Ferne Park

  

 

From Country Life:

From the south terrace of Ferne Park, the double avenue of 400 lime trees lead out towards the hazy distance where, on the rise of Cranborne Chase, a stand of beeches marks the site of the Bronze Age Win Green bowl barrow. This is the highest point in the Cranborne Chase National Landscape, where the ancient ox drove runs east/west, linking the chase to Salisbury in Wiltshire and Shaftesbury in Dorset over the county border. Equally breathtaking is the view from the front steps of the house, which faces north to the rolling greensand hills in the Vale of Wardour. Little wonder that there has been a settlement here since 1225.

The surprise is that the house that commands this view and the gardens and parkland that surround it have only been here for 25 years. When Lord and Lady Rothermere bought the estate, it covered 200 acres and was derelict: there was no house and everything that could be sold had been. Today, the estate encompasses 2,000 acres, of which the garden covers about 28 acres, providing cut flowers, houseplants, vegetables, fruit and eggs. The 100-acre park surrounding the garden has been substantially replanted and is now home to a herd of White Park heritage cattle.

‘When I went with my husband to look at Ferne,’ recalls Lady Rothermere of her first sight of the estate in March 1999, ‘I had no desire to build a house. To create a garden certainly wasn’t in my future plans.’ Yet, as they rolled down the A30 and the landscape opened up before them, they could not help but be smitten. ‘Our decision to move was very impulsive, but we were young.’(Read more.)

 

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We’re In the Midst of Another Globalist Psy-op

 From Welcome to Absurdistan:

The real damage was done to the young. While boomers made bank on global warming and globalism, kids are in despair. In the real world, the physical, nothing has happened for 35 years. Every middle and working class person has been cheated of life. Slow growth, no growth, over-regulation to stop enterprise because ‘carbon’, has nearly choked the life out of us. The Climate Change/Net Zero junta was supposed to shut us up, the science so convoluted and unreadable, we were supposed to be silent in awe of our superiors. And the corporations were about to make big big bank off the carbon tax subsidies of truck drivers and waitresses.

You know who swallowed the fiction whole? Teachers.

In a Lancet Planetary Health study of 10,000 young people across ten countries, 75 percent said the future is frightening, and 56 percent said they believe humanity is doomed. A 2025 PNAS study found one in five Americans aged 16 to 24 is afraid to have children because of the climate. That gloom has deepened over time. In Yale’s long-running survey, the share of Americans 18 to 34 who say global warming is already harming this country rose from 40 percent in 2012 to 64 percent in 2022. - American Greatness, August 22, 2026

That’s why those generations are looking hard at Democratic Socialism. The world of their parents was gutted by globalists, slow growth and the scare story of climate change. They don’t see a future.

But in the real world, even the IPCC has downgraded their warnings to moderate, unknown, not catastrophic, and the scam is almost over. Once the digital elites realized they needed more energy they stopped virtue signalling and funding the NGO’s, and that was that. Canada and Europe are still trying to save face and pay off investors in “carbon capture”, as are the media, but that will fade too. The pension losses alone……draw a veil.

But then of course, a new panic is confected. Bill Gates issued a warning about AI two days ago, which means AI panic is a globalist psy-op which has picked up just about everyone. If Bill Gates is opining, it’s a psy-op; nothing that man says is honest.

The things that physical AI, agentic Ai will do, is transform the workplace. When BMW and Sieman’s integrated AI into their factories, no jobs were lost. New jobs, with new training were integrated. (Read more.)

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The Best Film Ever?

In some recent Tudor novels and series there has been an emphasis on St. Thomas More's role in Henry VIII's persecution of religious dissenters. As Chancellor of England, St.Thomas had the morbid task of overseeing the execution of heretics according to the laws of the land. Most countries at the time saw heresy as a capital offense so St. Thomas was not doing anything unusual in carrying out the King's will in such matters. It is the mistake of our post-Enlightenment era to judge the past by our present way of doing things. Just as we are horrified by their burning of heretics, so would they be horrified by our massive numbers of aborted babies. From George Weigel at First Things:

I recently rewatched Fred Zinnemann’s riveting cinematic adaptation of Robert Bolt’s play for at least the sixth time, and the thought occurred: Is A Man for All Seasons the most perfect film ever made? Everything about it seems exactly right.

Bolt’s screenplay keeps the action moving, highlighting the story’s pivotal moments while losing nothing of consequence from the play’s script. Everyone in the cast is terrific, beginning with Paul Scofield’s Thomas More and continuing through Wendy Hiller’s Alice More, Robert Shaw’s Henry VIII (the young Renaissance hero, not the porcine lecher of later years), Orson Welles’s Cardinal Wolsey (embodiment of a Church crippled by its alliance with state power), Nigel Davenport’s rough-and-tumble Duke of Norfolk, Leo McKern’s cynically amoral Thomas Cromwell, and John Hurt’s Richard Rich, corrupted by intellectual arrogance and overweening ambition. Vanessa Redgrave’s lascivious, eighty-second cameo as Anne Boleyn hints at the sorry end awaiting the woman for whom King Henry broke with the Church of Rome.

Ted Moore’s cinematography is both gorgeous and true to history; I once looked out the window in More’s cell in the Tower of London and was struck by how cannily Zinnemann and his cinematographer used that view of the Thames embankment to convey the changing seasons during Sir Thomas’s lengthy imprisonment. Georges Delerue’s score is well-matched to the flow of the film and gives it an authentic Renaissance flavor.

If there is anything awry in A Man for All Seasons, I didn’t notice it. 

I’ve often taken exception to Bolt’s attempt, in the preface he wrote for the 1962 paperback edition of his play, to justify to his secularist peers his esteem for More, an ardent Catholic. In that apologia, the agnostic-bordering-on-atheist playwright positioned Thomas More as a proto-existentialist hero: one who died in defense of “an adamantine sense of his own self,” King Henry’s threat to which caused “this supple, humorous, unassuming, and sophisticated person [to] set like metal, [and be] overtaken by an absolutely primitive rigor”—a man who “could no more be budged than a cliff.” Yet in his screenplay, Bolt could not escape some decidedly Catholic facts: that the More family prayed together; that More, as a theologically knowledgeable consultant, helped Henry VIII win the title “Defender of the Faith” for a book defending the seven sacraments against Martin Luther; and that More, at his trial, insisted that the papacy was a divinely mandated institution. Then, at the end, Bolt’s More confesses that he dies “the King’s good servant, but God’s first”—the God who “will not refuse one who is so blithe to go to him.” (Read more.)

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How Medieval Literature Built the Arthurian Legend

  

From Medievalists:

Another story to emerge in the late twelfth century centres on the tragic and adulterous romance between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Iseult. The tale survives in several versions, including those written by Béroul and Thomas of Britain, and quickly became one of the most popular romances of the Middle Ages. Early versions contain only limited connections to King Arthur and his court, but later writers increasingly integrated Tristan into the wider Arthurian world, often portraying him as one of the Knights of the Round Table. The legend became a major parallel tradition within medieval Arthurian literature, blending themes of love, loyalty, betrayal, and fate. (Read more.)

 

The changing myth of King Arthur. Also from Medievalists:

After appearing and disappearing for centuries, Arthur’s story is set down in its longest and most widely-read early form in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain. In it, he stands for everything that was ideal in the author’s twelfth-century world: unity in a time of near-constant political instability, kingship with wisdom and fortitude, strength of arms with the courage to use it, and Christianity above all. As a historian, although widely discredited even in his own time, Geoffrey of Monmouth emphasized Arthur as worthy of legend because of his political acts: unifying warring kingdoms under one banner and ruling justly over all.

 At nearly the same time, courtly love was all the rage in the literary world. This ideal love was adulterous, courageous, and so passionate moderns might find it marginally embarrassing. It was at this moment that Lancelot rode into the Arthurian mythology, fainting with love over Guinevere, and pushing Arthur to the side as a stodgy, less hip cuckold. Arthur endured this romantic shift as a great but increasingly less-adventurous figure, who stayed behind boringly but brilliantly governing his realm while his knights risked life and limb on their glorious quests. Although this was also the moment in which the quest for the Holy Grail emerged, Arthur, ever-involved in worldly affairs and now tangled up in a love triangle, is not the one to find it. (Read more.)

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A Calculated Betrayal of America’s Working Families

From Chronicles:

In high-immigration metro areas, demand for housing has outstripped supply for years. Rents and home prices have surged at a pace that outstrips increases in median incomes. A working family in the suburbs now competes not only with other local buyers but also with a growing population whose presence is the deliberate result of immigration policy.

The same pattern appears in public schools and hospitals. Districts with rapid demographic change face larger class sizes, strained special-education budgets, and longer wait times for everything from pediatric care to elective procedures. These are not theories, but the daily realities of families who play by the rules and still watch their children’s opportunities shrink.

Then there is inflation. More people competing for the same finite goods and services—housing, medical appointments, community college seats, even supermarket shelves—pushes prices higher. The Federal Reserve may talk about aggregate demand, but it hits the budget of a nurse, electrician, or mid-level office worker as lost purchasing power.

Meanwhile, the billionaire class remains insulated. They do not compete for jobs or public-school slots. They profit from the expanded labor pool that keeps wages in check and from the consumer base that buys the products their companies sell.

But can we count on political change? “Vote the bums out!” becomes a much less effective strategy when the voting rights of citizens are diluted. Rapid population growth through immigration decreases over time the weight of existing citizens’ ballots in congressional apportionment and in the Electoral College, as the census which determines these numbers counts all residents, not just citizens. Communities that once set their own priorities find those priorities reordered by demographic shifts they never voted for. This is not xenophobia; it is simple math.

And yet a powerful faction on the left—especially those associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—insists that infinity migration is both a moral imperative and a path to economic justice. The DSA platform and its most prominent voices call for what amounts to open borders while simultaneously promising to deliver higher wages, stronger unions, and redistribution from the billionaire class to everyone else. These goals cannot coexist. You cannot flood the low- and mid-skill labor market and then claim you will raise the floor for native workers. You cannot expand the population competing for housing, healthcare, and education while claiming to prioritize the children already here. (Read more.)

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Remembering the Battle of Mohács

A brilliant article which shows how the European powers' fears over the growth of Habsburg hegemony contributed to the triumph of Islam. From Chronicles:

Hungary’s defeat coincided with larger European developments. The Habsburgs were then emerging as a major European power, considered by many players—and most dishonorably by the French—to be more threatening than the 100,000-strong devastating Turkish host advancing up the Danube Valley. The Habsburgs were able to establish control over the westernmost fifth of Hungary, and from there, 150 years later under the leadership of their brilliant commander Eugene of Savoy, to advance steadily south to the Military Frontier established along the northern banks of the Sava and the Danube east of Belgrade. In the Hungarian heartland under Turkish rule, however, and in  autonomous Transylvania in the east,  because so many Catholic hierarchs and priests died at Mohács, the Hungarian Reformation consolidated its territorial hold.

In 1526 there was a structural imbalance between Europe’s acute political fragmentation, while the Ottomans, under Suleiman, had achieved an impressive level of administrative centralization and military efficiency. The Turkish edifice would start crumbling only decades after Suleiman’s death in 1566, but in the meantime Europe faced immense danger from the east. It loomed just as Europe engaged—during the Thirty Years’ War—in the most destructive episode of self immolation until that time. The Ottoman threat finally retreateed after the second siege of Vienna in 1683.

The battle lost in 1526 has had a defining role in forming Hungarian historical consciousness. The “Mohács Trauma” appeared in the public discourse soon after the battle, and eventually became synonymous with continuing Hungarian misfortune in the public mind. For a long time that trauma was restricted mainly to the upper social stratum. This was in contrast to Serbia and other Serb lands, where the epic saga of the Battle of Kosovo and its mystical transformation of military defeat into moral victory lived on even among illiterate peasants, indeed especially among them. (Read more.)

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Mary of Modena: James II's Dazzling Queen

 

There are several cases throughout history of arranged royal marriages in which it was as if God had chosen to favor a particular country by sending a bride who possessed not only virtue but great physical beauty to be the wife of the ruler and the mother of the heir. A few of those alliances ended catastrophically when, for certain reasons, the bride in question was rejected by her adopted people, even when loved by her husband. I am thinking in particular of Henrietta Maria of France, despised for her attachment to her Catholic faith. There is also Marie-Antoinette, hated for her Austrian heritage, made worse by a campaign of vicious slander. The tragic Empress Alexandra, whom Tsar Nicholas married for love, was falsely accused of betraying Russia to her German relatives. Among such consorts, noble and fair to behold, shines Mary Beatrice of Modena, the second wife of James II. Justine Brown, author of The Private Life of James II, has surpassed herself in this comprehensive biography of the last Catholic Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland. I found it engrossing for the detailed descriptions of the pageantry of the final years of the Stuart dynasty before the so-called "Glorious Revolution" in which the true monarch was overthrown by his own daughters. The evidence is compiled to show that James II was driven from his throne not for any tyranny, as is claimed by Whiggish historians, but because his wife had give birth to a Catholic heir. It was hatred of the Faith that disrupted the royal line and led to the weakening of the royal authority, so that in time British sovereigns reigned but no longer ruled.

From the Amazon page:

Mary Beatrice learns governance, defies scandal, and becomes a steadfast beacon for Jacobite resilience amid a turbulent Restoration era.

The 1688 “Glorious Revolution” that toppled James II and VII also veiled his consort in propaganda. Mary of Modena: James II’s Dazzling Queen reveals the extraordinary woman beneath. Lovely and spirited, Mary Beatrice Isabella d’Este is also England’s sole Italian queen. Her father came from an ancient line, while her mother was one of Cardinal Mazarin’s seven famed nieces (the “Mazarinettes”).

Mary Beatrice learned the rudiments of governance at her widowed mother’s knee, and would one day act as regent of the Stuart court-in-exile—first for King James, then for their son, James Francis Edward. “The Queen over the Water” would shine as a beacon for the Jacobite cause.

Once, Mary Beatrice longed to be a nun. Instead, the young woman had to accept a different mission—marriage to James Duke of York, heir to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Although James’s conversion to Catholicism made their marriage possible, it set off a firestorm of controversy in the mysterious northern realm.

The story of the British Isles was romantic, but the reality was jarring. Thrown into the frenzy of Restoration politics, Mary Beatrice met each fresh episode courageously. Charles II adored his sister-in-law, but MPs strove to annul the “Italian match” before it could be consummated. She and James fell in love, but his philandering nearly broke her.

Building on Este tradition, Mary Beatrice won over the common folk, inspired poets and painters, introduced Italian opera, and drew talented ladies to court. She also attracted her flamboyant Mazarinette cousin Hortense Mancini to England, where she joined King Charles’s harem.

Ultimately, James and Mary Beatrice were coronated with great ceremony, but their troubles were only just beginning. For the first time in English history, it looked like the birth of a healthy prince might actually destroy the monarchy instead of strengthening it…(Read more.)

In Justine's account, I found Mary of Modena to be inspiring not only as a brave and steadfast Queen but as a Catholic wife and mother dealing with adversity. As a teenage bride she was shattered to discover that the handsome husband she had fallen in love with was a chronic adulterer with a growing number of illegitimate offspring. And while the children of James' mistresses grew and thrived, Mary's children miscarried, or were stillborn or died young. But Mary, who had originally wanted to be a Visitandine nun, followed the teaching of the founder of the Visitation order, St. Francis de Sales. St. Francis de Sales emphasized a loving acceptance of trials as well as complete trust and confidence in God. Queen Mary's spiritual director was the Jesuit St. Claude La Colombière who brought to England the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, for he had been the confessor of  the Visitation nun who claimed to have visions of the Savior, known to history as St. Margaret Mary. Mary of Modena would help spread the devotion to the Heart of God throughout Europe in her later years of exile. Meanwhile, James II, whose childhood had been disrupted by war, imprisonment and exile, came to learn to live a devout life from his much younger wife, so that he gave up his transgressive lifestyle. I was particularly struck by the happiness of James and Mary when they had lost everything, but had each other and their children. I recommend this biography of a Queen of England who experienced a white martyrdom, yet the more she was diminished, the greater she became.

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The Catholic Revival

 From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

Sergio Infante, a professor at Yale, is on a mission from God. He’s determined to make sure the new Catholic revival energizing Generation Z is woke. Contra Professor Infante, it is essential that the new wave of young Catholics be anti-communist. I’d like to encourage them to sign up for the Anti-Communist Film Festival, which will be held at the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington, D.C. in October. Registration is free. Here is Professor Infante from his piece in Slate:

Around the United States, as you’ve probably heard, Gen Z Catholics are heading to the pews in eye-popping numbers. They meet up in pizzerias and follow one another on social media. They flock to Catholic student organizations, which are booming. And at Yale University, where I teach Latin American and global history, they attend classes and public lectures to learn about their faith.

(Read more.)

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The England I Knew Is Gone

 From Carl Trueman at First Things:

In retrospect, I see that I grew up at a breaking point in English culture. I was (perhaps symbolically) the last person at my school to study Latin and the last not to take computer science. The ancient disciplines were already on life support, and the technocrats were waiting in the wings. My copy of Lewis and Short, the classic Latin dictionary, is an ever-present symbol of this; it was the school’s copy, given to me when I left as it was of no further use to the institution.  

Earlier this year, I had a strange premonition of how different England has become. A young Dutch politician, Eva Vlaardingerbroek, was barred from entering the U.K. One of my sisters had never heard of her and therefore did an AI Google search to find out what had made her so dangerous. To her surprise, the chatbot told her that this politician was known, among other things, to refer to my work in public lectures, and that we were both outspoken opponents of transgenderism. The same government, of course, has allowed thousands of anonymous young men to enter the country, providing them with accommodation while only last week finding it necessary to advise them of some quaint aspects of British culture, such as the fact that women are allowed to work, that “if you have sex with someone without their consent, this is called rape,” and that if you indulge in such behavior, “it will affect your asylum claim.” Dutch conservatives who think that women cannot have penises are not welcome, while men from countries that consider rape something of a gray area are entering in droves. Well, I suppose the situation could be worse: They could be fans of J. K. Rowling or retweet posts by Graham Linehan.

England exemplifies the political shape a country takes when expressive individualism grips the imagination of its ruling class. It is impossible for any culture to allow everyone to be who they want to be, from transgender activists to traditional Christians. Somebody therefore has to bring order to the potential chaos, and as expressive individualism tends strongly toward the transgressive, with its core notion that personal authenticity lies in breaking with the herd (that is, the social expectations of the past), the culture-makers will typically favor those who want to demolish received ideas and traditions deemed stumbling blocks to self-realization. This turns morality on its head. Yesterday’s virtues have become today’s oppressive vices, as the moral register has shifted in a psychological direction—most notably in the trivialization of trauma, which in some cases has come to mean little more than “somebody somewhere said something hurtful about me.” Sadly, the Church has often proved little different.  (Read more.)

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