On Living in History

I’m a diverse reader, following various interests. This Lent, I’m reading biography, the stories of people living within history. The diaries of German diplomat Count Kessler, a Cassandra post WW I, foresee Hitler’s rise step by step: all meetings, conferences, diplomacy fail.[1]

            Similarly, British Minister Duff Cooper vainly tries to persuade his government of threat, as it fails to arm or mobilise (and Cooper never again speaks to Chamberlain after Munich.) Later, Cooper is anxious about the Levant (region: Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and more) between British and French.[2]

            Then Byron, whose admiration for Napoleon (as Napoleon fights across Europe) embodies the seductiveness of great figures on the Romantic mind. Byron in Ottoman Greece discovers antiquity as prey as Elgin carves away the Parthenon marbles.[3]

            The martyrs of the Venerable English College Rome (many deemed traitors as Roman Catholic priests under Elizabeth I) witness the state’s power to enforce religious compliance, as well as convictions compelling martyrdom. We are heirs of the Reformation, for good and for ill.[4]

            Frailty of civilisations, reach to world conquest, religion as history. History shows what has been, what may be, sometimes what will be. We should read it; we live within it.

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[1] Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler (1918-1937).

[2] Cooper, Duff. Old Men Forget. (1953).

[3] McCarthy, Fiona. Byron: Life and Legend. (2002).

[4] Saint Michael’s Abbey. The Forty Four: The Martyrs of the Venerable English College Rome. (2000).