pumpkinstrokemarrow

Up to a point, Lord Cropper. It seems to me that if you were standing in the shield wall on Senlac Hill for hours on end, bashing Norman heads with your specialised hammer (Buck & Ryan may still do something suitable), seeing the Normans bash the heads of your comrades all around and in constant fear of having your own head bashed, you might get a bit stressed. Maybe to the point of traumatic stress. Maybe to the point of having nightmares, maybe even waking nightmares about it for years afterwards. The same sort of point could be made about standing in a square at Mont St. Jean for hours on end nearly a thousand years later, when battles may not have involved so much bashing by hand but did involve a lot more people and a lot more casualties.

It is true that people in those days were more used to death, pain and misery. Life was violent, brutish and short. At least it was for many people. But my belief is, chattering rag notwithstanding, that many of the survivors of such battles would have been permanently damaged, without necessarily having been wounded, despite being more used to it than we are. Perhaps condemned to a life on the margin, on the tramp, on the bottle or both. Perhaps to the life of the psychopathic aristo.. The iron dukes themselves seemed to have managed OK: both Bill and Art went on to have long and successful public lives. Did they bash their wives and dogs on the qt.? Also that, many of those who survived maybe did so by possessing qualities which would be regarded as thoroughly anti-social and unpleasant, if not criminal, in peace time. Think of the number of films featuring condemned men sent to do stirring deeds.

Talking of chattering rags, managed to get a NYRB the other day, the first time for a while. More like the LRB than the TLS; a lot of heavy articles only very loosely based on a book, if at all. So we got getting on for three pages on the health reforms in the US. Rather, not so much about the health reforms but about all the complicated shenanighans needed to get this very modest reform through. Odd how such a rich and powerful country has this huge blind spot about how to provide decent health care. I think, more or less alone in this regard in the developed world.

Then a long review, perhaps two pages, of a book by one Margaret MacMillan about the uses and abuses of history. Moved to buy the book which turns out to be very short. Leading me to think that it would interesting to analyse book reviews, bringing out the relationship - if any - between the length of the book and the length of the review. What are the drivers for the latter length? Another project for my MPhil from the university of the fourth age.

But all very relevant to my post concerning the columnist error on 20 March. Lots of stuff on why history matters. Amongst other interesting oddments, I learn that during the second world war, the Quebecois were rather keen on the Vichy regime in France and generally rather inclined to fascism. This was, presumably, in part a reaction against the stance of the English, but not very praiseworthy for all that. A bit of their history which has been largely brushed under the carpet. That during the first world war, despite the fact that the cuddly Irish hated the filthy Brits, over half the 200,000 or so Irish that volunteered to fight in the Brit army were Catholics. That the Hindu component of India is busily trying to rewrite history from a Hindu-centric viewpoint and gets rather unpleasant if anyone tries to pull them up a bit. Which reminded me that when visiting the temple at Neasden (http://www.mandir.org/) I was very impressed to learn how much important science had been kicked off by the Hindus at a time when we were still living in caves. Also that a lot of the detailing in the temple was a bit tacky. Perhaps the product of a lot of the work having been done by volunteers, rather than builders.

There was also a long article about abuse in US prisons. It all sounded pretty dreadful although it must be very hard to collect reliable data about this sort of thing. Do I believe that much of it is perpetrated by female staff on male inmates? Must try and read the thing carefully, given the mess that we got into about abuse in childrens' homes in this country. See January 17 2009.