This is a sense, a gut observation; not necessarily fact. I don’t want to say the news coverage of yesterday’s London bombings was excessive, in any way out of proportion. But it did seem fuller, more intensive, than that for the Madrid and Bali attacks. I have no evidence this is the case. Possibly, I was more interested: I was paying more attention.
Let’s say Americans are especially horrified by the London event. Despite our diversity, England is still the Mother Country, the home of our native tongue. Our “special relationship” is less about common goals and interests than it is about a sense of family. For all the violence of our war for independence, is it not simply the story of a child casting off the guardianship of a loving, jealous parent? Sure, that’s about as simplistic and naïve a take one can have on our history. But I can’t shake it.
I’m white, my ancestry is 75% English, I live in New England; I grew up in an area where Europeans struggled for control of the New World.
In 1759, Jeffrey Amherst built the largest British fort in North America at Crown Point (New York). Guarding the narrow passage of Lake Champlain to Lake George, it replaced the abandoned French Fort Saint-Frederic. Today the ruins of both remain. I can stand amid the fragments of the French fort and grasp only the strategic importance of the location. But back from the lake, in the British drill yard surrounded by collapsing barracks walls, the grand themes of history fall away and I find myself empathizing with the common British soldier. I sense his loneliness, his fears, his longing for home; we are cold together on winter nights, we each hunger for a mother’s cooking, we both respect and resent our officers. I know that guy.
Common humanity is a tangible connection; but the primitive loyalties, the draws of blood, language, and history, are undeniable. They bombed London yesterday. I know those people.
Crown Point
There's a place in South London, near Crystal Palace, called that. About ten years ago me and an ex girlfriend shared an art deco council flat there in a run-down block locally known as 'Sarajevo'.
Posted by: Aibrushed by the Commissars at July 8, 2005 11:12 PMAt Drink Soaked Marxist Popinjays for War (which cross pollinates with Harry's Place), they are making lists about good things about England/Britain. I offered:
Chaucer
William Shakespeare
Samuel Johnson
Walter Ralegh
Joseph Malord William Turner
George Stubbs
Lord Byron
Abolishing the slave trade
Red telephone boxes
Fish and Chips
Parliamentary Democracy
George Orwell
Evelyn Waugh
Ronald Firbank
Charles Dickens
The British Empire
Saving Europe from itself
The Rolling Stones
The English Parish Church
Winston Churchill
The English Pub (farewell)
Routemaster Buses (farewall)
The NHS
Christopher Wren
Kipling
Steptoe and Son
Westminster Abbey
WH Auden
Carry On Films
Cricket
The Sex Pistols
Gilbert and Sullivan
George Formby
Horatio Nelson
The English Language
Anthony Trollope
Sid James (he was South African, but...)
Powell and Pressburger
Biggles
Constable
Jane Austen
Kenneth Williams
Jonathan Swift
PG Wodehouse
the Navy
Shelley
Keats
Trees
Hogarth
William Powell Frith
both Francis Bacons
Stanley Spencer
Elgar
Thomas Tallis
The Battle of Trafalgar
William Blake
Gainsborough
The Wilton Diptych
The National Gallery
The British Museum
Soho
Big Ben
Trial by jury
The Oxford English Dictionary
The London Underground Map
Music Hall
Max Miller
Arthur Askey
Light Orchestral Music (a la Eric Coates)
A nice cup of tea
Anthony Powell
Saki
Samuel Pepys
Giles
The English Landscape
William Byrd
Christopher Marlowe
John Donne
Milton
Ben Jonson
Mary Wollestencraft
Joseph Wright of Derby
Laurence Sterne
Hazlitt
James Boswell
Dover Sole
Edwin Lutyens
Agatha Christie
Graham Greene
Brighton
Piers
Victorian Railway Stations
MR James
Thomas More
Pound Sterling
William Walton
Radios Three and Four
Ealing Comedies
George Gissing
Thomas Babington Macauley
Monty Python
The Goons
On the Buses
Rising Damp
Horse Racing
Thomas De Quincey
HG Wells
Canterbury Cathedral
Blackpool
Stanley Holloway
Stanley Holloway's monologues
The Who
Dickens' illustrators
Wimbledon
Treasure Island
RL Stevenson
Will Hay
The Times
The Defeat of the Spanish Armada
Kew Gardens
Chip Shops
Bubble and Squeak
Roast Lamb; mint sauce.
Roast Beef
Jugged Hare
Horse Chestnut Trees
Oak Trees
the Monarchy
Charles Hawtrey
Oscar Wilde
Delius
Walter Sickert
Spencer Gore
CRW Nevinson
Eric Ravilious
Paul Nash
Piccadilly Circus
Dame Laura Knight
Laurence Olivier
Robert Newton
John Mills
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
Emily Bronte
Andrew Marvell
John Gay
Alexander Pope
The coastline
The English Channel
John Bunyan
Samuel Richardson
Seigfried Sassoon
Philip Larkin
Kingsley Amis
Clapham Common
The Thames
Battersea Power Station
Desert Island Discs
The Boat Race
Trooping the Colour
The Proms
The Cenotaph
'"Jenny darling, if the chances were very good, I wouldn't dream of writing like this, but I'm no dreamer, Jen. The RAF, fighters and bombers combined, will undoubtedly win this war in time, but the end isn't nearly in sight yet, and before it's all over the losses will be enormous.
There seems no point in making any plans about the future. If anything happens to me, I'll want you to go and have a perm, do up your face, put the hat on and carry on - it'll take a lot of guts, but I know you'll tackle it in the right way. I'm feeling bungfull of confidence, but if I'm to be unlucky, well, I'm prepared for anything."
The letter writer, 23-year-old John Bufton, was killed in action a month later, just one of the great host of more than 300,000 British servicemen and civilians who died in the war, whose sacrifice we remember today. Almost all were no more and no less "ordinary people" than the hapless victims of last Thursday's bombings in London'
http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/07/10/do1001.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2005/07/10/ixopinion.html
Great list but I'll take the bait; what is so good about Clapham Common?
P.S. My great-grandfather used to have a milk farm in Clapham.
Posted by: Paul Stables at July 10, 2005 08:08 AMI've had a few nice evenings and mornings on it- it's charms are underrated. I mean it's a rough list- I forgot to put the Faces in for god's sake! By the way, lefties hate lists like that- they reach for that worn-away-with-work word 'jingo' and demand why they're are not more women and Africans on the list. That fashion victim Waldemar Janucsicz was doing in the Sunday Times last weekend when he was slagging George Stubbs off.
Posted by: Aibrushed by the Commissars at July 11, 2005 03:06 AMI'll confine myself to adding one item to the list:
Common Law
In high school, I remember getting so excited when I read the chapter on Common Law in Churchill's Birth of Britain that I considered naming a son Henry Plantagenet.
Thank god for little girls.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at July 11, 2005 08:34 AM