Tea at Trianon: So Much for Churchill

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

Monday, July 15, 2013

So Much for Churchill

From the Express:

Labour's Chris Bryant, who represents Rhondda, said his constituents had never forgiven the wartime Prime Minister for sending in the army to support police during a miners strike when Sir Winston was Home Secretary in 1910.

Mr Bryant made the comments in the House of Commons today during a debate on Education Secretary Michael Gove's reforms to the national curriculum.

The plans involve teaching about Sir Winston in English schools, but education in Wales is a devolved responsibility of the Welsh Government.

Mr Bryant told the Commons: "There's only one constituency in the land where Winston Churchill was never ever welcome, including after the Second World War, namely the Rhondda.

"So I am delighted this curriculum, which bizarrely only insists on one politician being studied in the whole of the history of the 20th century, namely Winston Churchill, will not apply in Wales or in the Rhondda." (Read entire article.)