I thought that Athelney would be to Alfred as Tintagel is to Arthur. But there were no itsy witsy shops with punning names, no explanatory pamphlets. Just a discreet plaque, an unimpressive Victorian monument — and an astonishingly evocative landscape of water and willows and glittering birds, which could hardly have changed in the eleven hundred odd years since Alfred fled to the Somerset marshes to take shelter from the Vikings.
We know what happened — we know that he emerged to defeat the Danes, and then made a peace which lasted long enough for him to create a country which was stronger and safer for his people. But he did. A number of things intrigued me about this.
But the other thing was — what was he like? What motivated him? Apart, obviously, from the understandable wish to stay alive. He was the youngest of five children, four of them boys.
He was clever, sensitive and thoughtful. Would he ever have expected that he would become king? It seems unlikely, given his place in the family. Was he prepared for it? What went through his mind during those weeks when he was holed up in the marshes? How did he manage to persuade other people — and himself — that he could defeat Guthrum, despite all appearances?
Where were his family, his wife and children, while all this was going on? And then I wondered about the ordinary people. What effect did the endless series of battles have on them? Did they care about who ruled them, or were they too busy trying to survive to even think about it? Charlotte books view quotes.
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Apr 26, AM. There is wide recognition that racism, treating people unequally because of the color of their skin, has been a constant in American history. By American history I include the Spanish, Portuguese, English and French conquest and colonization experience in the hemisphere, the extermination, subjugation and exploitation of the native populations and the enslavement of Blacks throughout the Americas, and the social and caste stratification across all American societies.
In this context, perhaps the first step in approaching the history of racism begins by acknowledging that we have, generally, failed in our understanding of history itself. All historical narratives share a troubled relationship with their past. The Mexican poet Octavio Paz once commented that the past asks that we understand it, not that we judge it. Although all understanding implies some level of judgment, he was correct in drawing attention to the fact that the events of the past have already occurred, and the real suffering of those that have died is unredeemable.
The purpose of understanding the past is not to change what happened, which is impossible, but to throw light on the unfulfilled claims made in the present. In this sense, the tearing down of a statute says much more about our untamed past than it does about a given historical figure.
The removal, forcefully or otherwise, of a statute of Robert E. It is easy to forget how dangerous life used to be, how deeply brutality was once woven into the fabric of daily existence. Cultural memory pacifies the past, leaving us with pale souvenirs whose bloody origins have been bleached away.
A woman donning a cross seldom reflects that this instrument of torture was a common punishment in the ancient world; nor does a person who speaks of a whipping boy ponder the old practice of flogging an innocent child in place of a misbehaving prince. Just as travel broadens the mind, a literal-minded tour of our cultural heritage can awaken us to how differently they did things in the past. Email me or post them on my Famous Quotations Facebook page.
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