Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items matching "Royal" in title, tags, annotations or url

Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url

Sort By: Relevance | Date Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
27More

The Art of Kingship: Louis XIV, A Reconsideration | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...ship-louis-xiv-reconsideration Louis XIV France Absolute Monarch
shared by manhefnawi on 20 May 18 - No Cached
  • On June 7th, 1654, Louis XIV was crowned in the traditional manner at the cathedral of Reims
  • It was indeed one of the least significant events in the whole reign of Loins XIV
  • The minority had ended at rather an early age, but kings of France were not as ordinary men, in that, among other things, they had the capacity of coming of age prematurely
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • For ten years after he had come of age Louis XIV left the government in the hands of Mazarin, apparently willingly
  • Louis XIV would as soon have neglected his Council as his grand couvert, when he dined in public
  • Louis never forgot the flight from Paris or the humiliations inflicted on his childhood by the Fronde. Saint-Simon said that he often spoke of those times with bitterness, even telling how he was so neglected that one evening he had been pulled dripping out of the fountain in the Palais Royal, where he had fallen and been left to lie. The lesson he drew from the Fronde was that the king must be absolute
  • The same standards were demanded from those who surrounded the King
  • A population of some twenty millions, when England or Spain had under five and the largest German states barely one or two millions, was, given able generals and domestic unity, a guarantee of military success. But such a cautious monarch as Louis did not fling himself into a course of foreign conquest without preparation
  • Given this, and a King like Louis XIV to play the central role, it became the scene of something like a perpetual ballet performed before an audience of twenty millions
  • An Italian visitor compared Louis XIV leaving his chateau, surrounded by body-guards, carriages, horses, courtiers, valets, to the Queen bee when she takes flight into the fields with her swarm
  • The Queen died about this time; and Louis, who by now was wanting to settle down, married Mme Scarron secretly
  • Versailles, court, etiquette, mistresses, were all part of the ornamental framework of monarchy, but Louis XIV was no mere playboy king. His pride was in his mastery of what he called the metier de roi, and it is important to note what this meant, because it has sometimes been given too extensive an interpretation
  • It was natural that Louis XIV should devote his attention above all to foreign affairs, but it was with his characteristic moderation and sense of the possible that he began his career of conquest
  • A king was in those days still primarily a great landowner and his first aim was to add to the extent of the lands possessed by his dynasty. In this sense the state was identified with the monarch and this was the meaning of I’Etat e’est moi. Louis XIV put the position quite clearly himself: “In working for the state, the monarch is working for himself; the good of the one is the glory of the other; when the former is happy, noble and powerful, he who has brought this about is glorious.
  • The devastating invasion of a German state was calculated to do so, and in this sense it succeeded, but only at a price
  • Under Louis XIV the higher nobility were domesticated at Court and ceased to be even a nuisance. Robbed of their leadership, the lesser nobles and gentry—of course they did not come to Versailles, as is sometimes implied, there would not have been standing room if they had—could safely be left to rot in idleness in their chateaux and manor-houses. With one exception Louis had no minister of noble birth throughout his reign
  • Under Louis XIV the royal bureaucracy, which had been so many centuries in the growing, reached its apogee
  • The government of France was now a complete bureaucracy and Louis XIV the grand bureaucrat.
  • If the Catholics were loyal, the Huguenots were not less so. It almost seemed as if there were a competition which religion could elevate the King on a higher altar
  • Louis XIV did not have to initiate the persecution of the Huguenots
  • In the cause of religion Louis XIV had lost, as Sorel put it, more than he could have gained by the most victorious war or than could have been demanded by his enemies as the price of the most disastrous peace
  • He had seen a whole generation of his subjects pass away. Within a few months, in 1711, his son, his grandson and his elder great-grandson all died, leaving only a weak baby to carry on the Bourbon dynasty
  • The last of the agreements was signed in November 1715, but the King of France had died at Versailles on September 1st, at the age of seventy-seven and in the fifty-sixth year of his personal rule
  • The sun king had gone down not in splendour but amid clouds of foreign defeat and domestic distress, to be succeeded, against his will and testament, not by his bastard Maine, whom he loved, but by Philip of Orleans, whom he hated. The Regent was to try to put the clock back, to undo the work of the great monarch in every field. In foreign policy, religion, government, finance, the Regency was an attempt at revolution from above
  • Three-quarters of a century after Louis XIV had died the monarchy which had reached its height, and been given its final majestic proportions under him, came crashing down in ruins; and in this case it is just to tax the architect with ill-matched aims
  • Every time the King creates an office, it was said, God creates a fool to buy it. In fact, the purchasers were not quite so foolish as the saying suggests
  • Finally, it must be said that Louis XIV had not even successfully completed his especial task of securing the emancipation of the monarchy from the danger of a future Fronde. He had bound the noblesse to the Crown, but he had equally bound the Crown to the privileged orders. If Louis XIV was the master of his Court, his successors were to be the dependants of their own courtiers. Parlements, provincial estates still remained; and, powerless under a strong king, they were to be a menace under weak ones. The wheel came full circle in 1787 with the révolte nobiliaire, when the last Fronde began the revolution against Louis XVI, and the privileged orders destroyed the absolute monarchy, though in doing so they also destroyed themselves
10More

The Ottoman Empire: Succession, Deposition and Fratricide | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...sion-deposition-and-fratricide Ottoman Empire
shared by manhefnawi on 28 May 18 - No Cached
  • As with any ruling dynasty, the requirement that the reigning sultan produce an heir was central to succession
  • judicial royal fratricide became an accepted method of securing the Ottoman throne until its abolition in the 17th century by Ahmed I
  • The eventual abolition of fratricide came about following widespread public disapproval over the accession of Mehmed III to the throne
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Ahmed I did go on to produce sons, but, at his death in 1617, his eldest was only 13 years old. This prompted the imperial council to allow Mustafa, then aged 25, to ascend the throne as Mustafa I, although he would be deposed and re-enthroned several times throughout his life
  • a key turning point in the power structures of the Ottoman Empire
  • The introduction of the ‘cage’ and the survival of a number of other viable candidates for the throne meant the sultan faced a greater danger of depositions and coups by interested individuals or parties seeking to wield power.
  • That Osman II announced his intention to undertake the pilgrimage immediately after returning to Istanbul from Edirne provoked fears that he might become an absentee monarch, who might be seeking to return the capital to its original site – Edirne
  • It is a truth universally acknowledged that royal depositions must, sooner or later, be in want of a regicide. The first in the history of the Ottoman Empire occurred on Friday 20 May 1622, with the death of Osman II, son of Ahmed I. Known as Osman the Young, he had ascended the throne in 1618 at the age of 14, following the coup that deposed Mustafa I, his uncle, for the first time. In 1622, aged 17, he had still not succeeded in legitimising himself as a conqueror of territory and so sought to cultivate the role of a pious sultan instead
  • The dynasty continued with variable succession methods until the end of the sultanate, with Mehmed VI, who ruled from 1918 until 1922. Following the official declaration and recognition of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Mehmed VI went into exile
  • the title of Head of the House of Osman is still passed down and used today
9More

France - France in the early 17th century | Britannica.com - 0 views

www.britannica.com/...ance-in-the-early-17th-century Henry IV Strengthens the Monarchy
shared by manhefnawi on 03 Jun 18 - No Cached
  • The restoration of royal authority was not, of course, simply a matter of adjusting theories of kingship; there was a clear practical reason for Henry’s success. The country had tottered on the brink of disintegration for three decades. By the time of Henry’s succession, it was generally recognized that only a strong personality, independent of faction, could guarantee the unity of the state, even though unity meant religious toleration for the Protestant minority. In the Edict of Nantes (April 13, 1598) Henry guaranteed the Huguenots freedom of conscience and the right to practice their religion publicly in certain prescribed areas of the country.
  • Although the problem of religion was not finally settled by the Edict of Nantes, Henry did succeed in effecting an extended truce during which he could apply himself to the task of restoring the royal position
  • The chief need of the monarchy was to improve the financial situation, parlous since the days of Henry II’s wars and aggravated by the subsequent internecine conflict.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Sully was not an original financial thinker. He undertook no sweeping changes, contenting himself with making the existing system work, for example, by shifting the emphasis from direct to indirect taxation. He succeeded in building both an annual surplus and substantial reserves.
  • the introduction in 1604 of a new tax, the paulette, named after the financier Charles Paulet, which enabled officiers (officeholders) to assure the heritability of their offices by paying one-sixtieth of the purchase price each year.
  • Henry IV believed in direct state intervention, and he took steps to fix wages and to prohibit strikes and illegal combinations of workmen. Henry’s policies bore fruit especially in the textile industries, where the production of luxury silk goods and woolen and linen cloth greatly increased. Henry also took the initiative in making commercial treaties with Spain and England, thereby increasing the volume of French trade and stimulating the export of grain, cattle, and wine.
  • he was able to prevent them from once more dividing his kingdom.
  • He did have to counter a conspiracy led by one of his own marshals, Charles de Gontaut, baron et duc de Biron, who plotted with the king of Spain and almost succeeded in raising southwestern France in revolt. Henry, however, had Biron arrested and executed in 1602; this strong action against an old friend and powerful enemy had the effect of subduing the political rising and strengthening Henry’s own authority.
  • When Henry IV was assassinated by François Ravaillac, a Catholic fanatic, in May 1610, he had gone a long way toward restoring the monarchy to a position of authority similar to that held by Francis I and Henry II and had reunified a state greatly threatened at his accession from both within and without.
3More

Piers Morgan Leaves 'Good Morning Britain' After Attacks on Meghan - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ghan-good-morning-britain.html
shared by mattrenz16 on 10 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Piers Morgan, who drew intense scorn in Britain for his upbraiding of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, since her bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey, resigned on Tuesday as an anchor for ITV news after storming off the set of the network’s morning show.
  • The host’s hasty departure from “Good Morning Britain” punctuated a turbulent 24 hours for Mr. Morgan, who inflamed viewers on Monday when he cast doubts about Meghan’s account to Ms. Winfrey that members of the royal household had discouraged her from seeking mental health treatment when she confided in them that she had had thoughts of suicide.
  • “If that is true, A, that person, if they’re still there, they should be fired,” he said, “and, B, the royal family have serious questions to be answered about how they handled it.”
6More

Opinion: Public sympathy is with the Queen. But the British monarchy may need more than... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html Britain Monarchy Culture
shared by lmunch on 30 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • I remembered that fan as I watched mourners arrive at Buckingham Palace to lay flowers for Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, whose death was announced Friday. My thoughts were also with the new widow whose quiet sorrow already dominated global news. The grief that attaches to public figures is no less real for distance. Public lives provide markers and milestones for others, and few more so than the Queen and her consort, who have spent more than seven decades in the public eye.
  • The Queen has always modeled one response to this situation -- seen, but rarely heard, her feelings and opinions jealously guarded. Shortly she is to face TV cameras to talk about the worst thing that has ever happened to her. There is a poignancy to this most reserved of women being forced to grieve in public. There might also be, in sharply polarized responses to the unfurling pageantry, an intimation of mortality for the constitutional monarchy she has headed for 69 years.
  • The monarchy is the ultimate exclusive club, the sovereign born to reign over subjects, not citizens, hardly the most obvious of qualifications for performing the key role of a head of state: to unify. The Queen has nevertheless largely succeeded in this function, popular and, in decade after decade and poll after poll, trusted, rarely faltering but for a few famous missteps, her delays in leading public mourning for the dead after a mining disaster in Aberfan, Wales and, later, for her daughter-in-law Diana.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Although the heir to the throne will never match the popular appeal of his mother, I imagined that public sympathy for the personal loss that must precede his coronation would tide him over a reign that, at his age, would be transitional, an interlude before the ascendancy of a glossier generation.
  • The one-two punch of revelations about Prince Andrew's profound involvement with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the fracturing of the idea that the royals would easily absorb Meghan Markle into their ranks further rewrote the narrative and highlighted, too, a new frailty to an institution that could neither effectively manage its media operations nor its problematic family members.
  • For the first time, I wonder if I will live to witness the end of the monarchy. On the other hand, if the past year has taught me anything, it is that lives are more fragile than institutions. The Queen's husband and mine are gone forever. They did once meet, at that state banquet. As Andy moved up the receiving line behind members of the Mexican delegation, Prince Philip spotted him and, noting his bleached hair, pale skin and green eyes, exclaimed "thank heavens, one of ours."
10More

Opinion | Tina Brown: Prince Philip Walked Two Paces Behind the Queen - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...prince-philip-dead.html history opinion
shared by aleija on 09 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • In 1953, in the rustling, ermined silence of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey, the 31-year-old Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, removed his own coronet, knelt at the feet of the young woman he wed six years before, and swore an oath of allegiance. “I, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, do become your liege man of life and limb and of earthly worship … so help me God.”
  • That Philip kept that oath for the next 68 years is a miracle not only of the modern monarchy but also of modern matrimony.
  • Philip was the unsettling definition of a full-on alpha male: devastatingly handsome, vigorously self-assured, impatient with fools — and not just fools.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • This was no contrived union, like the disastrous marriage of Charles and Diana. It was a love match from the start. The queen had been crazy about him since 1939, when she was 13 and Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, an 18-year-old Navy officer cadet, squired her around the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth.
  • Surrounded by excruciating formality, she could always depend on him to make her laugh. His gift to her was the shared secret that the formalities were both utterly absurd and absolutely necessary. “She knew she would always get an honest answer from him,”
  • Philip may have been related to half the crowned heads of Europe, but his family had been booted into exile, and he was the penniless prince of nowhere.
  • The shy, observant Princess Elizabeth was undaunted. She saw in Philip the unflinching character who would be what she would call on their 50th anniversary “my strength and stay all these years.” The two were bonded by a sense of duty and a desire to serve that was framed by the war.
  • In time, he fell in love with her, he told her in a 1946 letter quoted in Philip Eade’s biography, “completely and unreservedly.” When he proposed to her seven years later at Balmoral, neither her father, the king, nor the queen mother thought he was a safe bet.
  • In return, she provided Philip with an emotional safe place his childhood lacked. Though his eye was rumored to rove, his devotion to the queen cannot be questioned. He completed more than 22,000 royal engagements on his own and accompanied the queen on all of her overseas tours (“Don’t jostle the queen!” he would sometimes bark if the press got too close.)
  • The key to that was to avoid making him feel unmanned. There was a difficult passage in the early years, when he learned that his children would take the dynastic Windsor name, not his own. And there were few models then for how to build a marriage in which the balance of power was so entirely weighted toward a wife, unless you count Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
6More

Naruhito: Japan's emperor formally proclaims enthronement in centuries-old ceremony - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html culture history
shared by anniina03 on 24 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Japan's Emperor Naruhito has officially proclaimed his enthronement, in a ritual-bound, centuries-old ceremony attended by more than a hundred dignitaries from around the world.
  • The head of state began his reign in May, after his father, Akihito, became the first emperor to abdicate in 200 years. But on Tuesday, Naruhito, 59, announced his change in status to the world, in an elaborate series of rituals known as "Sokui no Rei"
  • Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stood before Naruhito's throne, and read a speech. He then bowed deeply and yelled "Long live the emperor!" As Naruhito ascended the throne, boxes were placed next to him that are believed to contain a sword and ancient jewel that, according to legend, date back to the mythical forefather of Japan's first emperor, Jimmu, who ruled almost 2,700 years ago. Along with a fabled octagonal mirror, they form Japan's royal regalia, or the Three Sacred Treasures. The sword and the jewel are so sacred that they've never been seen in public.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The high-profile occasion comes as Japan reels from Typhoon Hagibis -- one of the strongest storms to hit the country in years. The typhoon left dozens dead and caused extensive damage after it smashed into the country earlier this month.The devastation prompted the palace to postpone a 4.6-kilometer (2.9-mile) public parade from the Imperial Palace to Akasaka Palace until November.
  • On Friday, the government announced that about 550,000 petty criminals will be pardoned to mark the emperor's enthronement.
  • Unlike other monarchs, Naruhito is a symbol of the state rather than the head of state, and the Japanese emperor wields no political power. .m-infographic--1556606459996 { background: url(//cdn.cnn.com/cnn/.e/interactive/html5-video-media/2019/04/30/Japan_Imperial_family_2019_new_smallx2.png) no-repeat 0 0 transparent; margin-bottom: 30px; padding-top: 233.33333333333334%; width: 100%; -moz-background-size: cover; -o-background-size: cover; -webkit-background-size: cover; background-size: cover; } @media (min-width: 640px) { .m-infographic--1556606459996{ background-image: url(//cdn.cnn.com/cnn/.e/interactive/html5-video-media/2019/04/30/Japan_Imperial_family_2019_new_medium.png); padding-top: 59.13978494623656%; } } @media (min-width: 1120px) { .m-infographic--1556606459996{ background-image: url(//cdn.cnn.com/cnn/.e/interactive/html5-video-media/2019/04/30/Japan_Imperial_family_2019_new_medium.png); padding-top: 59.13978494623656%; } }
10More

Palace of Versailles: Facts & History | Live Science - 0 views

www.livescience.com/-versailles-facts-history.html
shared by magnanma on 27 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Located about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southwest of Paris, the palace is beside the settlement of Versailles. The town was little more than a hamlet before becoming the seat of royal power. By the time of the French Revolution, it had a population of more than 60,000 people, making it one of the largest urban centers in France.
  • France's kings were first attracted to Versailles because of the area's prolific game. Louis XIII, who lived 1601-1643, bought up land, built a chateau and went on hunting trips.
  • The chateau Louis XIII built was little more than a hunting lodge having enough space to house the king and a small entourage. It was his successor, Louis XIV (1638-1715), the "Sun King," a ruler who chose the sun as his emblem and believed in centralized government with the king at its center, who would radically transform Versailles making it the seat of France's government by the time of his death.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Spawforth notes that the palace contained about 350 living units varying in size, from multi-room apartments to spaces about the size of an alcove. The size and location of the room a person got depended on their rank and standing with the king. While the crown prince (known as the dauphin) got a sprawling apartment on the ground floor, a servant may have nothing more than a space in an attic or a makeshift room behind a staircase.
  • Scholars have suggested a number of factors that led him to build a great palace complex at Versailles and move the French government there. It's been noted that by keeping the king's residence some distance from Paris, it offered him protection from any civil unrest going on in the city. It also forced the nobles to travel to Versailles and seek lodging in the palace, something that impeded their ability to build up regional power bases that could potentially challenge the king.
  • A series of gardens, created in a formal style, stood to the west of the palace (one of them today is in the shape of a star) and contained sculptures as well as the pressurized fountains capable of launching water high into the air. The formality and grandeur of the gardens symbolized Louis XIV's absolute power, even over nature
  • Despite the richness of the palace, the kings had to make do with makeshift theaters up until 1768 when Louis XV allowed the building of the royal opera. It contained a mechanism that allowed the orchestra level to be raised to the stage allowing it to be used for dancing and banqueting. Spawforth notes that the opera required 3,000 candles to be burned for opening night and was rarely used due to its cost and the poor shape of France's finances.
  • After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette would be stripped of power, brought to Paris and ultimately beheaded. The palace fell under the control of the new republican government.Many of its furnishings were sold to help pay for the subsequent Revolutionary Wars. When Napoleon came to power, he had an apartment created for himself in the Grand Trianon, complete with a map room.
  • In 1871, after France had lost a war against Prussia, Kaiser Wilhelm I was proclaimed Emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors, adding an extra layer of humiliation to the French defeat. For several years after this defeat, the situation in France was so bad that its Chamber of Deputies and Senate opted to meet at Versailles, rather than Paris, for reasons of safety.
  • Today, Versailles is one of the most-visited sites in France. Visitors are drawn to its architectural grandeur, the stunning water features (concerts are often played in the gardens during the summer) and its sense of history. 
7More

Signs Get Snatched, Kicked, Burned as Political Battle Reaches the Front Lawn - The New... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...political-sign-wars.html trump US election biden
shared by tsainten on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Americans are lining up against one another, sometimes right in their own front yards.
  • Americans are bubbling over with tension and dread. They have endured a long, combative campaign in the midst of a pandemic and a complicated voting process with an uncertain outcome.
  • A lack of civility and decorum. A growing sense of chaos.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Skirmishes over yard signs, flags and other expressions of candidate loyalty emerge with regularity every election season, but this year seems more intense.
  • A Trump sign, booby-trapped with hidden razor blades, injured a worker in Michigan who was moving it because it had been placed too close to a roadway, sending him to the hospital to get his bloodied hand stitched up.
  • “Route 22 battle royale,” as described by the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, began innocently enough. On one side of the road, supporters of Mr. Trump turned a former salon into a “Trump Victory Center,” decked out in red, white and blue. Less than half a mile away, volunteers in favor of Mr. Biden staked out ground in a medical office building, complete with a cutout of the former vice president, smiling and wearing a blue face mask.
  • “It feels like a war,” said Michelle McFall, a local Democratic organizer who helped form the grass-roots group for Mr. Biden. “People are holding their ground as they would in battle, and they are strategically planning their actions and counter actions.”
11More

The Lancet's editor: 'The UK's response to coronavirus is the greatest science policy f... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...olicy-failure-for-a-generation response uk pandemic history
shared by Javier E on 14 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • The Covid-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again is a short polemical book, building on a series of excoriating columns Horton has written in the Lancet over the past few months. He lambasts the management of the virus as “the greatest science policy failure for a generation”, attacks the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) for becoming “the public relations wing of a government that had failed its people”, calls out the medical Royal Colleges, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Medical Association (BMA) and Public Health England (PHE) for not reinforcing the World Health Organization’s public health emergency warning back in February, and damns the UK’s response as “slow, complacent and flat-footed”, revealing a “glaringly unprepared” government and a “broken system of obsequious politico-scientific complicity”.
  • As editor of the Lancet, he’s particularly aggrieved that the series of five academic papers the journal published in late January first describing the novel coronavirus in disturbing detail went unheeded. 
  • “In several of the papers they talked about the importance of personal protective equipment,” he reminds me. “And the importance of testing, the importance of avoiding mass gatherings, the importance of considering school closure, the importance of lockdowns. All of the things that have happened in the last three months here, they’re all in those five papers.”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • What he does know, from the published reports of Sage meetings, is that scientists were “trying to be as sensitive to economic issues as they were to health issues”. That, he says, “is a dangerous place to be” because it compromises the ability of the advisory group to protect health.
  • Horton believes this pandemic is a watershed moment in history, an event that is much larger than simply a crisis in health. “Covid-19 has held a mirror up to our society,” he says, “and forced us to look at who really is vulnerable, who really does make society work, who has to literally put their lives on the line while the rest of us are secluded in our houses. We’ve discovered something about ourselves that we may have been conveniently able to hide before but we can’t hide any more. And so the question is what do we do with that knowledge now?”
  • Despite his ill-health, Horton is a boyish-looking 58 who, incredibly, has been editor of the Lancet for a quarter of a century. In that time he’s turned the journal into a major international success, frequently setting the agenda for global health. Last year he received the $100,000 Roux prize for lifetime achievement in population health, being cited as one of the field’s most “committed, articulate, and influential advocates”.
  • The debts refer to Horton’s role in publishing Andrew Wakefield’s discredited paper claiming a link between the MMR vaccination and autism. The panic that ensued led to a significant drop in vaccinations across the world, growth of the anti-vaccination movement, and lethal outbreaks of measles. Although the science was questioned from the beginning, Horton strongly defended Wakefield, whom he knew from their time working together at the Royal Free. It took 12 years before Horton finally retracted the paper, after a General Medical Council inquiry found Wakefield to have been guilty of dishonesty and deception.
  • Horton “made a catastrophic mistake in publishing that article, and that had enormous consequences both in the UK and globally”.
  • the British government and its senior scientific advisers. Horton believes that in order to restore their damaged reputation they need to acknowledge their mistakes. 
  • “I think that’s going to have to start with Sage, the chief scientific officer and the chief medical officer being very clear that the signals were missed from January. And there needs to be an acknowledgment that there was a collusion that took place between scientific and medical advisers and politicians which was in the end damaging to public health.”
  • Horton acknowledges that from the last conversation he had with him, Whitty “thinks that I don’t understand what he’s trying to achieve”. Yet there remains a case to answer about why we took so long to lock down, and why, despite all the warnings first from China and then from Italy, that we seemed to be caught unawares by the speed and lethality of the virus.
10More

FC95: The Age of Louis XIV, the "Sun King" (1643-1715) - The Flow of History - 2 views

www.flowofhistory.com/...FC95 Louis XIV history france
shared by Javier E on 23 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Introduction From 1643 to 1815 France dominated much of Europe's political history and culture.  Foreigners came to France, preferring it to the charms of their own homeland.  Even today, many still consider it the place to visit in Europe and the world.  In the 1600's and 1700's there was a good reason for this dominance: population.  France had 23,000,000 people in a strongly unified state compared to 5,000,000 in Spain and England, and 2,000,000 in the Dutch Republic and the largest of the German states.  This reservoir of humanity first reached for and nearly attained the dominance of Europe under Louis XIV, the "Sun King".
  • Louis' early life and reign (1643-61) Louis was born in 1638 and succeeded his father, Louis XIII, as king in 1643 at the age of five.  Luckily, another able minister and Richelieu's successor, Cardinal Mazarin, continued to run the government.  In 1648, encroachment by the government on the nobles' power, poor harvests, high taxes, and unemployed mercenaries plundering the countryside after the Thirty Years War led to a serious revolt known as the Fronde, named after the slingshot used by French boys.  Louis and the court barely escaped from Paris with their lives.  Although Mazarin and his allies crushed the rebels after five hard years of fighting (1648-53), Louis never forgot the fear and humiliation of having to run from the Parisian mob and fight for his life and throne against the nobles.  This bitter experience would heavily influence Louis' policies when he ruled on his own.
  • Louis XIV may not have said, "I am the state", but he ruled as if he had said it.  Louis was the supreme example of the absolute monarch, and other rulers in Europe could do no better than follow his example.  Although Louis wished to be remembered as a great conqueror, his first decade of active rule was largely taken up with building France's internal strength.  There are two main areas of Louis' rule we will look at here: finances and the army. Louis' finance minister, Jean Baptiste Colbert, was an astute businessman of modest lineage, being the son of a draper.  Colbert's goal was to build France's industries and reduce foreign imports.  This seventeenth century policy where a country tried to export more goods and import more gold and silver was known as mercantilism.  While its purpose was to generate revenue for the king, it also showed the growing power of the emerging nation state.  Colbert declared his intention to reform the whole financial structure of the French state, and he did succeed in reducing the royal debt by cutting down on the number of tax farms he sold and freeing royal lands from mortgage.  Colbert especially concentrated on developing France's economy in three ways.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Versailles Louis' religious faith was largely a superficial one attached to the elaborate ritual of the Catholic mass.  This love of ritual also showed itself in how Louis ran his court at his magnificent palace of Versailles, several miles outside of Paris.  Much of the reason for building Versailles goes back to the Fronde that had driven Louis from Paris as a young boy.  Ever since then, Louis had distrusted the volatile Paris mob and was determined to move the court away from the influence of that city.  Versailles was also the showpiece of Louis' reign, glorifying him as the Sun King with its magnificent halls and gardens.
  • Religion was one aspect of Louis' reign that illustrated the absolute nature of his monarchy quite well.  Louis himself was quite a pious Catholic, learning that trait from his mother.  However, in the spirit of the day, he saw religion as a department of state subordinate to the will of the king.  By the same token, not adhering to the Catholic faith was seen as treason. As a result, Louis gradually restricted the rights of the French Huguenots and finally, in 1685, revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had given them religious freedom since the end of the French Wars of Religion in 1598.  This drove 200,000 Huguenots out of France, depriving it of some of its most skilled labor.  Thus Louis let his political and religious biases ruin a large sector of France's economy.
  • Results of Louis' reign The age of Louis XIV was important to European history for several reasons.  First of all, it saw the triumph of absolutism in France and continental Europe.  Versailles was a glittering symbol and example for other European rulers to follow.  Any number of German and East European monarchs modeled their states and courts after Louis XIV, sometimes to the point of financial ruin.  Second, Louis' wars showed the system of Balance of Power politics working better than ever.  French aggression was contained and the status quo was maintained.  All this had its price, since the larger sizes of the armies and the final replacement of the pike with the musket took European warfare to a new level of destruction.  Finally, Louis' reign definitely established France as the dominant power in Europe.  However, the cost was immense and left his successors a huge debt.  Ironically, the problems caused by Louis XIV's reign would help lead to the French Revolution in 1789 and the spread of democratic principles across Europe and eventually the world.
  • Louis' main goals were to expand France to its "natural borders": the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees.  This, of course, would make him enemies among the Dutch, Germans, Austrians, Spanish, and English.  Therefore, Louis' diplomacy had to clear the way to make sure he did not fight everyone at once.  For this purpose he skillfully used money to neutralize potential enemies (such as Charles II of England in the Secret Treaty of Dover) and extracted favorable terms from stalemate or losing situations.  But Louis could also make some fateful blunders to hurt his cause.  His obsessive hatred of the Dutch dominated his policy too much, as did his own self-confidence and arrogance in trying to publicly humiliate his enemies.  However, this just alarmed Louis' enemies more, especially the Dutch, Austrians, and English, who allied against Louis to preserve the balance of power.
  • Exhaustion on both sides finally led to the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.  Louis' grandson took the throne of Spain and its American empire, but the French and Spanish thrones could not be united under one ruler.  Austria got the Spanish Netherlands to contain French aggression to the north.  Just as the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 had contained Hapsburg aggression, the Treaty of Utrecht contained French expansion.  Two years later Louis XIV was dead, with little to show for his vaunted ambitions as a conqueror except an exhausted economy and dissatisfied populace.
  • Just as Louis's palace at Versailles dominated European culture during the late 1600's and early 1700's, his diplomacy and wars dominated Europeans political history.  As Louis himself put it: "The character of a conqueror is regarded as the noblest and highest of titles."  Interestingly enough, he never led his troops in battle except for overseeing a few sieges from a safe distance.
  • I am the state. — Voltaire, incorrectly quoting Louis XIV
7More

Prince Andrew and Boris Johnson: The U.K. Deals With Two Crises at Once - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nson-prince-andrew-royals.html culture crisis policy
shared by lucieperloff on 14 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • Stoic, dignified and comforting, the queen’s words helped anchor the country during the fretful days that followed — not the first time the monarchy has acted as a stabilizing force for the government during tumultuous events.
  • While these cases are about starkly different issues, they both feature privileged middle-aged men under fire for their behavior, raising age-old questions of class, entitlement and double standards.
  • Commentators said, half in jest, that the legal ruling against Andrew, 61, helped Mr. Johnson, 57, because it deflected attention from his grilling in the House of Commons, where opposition lawmakers accused him of lying and demanded that he resign. But both men are at the mercy of forces largely out of their control.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • What the two cases have in common, critics said, is a lack of accountability on the part of the main actors.
  • With so much at stake, especially in a year in which the queen is celebrating 70 years on the throne, royal watchers speculate that Andrew will seek his own settlement with Ms. Giuffre. Who would pay that settlement, and with what money, are already questions being asked by British newspapers.
  • But that does not mean she is without influence. Legal experts say the monarchy, because of its longevity and constancy, can have a moderating effect on the most extreme forces in politics.
  • If anything, her disciplined adherence to social distancing rules — captured most poignantly when she grieved alone in a choir stall at the funeral of her husband, Prince Philip, last year — is a vivid contrast to the prime minister’s after-work socializing.
2More

Russian Warships Sail Through English Channel - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...ugh-english-channel-1477077173 alliance history
shared by drewmangan1 on 26 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • The U.K. Ministry of Defense said two Royal navy ships, the frigate HMS Richmond and destroyer HMS Duncan, were escorting the Russian ships as they sailed in international waters down the U.K.’s eastern seaboard.
  • U.K. Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Thursday at a defense conference in London that the Russian deployment was, “clearly designed to test the alliance,” adding that the ships would be “marked every step of the way” by British and NATO ships.
3More

Britain's Prince Charles co-authors a book on climate change | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...rs-book-on-climate-change.html prince charles climate change royal UK
shared by ethanmoser on 16 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Britain's Prince Charles co-authors a book on climate change
  • Penguin Books says Prince Charles has co-authored a book on climate change together with an environmentalist and a Cambridge scientist.
  • The book launched Sunday is part of Ladybird book series, which traditionally targeted children but has recently expanded to a broader audience. It uses the original style of a picture book but offers adults "bite-sized understanding on a sometimes challenging subject."
16More

Bernie Sanders's Political Revolution Nears Its End - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...484439 revolution bernie atlantic
shared by proudsa on 26 May 16 - No Cached
  • This is Sanders’s last stand, according to the official narrative of the corrupt corporate media, and if there is anything we have learned in the past year, it is the awesome power of the official narrative—the self-reinforcing drumbeat that dictates everything.
  • Sanders continued: “I believe that if we win here in California, and if we win the other five states that are voting on June 7, we’re going to go marching to the Democratic convention with a hell of a lot of momentum. I believe that if we do well here in California, we’ll march in with momentum and we’ll march out with the Democratic nomination!”
  • Sanders and his people have their own sets of rules. All you have to do is unskew the delegate counts, they explain, take out the superdelegates, imagine they all vote for Sanders, imagine certain primaries had been conducted according to different rules.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The Bernie-or-Bust-ers tend to be young, male, and white; few describe themselves as Democrats, and many are new to voting. Women, people of color, and Democrats seem more open to Clinton.
  • They’re both challenging the system. We are people who don’t believe in the system! We want to make a new system where people take care of each other.”
  • The Sanders movement has become impervious to reality. Some have even called into question the nature of reality itself: “Bernie Sanders’ ‘political revolution’ is political only inasmuch as thought is political,” a self-described “metamodernist creative writer”
  • Sanders has repeatedly said he will not play the spoiler—by running as an independent or backing a third-party candidate such as Stein. He says he will do everything in his power to defeat Trump.
  • A spate of recent polls have shown Clinton tied with or slightly trailing Trump in November matchups, the apparent effect of a Republican Party that has unified and a Democratic Party that remains fractured.
  • Many Sanders supporters told me they had once liked Clinton, but over the course of the primary they have come to dislike and distrust her.
  • It seems fitting that this potentially final battle royale should take place in California, a big, liberal state populated by all the various Democratic tribes: the kombucha-sipping hipsters of San Francisco; the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley; the limousine liberals of Hollywood; the large black and Latino populations.
  • A poll of the state conducted earlier this month gave Clinton an 18-point lead over Sanders, but in a new poll released Thursday, that had narrowed to just two points.
  • This week, he was given five slots on the Democratic platform committee, which will allow him to influence what the party stands for—presumably an important goal.
  • “I was very loving toward Bernie Sanders until about a week ago, but now he’s working to elect Trump,” said Kathy Katz, 73, of Temecula. “We’re all way more liberal than the Democratic Party, but some of us realize you can’t win an election that way!”
  • Clinton, for her part, has taken to pretending Sanders does not exist. In her speech, she referred only to Trump, whose candidacy, she said, “may have started out as entertaining, but now it’s really, really concerning.” She added, “We have a bully pulpit in the White House—that doesn’t mean we want a bully in the White House!”
  • Sanders was introduced by a blind Filipino delegate and a gay actress who spoke passionately in favor of transgender rights and compared Sanders to a unicorn, because “he seems too good to be true.”
  • proudsa on 26 May 16
     
    "This Is How a Revolution Ends" - keep in mind the revolutions we have studied throughout the year (notice the differences and similarities)
11More

Thailand's thoughtcrime arrests are getting dangerously bizarre - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...85163714 Thailand Arrests Crime Rights
shared by maddieireland334 on 31 May 16 - No Cached
  • Thailand is now entering its third year under military dictatorship, a reign established when generals seized power from an elected government on May 22, 2014.
  • The army has vowed to use its sweeping powers to heal a nation torn by class resentment.
  • When the army seized power two years ago, it justified its takeover by promising a wave of grand reforms. Thailand, the generals said, would become a nation purged of corruption and of the recurring, sometimes bloody street protests that have convulsed the political order for nearly a decade
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Indeed, Thailand has endured 13 successful coups since 1932, the last year in which the nation (then called Siam) was directly ruled by monarchs.
  • This can involve several days of interrogation and re-education at an army camp. Failure to attend is a crime. “The United States has the Patriot Act to deal with the situation after 9/11,” Gen. Werachon said. “This is the same.”
  • Even less fortunate are those accused of Thailand’s most serious speech-related crime: disrespecting the royal family
  • But disrespect toward the king, who is now 88 and in ailing health, is hardly common. He is widely revered and his image is ubiquitous — on banknotes, gilded street portraits and glowing portrayals on television.
  • Though corruption persists and the economy is struggling, few are eager to risk confronting a military with near-absolute power.
  • A poll released six months ago by Thailand’s statistics office, which is beholden to the military government, dubiously suggests that 99% of Thais are happy under the junta.
  • “They made it clear from day one that they would not tolerate even the slightest dissent,” Sunai said. “Now these measures send a very clear signal that Thailand is falling deeper and deeper into military dictatorship.”
  • The public will vote on the junta’s favored constitution in August. But ahead of the referendum, debate is stifled. The penalty for those found guilty of “influencing a voter”? Up to 10 years in prison.
15More

China to send nuclear-armed submarines into Pacific amid tensions with US | World news ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...med-submarines-into-pacific-us china pacific world world news
shared by redavistinnell on 26 May 16 - No Cached
  • China to send nuclear-armed submarines into Pacific amid tensions with US
  • The Chinese military is poised to send submarines armed with nuclear missiles into the Pacific Ocean for the first time, arguing that new US weapons systems have so undermined Beijing’s existing deterrent force that it has been left with no alternative.
  • They point to plans unveiled in March to station the US Thaad anti-ballistic system in South Korea, and the development of hypersonic glide missiles potentially capable of hitting China less than an hour after launch, as huge threats to the effectiveness of its land-based deterrent force.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • “Because China’s SSBNs [nuclear missile submarines] are in the South China Sea, the US navy will try to send spy ships in there and get close to the SSBNs. China’s navy hates that and will try to push them away,” Wu said.
  • Warheads and missiles would be put together and handed over to the navy, allowing a nuclear weapon to be launched much faster if such a decision was taken. The start of Chinese missile patrols could further destabilise the already tense strategic standoff with the US in the South China Sea.
  • China has been working on ballistic missile submarine technology for more than three decades, but actual deployment has been put off by technical failures, institutional rivalry and policy d
  • Behind the ominous warnings is growing concern in the People’s Liberation army that China’s relatively small nuclear arsenal (estimated at 260 warheads compared with 7,000 each for the US and Russia), made up mostly of land-based missiles, is increasingly vulnerable to a devastating first strike, by either nuclear or conventional weapon
  • The decision to deploy Thaad anti-ballistic interceptors in South Korea was taken after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, and the stated mission of the truck-launched interceptors is to shield the south from missile attack.
  • China is developing a similar missile but officials in Beijing fear that the Chinese nuclear arsenal is so small it could be almost completely wiped out without notice, with the few missiles launched in reprisal being destroyed in mid-air by US missile defences.
  • There seems to have been some discussion of moving to a “launch on warning” policy, to fire Chinese weapons before incoming missiles land and destroy them. That appears to be a minority view, however
  • The core aim is to have a second strike capacity that is “survivable” and “penetrative”. Submarines, on patrol in the ocean depths, fulfil the first requirement, they say.
  • Partly to help penetrate US missile defences, China has in recent months also started putting multiple warheads on its largest missile, the DF-5, another development that has set alarm bells ringing in the Pentagon, where some analysts view it as the first step towards a massive nuclear armament drive aimed at obliterating the US arsenal.
  • Evidence for China’s more “relaxed” approach is the length of time it took to deploy multiple warheads, two decades after developing the necessary technology. China has similarly taken decades to deploy nuclear missile submarines.
  • The slow pace has not just been for practical reasons. China’s guiding principle has been to have a capacity for “minimum means of reprisal” while minimising the chance of accidental or unauthorised launch.
  • However, to follow the British Royal Navy model – in which each Trident submarine commander has a signed letter from the prime minister in his safe, to open in the event of a strike on London – would entail a huge leap in the alert status of the Chinese nuclear arsenal, and a similarly huge delegation of responsibility to one of the armed forces.
12More

Leading Hezbollah commander and key Israel target killed in Syria | World news | The Gu... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...lled-israel-mustafa-badreddine hezbollah commander israel killed
shared by sarahbalick on 13 May 16 - No Cached
  • Leading
  • Hezbollah
  • commander and key Israel target killed in Syria
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • edia reports in Lebanon and Israel quickly suggested the blast had been caused by an Israeli airstrike, a suggestion to which Hezbollah gave weight, announcing it was investigating whether a “missile or artillery strike” had been responsible.
  • Badreddine was the most senior member of the organisation to have been killed since the
  • death
  • of his predecessor and brother-in-law, Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated by a joint Mossad/CIA operation in the Syrian capital in February 2008.
  • Announcing Badreddine’s death, Hezbollah said: “He said months ago that he would not return from Syria except as a martyr or carrying the flag of victory. He is the great jihadi leader Mustafa Badreddine, and he has returned today a martyr.”
  • The investigation will work to determine the nature of the explosion and its causes, whether it was due to an air or missile or artillery strike, and we will announce the results of the investigation soon.”
  • Hezbollah said he had been involved in nearly all the group’s operations since its inception in the early 1980s. Most had targeted Israel, which occupied Lebanon from 1982-2000. However, Badreddine had also been accused of leading a cell that was allegedly responsible for the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri on the Beirut waterfront in February 2005.
  • Despite Israeli protests, Russia has recently proceeded with a long-delayed sale to Iran of the advanced S-300 weapons system, which can shoot down most modern fighter jets. Israeli officials have said they would prioritise tracking the whereabouts of the systems, the position of which in southern Lebanon would pose a potent threat to their air force.
  • Tens of thousands of mourners are expected to pay their respects at a shrine site for Hezbollah dead, which includes the graves of Imad and Jihad Mughniyah. Nasrallah is also expected to make a public statement – his second within a week. More news Topics Hezbollah Lebanon Iran Israel Middle East and North Africa Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Share on WhatsApp Save for later Article saved <
9More

BBC News - Bahrain opposition leadership 'systematically targeted' - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-middle-east-24999699 bbc bahrain arab spring crisis policy culture peaceful opposition
shared by julia rhodes on 20 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The head of the main Shia political society in Bahrain has told the BBC that the opposition leadership is being systematically targeted by the state.
  • Khalil Marzook, is on trial for inciting youth violence and trying to overthrow the Sunni-led government.
  • "Khalil and the Wefaq party have always advocated a peaceful path to democracy and condemn violence," he insisted.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • In February 2011, many Bahrainis inspired by the Arab Spring gathered at the prominent Pearl Roundabout in the capital Manama calling for democratic reforms.
  • Many were from the majority Shia community, which has long complained of being marginalised by the Sunni royal family.
  • These included the prosecution of security forces personnel responsible for torture and the deaths of detainees, the release prisoners of conscience, and the reinstatement of dismissed Shia workers.
  • "The torture continues, unfair trials continue," he added. "Nearly 3,000 people are in jail and the numbers increase all the time.
  • But the idea is very clear. The authorities are saying we can put any one of you in jail whenever we want. "And this is their plan, to put all the opposition under pressure, target the leadership and put us in jail or force us out of the country or take away our citizenship." Mr Salman warned that if they jailed peaceful opposition leaders from groups such as Wefaq, only hardliners would remain and that would lead to more and more violence.
  • As a result, terrorists who are trained by Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran, took advantage and threatened the safety of civilians in Bahrain
15More

The War No Image Could Capture - Deborah Cohen - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...354670
shared by B Mannke on 11 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Essay December 2013 The War No Image Could Capture Photography has given us iconic representations of conflict since the Civil War—with a notable exception.&nbsp;Why, during the Great War, the camera failed.&nbsp;
  • They could not be rescued yet, and so an anonymous official photographer attached to the Royal Engineers did what he could to record the scene. The picture he took, though, tells almost nothing without a caption. The landscape is flat and featureless. The dead and wounded look like dots. “Like a million bloody rugs,” wrote F.&nbsp;Scott Fitzgerald of the Somme carnage. In fact, you can’t make out blood. You can’t even tell you’re looking at bodies.
  • iconic representations of war
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • World War&nbsp;I yielded a number of striking and affecting pictures. Some, included in the gallery of 380 presented in The Great War: A Photographic Narrative, are famous: the line of gassed men, blinded and clutching each other’s shoulders as they approach a first-aid station in 1918; the haunting, charred landscapes of the Ypres Salient in 1917. And yet in both cases, the more-renowned versions were their painted successors of 1919: John Singer Sargent’s oil painting Gassed, and Paul Nash’s semi-abstract rendering of the blasted Belgian flatland, The Menin Road. The essence of the Great War lies in the absence of any emblematic photograph.
  • The quest to communicate an unprecedented experience of combat began almost as soon as the war did, and it has continued ever since
  • All Quiet on the Western Front (1929): the war was unimaginable, dehumanizing, the unredeemable sacrifice of a generation. It marked the origin of our ironic sensibility
  • The central conundrum in representing the First World War is a stark one: the staggering statistics of matériel, manpower, and casualties threaten constantly to extinguish the individual. That was what the war poets understood, and why the images they summoned in words have been transmitted down a century. As Wilfred Owen did in “Dulce et Decorum Est”&nbsp;(1917), the poets addressed their readers directly, unsettling them with a vision of the damage suffered by a particular man’s body or mind.
  • Photography, of course, can’t capture sounds or bitter intonations—that devastatingly exact gargling, not gurgling
  • We felt they were mad.”
  • Needless to say, such a move was not repeated.
  • A great deal of the official photography of 1914 and 1915 borders on the risible: stiffly posed pictures that gesture to the heroic war that had been foretold rather than the war that was unfolding. In one picture, a marksman in a neat uniform crouches safely behind a fortification, intent on his quarry. In another, a dugout looks like a stage set, in which the actors have been urged to strike contemplative poses.
  • e Battle of Guillemont, a British and French offensive that was successful but at great cost, this image from September&nbsp;1916, by the British official photographer John Warwick Brooke, is disorienting at first glance. Are the inert lumps on the ground dead bodies, or parts of dead bodies? They are neither. But the initial relief upon recognizing that they’re inanimate objects evaporates
  • The British prime minister’s own eldest son, Raymond Asquith, was killed a few days later and a few miles away, at the Battle of Flers–Courcelette.
  • . All the way through—as he meticulously documents the laborious mobilization, the pointless charges, the dead and injured marooned in the field—Sacco’s perspective is from the British lines, which means the soldiers are seen mostly from the back. He gets the details of the carts, the guns, and the uniforms exactly right. The faces he draws are deliberately generic.
  • They visited the battlefields to find the small white headstone with their soldier’s name; when there was no grave, they touched the place where a name was engraved on a memorial. They held séances to summon the dead. But inevitably, as the decades roll on, what endures are the fearsome numbers.
« First ‹ Previous 41 - 60 of 199 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page