Tea at Trianon: Lawrence of Arabia

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, August 27, 2010

Lawrence of Arabia

His secret missions revealed.

The secret missions helped Lt Col Lawrence capture Damascus in 1918 where he became instrumental in setting up an Arab government.

But the flights were so sensitive the RAF were said to have known nothing of them and they remained a secret - eluding depiction in the 1962 Hollywood movie Lawrence of Arabia starring actor Peter O'Toole.

Now details of the flights have emerged in diaries complied by an aircraft mechanic George Hynes who was one of Lawrence's closest aides during the Arab revolts.

anothertwocents said...: This resplendent painting of TE Lawrence dates from around the time of his participation at the Paris Peace Conference, and thus before he saw the British break practically all the promises Lawrence had made to the Arabs to entice them to rebel against the Turks, their fellow Muslims.

Lawrence came to be so disgusted by British politicians, Churchill included, that he left to live a simple life under an assumed name.; August 27, 2010 at 6:39:00 PM EDT