Dear Readers,
I have begun taking a break from the blog. In due time I will be back to posting, but for the time being it will be very infrequent.
To keep you busy, here are a couple of recent finds I wish to recommend:
1- 2011 Reith Lectures; the lectures have resumed and a looking into the question of protecting Freedom in society. (feed)
2- History of England by David Crowther (feed) - a very nice history of England by following the line of the Royal Family of England as far as it can be traced back. One thing to keep in mind when you start: Crowther calls the Britons 'British' which can easily confuse or even confound (a war of the English on the British? That is between Britons and Anglo-Saxons)
3- History of the First World War - a history with emphasis on the military aspects of the war and with an interesting batch of stories about fronts other than the Western or the Eastern front. In stead of looking up the feed, I recommend to download from the site as the feed contains only the last handful of the entire 44 episodes so far.
Anne
4 comments:
"One thing to keep in mind when you start: Crowther calls the Britons 'British' which can easily confuse or even confound..."
There is no confusion: Great Britain, aka the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is a country of which England is one part, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (or Ulster) being the others. Their unification, to simplify a piece of rather complicated history, dates from what is known as 'The Union of the Crowns' in 1707. Since that date, therefore, 'England' properly denotes only one member of that union, while 'Britain' or 'the UK' denotes the the entire union, and 'British' its citizens. The loose usages 'England' and 'English' to refer to the entirety of the UK and its inhabitants are not only politically and historically inaccurate, they are also offensive to the other constitutive nationalities.
Thanks Anne - hope your break is good - we appreciate your posting.
A tip from an Aussie - you can simplify matters by referring to the English as "Poms" :-)
Jon
Thanks for the review Anne. (this is me, David, History of England bloke). Um, the nomenclature thing has me waking up screaming. Before starting, I felt that there are too many Histories of 'Britain' which are basically a history of England with a bit of Wales & Scotland tacked on. All the UK nations have a rich and varied history, which I think deserves their own focus, so I wanted to avoid that. However, lord only knows what I will do after the 13th C unification of Welsh and English crowns, and particularly the Act of Union. Suggestions welcome . . .Anne has a point about my use of the word British as opposed to Britons though.
Jon - so is 'Pom' simply a term for English, not Welsh or Scots? Maybe I'll change the title to a history of Pommieland.
Hi David
I'm afraid Pom is often somewhat derogatory as in "whinging poms". Mainly it's focussed on the English but others might slip in there sometimes.
Jon
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