Ah ha! Freshly re-read and reflected on, in relative tranquility, I feel - in common with Edgar in King Lear though taking the liberty of revising wording for present purpose - that "The last is not the last, so long as we can say 'this is is the last', word from Thucydides.
Bon chance with you foraging for further rich and hitherto 'lost' writings of Thucydides Peter. Your despatch will hopefully prove, in the fullness of turning time, prove to be but the first instalment of 'The Thucydidean Dialogues' a literary work that will underscore the connectivity of Time Past to Time Present and to the unfolding of Time Future.
As I write, having hotfooted it back to typing pad from PMQs, it is being mooted that ZM is to revisit DT in the good company of Allies EM and KS. May your bug in the OO be the reliable source of copy for 'The Thucydian Dialogues Part II'.
This is a wonderful discovery. I am so happy you brought it to the world’s attention. Thucydides did an excellent job recording the emotion of the moment. I felt like I was in the room.
Excellent! But can I make a general plea for everyone to stop talking about a shouting match which seems to have become a media norm. President Kelensky tried to speak reasonably throughout, but was talked down and bullied by speeches that were untruthful, one-sided and animated by personal vendetta, in a word unreasonable by any definition. Thanks for the Thucydides! From a subscriber.
Thank you for this. You are of course absolutely correct: the shouting was all on one side. Good point. But I'm glad that you enjoyed it otherwise, and thank you for being a subscriber and taking the time to comment.
Even as I wonder and you ponder Ukraine, today and now even as I type, is being blitzed and bodies (those that remain intact enough to be) are being bagged!
At this point, Rob, especially after last Friday, that decision no longer comes as a surprise. But it's a very bad, very shameful betrayal of the Ukrainians, to whose brave resistance we all owe a great deal.
It's also, in my view, a very bad and utterly shameful betrayal of the majority of Americans. Or maybe I read the US Presidential Election entirely wrong and the majority of Americans went to the polls quite expecting to find, five weeks into Mr Trump's second Presidency, that Mr Putin would be (for once) telling the truth in pointing up the clearly close alignment of Washington and Moscow policy agendas?
In your wide reading in the realms of history and politics can you recall examples of such rapprochement between two hitherto adversarial (for the very good reason of their being so culturally polarised) states? Or perhaps you can bring to mind examples of how a country as cruelly betrayed by a former ally gets out from under the yoke of imperial tyranny and prospers?
Going to tune into Mr Trump's address to Congress. After he's declared The American Tariff Wars open in the past 24 hours and disrespectfully insisted on referring to Canada's Prime Minister as being "Governor" who knows what strokes Putin's Placeman Puppet on Pennsylvania Avenue is going to treat the American People to next?
I'm sure some Americans feel betrayed, but it would be hard to say how many. Trump made no secret of his attitude toward Ukraine. Polls suggest that a majority of Americans support continued aid to Ukraine. But with respect to the election, in general I do not think foreign affairs weigh very heavily on the voting decisions of most Americans. Domestic issues loom larger. As for your question... I don't know. My historical education is actually somewhat deficient. I imagine a more knowledgeable reader could come up with a parallel--there's nothing new under the sun, as someone once said. But it's certainly true that the turnabout on Ukraine policy has been sudden enough to give a person whiplash.
I read Geography at university attracted to what was a School of Applied Geography. As students we were encouraged to make connections between the theories and practices encountered in course of study and how these might be put to work in order to comprehend and respond to the constant changes unfolding in the world about us. I write this to explain, somewhat, how I tend to engage with both news and academic media. "Okay" I might, put simply, be saying/thinking "that's interesting... that's impactful... that's inviting response... what's applicable to better understanding, interpreting and positively (individually and societally) responding to the change(s) unfolding?
As an individual, and what's more one who is neither resident or citizen of the USA, the best I can do is endeavour to get my head around the phenomenon that is, let's say doubtless for want of a better descriptor, 'Trump the Disrupter' and to keep tabs on just why it is that I find myself thinking that the period of turbulence that this one character has contrived to unleash upon both America and the Wider World is not going to end either well or any time soon. There are, to my mind obvious, lessons from 20th and first quarter 21st century history that the many inveterately incurious members of our 'advanced' North American and West European societies may come to learn the hard way in some sooner rather more distant future.
I do enjoy reading what you share about what your reading in each latest episode of the rolling project that is is your bookshelf Peter. I enjoy the very decent intellectual standards that you bring to your reading and writing. My intention, "going forward" as was the go to phrase (of a-few-phrase-to-overuse-cycles ago) will be to detach the engine of ideas from the carriages/wagons of seeking faux relevance and applicability to what's unfolding live time in the world about us.
Best for the present from Middle England in the tolerable weather we're enjoying now that Meteorological Spring is here.
🙄 Well, finding that The Trumpster isn't going to be strutting to the podium and spouting his "vision" for well over an hour yet, I'm now heading up the wooden stairs to Bedfordshire... news bulletins don't quite cut it for me, of late, when it comes to the dastardly doings of The Donald and JD... watching live is, when possible, so rewarding because it is so revealing... thinking of notable book of a few decades back, 'The Naked Ape' by TV zoologist Desmond Morris, suggests a reprise title with Donald J Trump the self obsessed alpha male in the frame: 'The Naked Solipsist'. 🤔
Night night all, sleep tight, don't let the Terrible Trump Monsters bite!
Ah ha! Freshly re-read and reflected on, in relative tranquility, I feel - in common with Edgar in King Lear though taking the liberty of revising wording for present purpose - that "The last is not the last, so long as we can say 'this is is the last', word from Thucydides.
Bon chance with you foraging for further rich and hitherto 'lost' writings of Thucydides Peter. Your despatch will hopefully prove, in the fullness of turning time, prove to be but the first instalment of 'The Thucydidean Dialogues' a literary work that will underscore the connectivity of Time Past to Time Present and to the unfolding of Time Future.
As I write, having hotfooted it back to typing pad from PMQs, it is being mooted that ZM is to revisit DT in the good company of Allies EM and KS. May your bug in the OO be the reliable source of copy for 'The Thucydian Dialogues Part II'.
This is a wonderful discovery. I am so happy you brought it to the world’s attention. Thucydides did an excellent job recording the emotion of the moment. I felt like I was in the room.
Thanks, Richard, and I am happy to be of service. One marvels at Thucydides' prescience.
Excellent! But can I make a general plea for everyone to stop talking about a shouting match which seems to have become a media norm. President Kelensky tried to speak reasonably throughout, but was talked down and bullied by speeches that were untruthful, one-sided and animated by personal vendetta, in a word unreasonable by any definition. Thanks for the Thucydides! From a subscriber.
Thank you for this. You are of course absolutely correct: the shouting was all on one side. Good point. But I'm glad that you enjoyed it otherwise, and thank you for being a subscriber and taking the time to comment.
I'm sorry to get that point off my chest to an undeserving target and do hope a lot of people read your brilliant piece.
No worries! Thanks again. : )
How would this https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/04/us-military-aid-ukraine-pause-trump-zelenskyy-updates have landed with a latter day Thucydides, I wonder, Peter?
Even as I wonder and you ponder Ukraine, today and now even as I type, is being blitzed and bodies (those that remain intact enough to be) are being bagged!
At this point, Rob, especially after last Friday, that decision no longer comes as a surprise. But it's a very bad, very shameful betrayal of the Ukrainians, to whose brave resistance we all owe a great deal.
It's also, in my view, a very bad and utterly shameful betrayal of the majority of Americans. Or maybe I read the US Presidential Election entirely wrong and the majority of Americans went to the polls quite expecting to find, five weeks into Mr Trump's second Presidency, that Mr Putin would be (for once) telling the truth in pointing up the clearly close alignment of Washington and Moscow policy agendas?
In your wide reading in the realms of history and politics can you recall examples of such rapprochement between two hitherto adversarial (for the very good reason of their being so culturally polarised) states? Or perhaps you can bring to mind examples of how a country as cruelly betrayed by a former ally gets out from under the yoke of imperial tyranny and prospers?
Going to tune into Mr Trump's address to Congress. After he's declared The American Tariff Wars open in the past 24 hours and disrespectfully insisted on referring to Canada's Prime Minister as being "Governor" who knows what strokes Putin's Placeman Puppet on Pennsylvania Avenue is going to treat the American People to next?
I'm sure some Americans feel betrayed, but it would be hard to say how many. Trump made no secret of his attitude toward Ukraine. Polls suggest that a majority of Americans support continued aid to Ukraine. But with respect to the election, in general I do not think foreign affairs weigh very heavily on the voting decisions of most Americans. Domestic issues loom larger. As for your question... I don't know. My historical education is actually somewhat deficient. I imagine a more knowledgeable reader could come up with a parallel--there's nothing new under the sun, as someone once said. But it's certainly true that the turnabout on Ukraine policy has been sudden enough to give a person whiplash.
I read Geography at university attracted to what was a School of Applied Geography. As students we were encouraged to make connections between the theories and practices encountered in course of study and how these might be put to work in order to comprehend and respond to the constant changes unfolding in the world about us. I write this to explain, somewhat, how I tend to engage with both news and academic media. "Okay" I might, put simply, be saying/thinking "that's interesting... that's impactful... that's inviting response... what's applicable to better understanding, interpreting and positively (individually and societally) responding to the change(s) unfolding?
As an individual, and what's more one who is neither resident or citizen of the USA, the best I can do is endeavour to get my head around the phenomenon that is, let's say doubtless for want of a better descriptor, 'Trump the Disrupter' and to keep tabs on just why it is that I find myself thinking that the period of turbulence that this one character has contrived to unleash upon both America and the Wider World is not going to end either well or any time soon. There are, to my mind obvious, lessons from 20th and first quarter 21st century history that the many inveterately incurious members of our 'advanced' North American and West European societies may come to learn the hard way in some sooner rather more distant future.
I do enjoy reading what you share about what your reading in each latest episode of the rolling project that is is your bookshelf Peter. I enjoy the very decent intellectual standards that you bring to your reading and writing. My intention, "going forward" as was the go to phrase (of a-few-phrase-to-overuse-cycles ago) will be to detach the engine of ideas from the carriages/wagons of seeking faux relevance and applicability to what's unfolding live time in the world about us.
Best for the present from Middle England in the tolerable weather we're enjoying now that Meteorological Spring is here.
🙄 Well, finding that The Trumpster isn't going to be strutting to the podium and spouting his "vision" for well over an hour yet, I'm now heading up the wooden stairs to Bedfordshire... news bulletins don't quite cut it for me, of late, when it comes to the dastardly doings of The Donald and JD... watching live is, when possible, so rewarding because it is so revealing... thinking of notable book of a few decades back, 'The Naked Ape' by TV zoologist Desmond Morris, suggests a reprise title with Donald J Trump the self obsessed alpha male in the frame: 'The Naked Solipsist'. 🤔
Night night all, sleep tight, don't let the Terrible Trump Monsters bite!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/04/us-military-aid-ukraine-pause-trump-zelenskyy-updates