Anglophilia, pt. 55 BC

No one ever thought that 1066 and All That was All That, but that book turns out to have been a Good Thing after all. But to understand this, it helps to imagine the book read aloud by Internet wonder Philomena Cunk. This week, the Internet discovered that Cunk has been on the BBC for many years. She has become famous for wondering: “What is clocks?”

She ponders history as well as the “centuries of millenia” of architecture (“buildings”), as well as time. Not only is she an historian, she is a philosopher, or perhaps an idiot. Aristotle said that philosophy begins with wondering. Cunk, in her questioning of “experts,” makes us wonder who it is who would waste time on wondering. And yet, we cannot spend enough time inquiring along with Philomena Cunk.

(Has she ever interviewed Timothy Williamson? He would be almost ripe for it.)

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I checked out Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman for Karin. Rickman is her idol. Karin worries that the diaries will spoil Rickman for her.

She needn’t.

He is – was (R.I.P.) – a good diarist and a decent guy. He clearly was fond of the Harry Potter kids.

I promised Karin I’d read Harry Potter 1 and 2 by May 1 so that we could watch those movies together. She’s reading Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? so that we can watch the Britbox series of that book.

House hunting, pt. 1066 and all that

Karin & I took Samuel to the St. Joseph County fair, and, for the first time, he saw cows, chickens, horses, hogs, goats, and kangaroos. Then we drove across town and walked through a well-kept house with fifties decor. Martin, Mary, and David were with us. Everyone was very positive about this house, and so, a few hours later, we made as handsome an offer as we could; it was refused.

Tonight: two more houses.

Eminent historians

Staying at home while Karin goes to work is just terrible. Oh, I have job applications and other writing projects to do. But most of the day, I’m bored out of my brain.

I’ve also been too restless to read much – from print sources, that is. Somehow, the computer screen keeps me glued to it all day.

I’ll mention a few recent readings and then be done.

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My dad linked to this article by Gregory H. Shill in the Atlantic about how U.S. law unjustly favors driving. The article is a condensed version of this much longer paper, also well worth a look.

(There was a time when I wanted to write a philosophical polemic against driving, or at least against law that encourages it, but I doubt I could improve on the work of Prof. Shill.)

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On a totally different subject, the eminent British historian Richard J. Evans has published, in the Guardian, a savage obituary of the eminent British historian Norman Stone.

A student of Stone’s replies here, and the Spectator, while not exactly disagreeing with Evans, defends Stone here.

Long ago, Stone himself published a savage obituary of the eminent British historian E.H. Carr in the London Review of Books. Here is a quotation:

In 1961 [Carr] delivered six lectures to [his Cambridge] Faculty on the theme ‘What is History?’: it may count as his most successful book, for there is a keen appetite in schools for this boring subject, and the paperback volume is frequently reprinted. It is probably as much a mistake to ask a working historian to discuss this theme as to ask a painter to give his views on aesthetics. Carr had not much more to offer than a version of Fifties progressivism: history teaches respect for the present, or, better still, the Soviet present. In places, it read like a Marxist 1066 and All That. It does, however, begin well, perhaps even brilliantly.

I have a copy of What Is History: it has always vexed me that I don’t know what history is. I also have Evans’s In Defense of History, because I don’t know what history is for.

Stone may or may not have been right that a working historian isn’t especially able to tackle the philosophical questions. But I wonder if his own refusal to tackle them was, fundamentally, what divided him from those he criticized and who now criticize him.