Category Archives: history

For Remembrance Sunday

Posted on November 9, 2014 by Andrew Stuttaford

When the Welsh poet Edward Thomas (1898-1917), who had signed up for the British Army in 1915, was asked what he would be fighting for, he stopped, picked up a pinch of earth and crumbled it between finger and thumb … Continue reading →

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Red Priests Then and Now

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Andrew Stuttaford

The Prague Post: Prague, Sept. 15 (ČTK) — Rostislav Kotrč, a priest of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, will run for the Communists (KSČM) in the local elections in the autumn, daily Mladá fronta Dnes (MfD) writes today. Kotrč, 40, at … Continue reading →

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Happy Easter!

Posted on April 20, 2014 by Andrew Stuttaford

I’m not entirely sure that this card from 1915 (“thundering Easter greetings”) is in keeping with the spirit of the season, but Happy Easter nonetheless… H/t: GERArmyResearch

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Desperate

Posted on August 31, 2013 by Andrew Stuttaford

Writing in the Catholic Herald, a priest, Fr. Alexander Lucie-Smith, compares Kim Jong-Un with Henry VIII, the king who (according to paper’s headline-writers “founded the Church of England”: nope, it was Elizabeth I who did that, but no matter): …The … Continue reading →

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Trampled in Trebizond

Posted on July 27, 2013 by Andrew Stuttaford

Cross-posted on the Corner: The Economist reports: On July 5 the mufti of Trabzon gathered with other citizens for the first Friday prayers of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, not at a mosque but at an ancient Byzantine church. … Continue reading →

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Innocent Guilty

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Andrew Stuttaford

Yes, yes, there’s a back-story, and, yes, yes, a later version of the document did get the papal nod, but this snippet of history is too entertaining not to repeat. The Financial Times reports: It was, as these things go, … Continue reading →

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Happy Independence Day

Posted on July 4, 2013 by Andrew Stuttaford

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia (1782): “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

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Free Markets, No Thanks

Posted on June 23, 2013 by Andrew Stuttaford

Barbara Ward (1914-81), a former foreign editor of the Economist and much more besides, plays an important part in Rupert Darwall’s The Age of Global Warming, a new book that is, among other things, a fascinating intellectual and political history … Continue reading →

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The Cheerleader

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Andrew Stuttaford

On the whole, patriotic priests are preferable to those preaching the old baloney about the universal brotherhood of man, an impossible, unnatural aspiration that, by definition, can only (if it is to mean anything) be coercive. It is however better … Continue reading →

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The Great Agnostic

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Andrew Stuttaford

Writing in the Weekly Standard, here’s Katherine Mangu-Ward with an entertaining review of a new biography of Robert Ingersoll, the Great Agnostic: While today’s GOP is associated with public displays of faith, the Republican party of Ingersoll’s day was more … Continue reading →

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