting, and it appeals to my luke warm  patriotism, is that the book describes the involvement of the Australian and New Zealand governments in the Vietnam War. At the peak of ANZAC involvement (1969) there were 8000 Australian and 543 New Zealand military personnel in Phouc Thy province, which comprised 3 battalions, support staff and special forces units. Max Hastings describes in big strokes the successes and failures of ANZAC operations. Apparently they were quiet, professional, with an emphasis on field craft and did not tend to shoot bystanders (460 : 2018), which I find comforting. There were cultural differences in terms of operational differences and the nature of the successes and failures were interesting. Hastings considers whether or not, if the American forces had adopted ANZAC practices, would this have altered the outcome of the Vietnam War. His conclusion is that the issue wasn't operational, it was the belief that operational success could compensate for a lack of credibility of the South Vietnamese government in the eyes of its people that lead to failure of the overall strategic goals. This is described as the failure of "Vietnamization" and there is a Rodney Dangerfield screwball comedy from the 1980's that features a scene with Sam Kinison that frankly summarizes this issue. In the context of the movie, what it is doing is a little complex, as humour tends to be, it tends to scour issues in the subconscious, some kind of discourse analysis could be done here, preferably by someone else.

The book vaguely complements the TV documentary series The Vietnam War, which is available on line. It is interesting the points of difference, the book specifically has more tactical information and goes out of its way to feature narratives from both American and South Vietnam sources but also North Vietnamese, British spies in Hanoi, Russian and Chinese Advisors. The TV documentary presents the cities, environment and historical figures in detail "A picture is worth a thousand words" but is light on the tactics and the political processes behind the decisions made, but it does have a great soundtrack from music of the era.

December 2018 (27/12/18)

One of the points of this book was the lack of transparency and mendacity of both the American and North Vietnamese governments, where the Vietcong  despite the brutality of their methods fought for a more credible government. Currently there is an article in "Foreign Policy" dated September 2018 by Ashley Jackson that describes the Taliban becoming a more credible government in Afghanistan, the article is called "The Talbians Fight for Hearts and Minds" (2018). What do I actually think? Well I know I don't know, having read about the process of the unification of Vietnam under the North Vietnamese government, which in the 1970's I know I would not have supported with my 2018 values, but if I was a guy in the 1970's and didn't know any better I probably would have. If Jane Fonda told me to support North Vietnam then I probably would have. Fortunately I am a sophisticated pseudo intellectual 2018 guy so now I would only believe what Pamela Anderson tells me instead. God help me, I don't think I am particularly smart..