The Times on July 17th 1897 published Kipling's poem Ressional. This includes the lines:
... The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
...
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! ...
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
...
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! ...
This was a reflection on the transience of empire written at the time of Queen Victoria's Jubilee.
There is something of a recessional air around these days; with many in the country fretting over the challenges we face, others (a small but vocal minority) increasingly uncomfortable with much of our history, and more (particularly younger folk) rather fearful of the future. And to my surprise it has got to me. My normally sunny self has clouded over. It might be winter: grey and cold out there. Perhaps it's my age: it's getting harder to pretend anymore that I'm still 56. Perhaps it's because our society's great institutions seems a lot less competent than they did. Confronted with the question "What do we do really well?", the answers seem uncertain. A few examples:
– We have been effective at building wind farms in the seas surrounding us, but slow at connecting them to an electricity grid that we have failed to upgrade to deal with the realities of having very many diverse sources of power.
– We are pathetically poor at insulating our existing housing stock whilst continuing to build shoddy new properties and slow at bringing building regulations up to required levels.
– We have spent 30+ years dithering about the role of nuclear power and so we now have a much reduced base load of continually-available power and are utterly reliant on increasingly expensive gas.
– The health service, whilst still being regarded by those who only England know as "the best in the world" is itself in intensive care with not enough people caring for it or caring about the need to care for it.
And so on. Well this is probably overblown as England has been going to the dogs since at least the 12th Century – and maybe it is time to take the idea of the Normans paying reparations for the damage they did more seriously. But it does beg the question: what do we do really well?
My only response for now is artisanal cheese making. No country in the world surely matches us which is something to celebrate.
That's it for 2022. I'm hoping for a sunnier 2023 in every sense ...
Responses
I'm watching an interesting Netflix series 'Secrets of Great British Castles' and your comments about reparations from the Normans has much merit.