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It was called killing with courtesy and involved all the passions that could raise blood pressure: family, race, wealth, sex, social class , honor and identity. ”On 15 November 1712, two leading scions of the British aristocracy met in a deadly duel in Hyde Park. After two minutes of brutal swordplay, the Whig Lord Mohun [...]
‘All hands on deck, we’ve run afloat!’ I heard the captain cry ‘Explore the ship, replace the cook: let no one leave alive!’ Across the straits, around the Horn: how far can sailors fly? A twisted path, our tortured course, and no one left alive We sailed for parts unknown to man, where ships come [...]
The Medusa, a naval frigate, ran aground off Mauritania in July 1816. Only about 250 of the 400 people on board could fit into the lifeboats. On a jerry-built raft about 150 of the others were set adrift. By the time of their rescue thirteen days later, only fifteen were still alive. The event caused [...]
The British eighteenth century used to be presented as the serene aftermath of the spectacular disruptions of the seventeenth century or as the quietly corrupt old regime against which a modernizing nineteenth century set itself. Both interpretations seriously underplayed the eighteenth century’s characteristic energy and dynamism. Whilst the traditional and conventional view does locate Britain’s ‘rise to greatness’ [...]
There was a time when landed gentry were able to lead a life of extraordinary privilege and freedom. It was the era of the lordly pleasures. Secure in their wealth, confident of their position, indulged by their countrymen, the aristocrats of eighteenth-century England did their own thing, and in doing it, invented enduring ideals of [...]
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green And was the holy lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen And did the countenance divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills And was Jerusalem builded here Among those dark Satanic mills Bring me my bow of burning gold Bring me my [...]
The cannibal in written records was originally a story about what existed beyond the boundaries of the known. It kept the wild and the civic state apart. Sometimes, however, it brought them together: Othello seduced Desdemona with his tales of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath [...]
“The Raft of the Medusa,” while maintaining the symmetry of Poussin, changes painting once and for all. It is sculptural and architectural, but depicts no architecture. Two great overlapping triangles, suggesting both a ship’s sails and the ocean’s waves, define the space. They also contain 19 human figures (one barely visible, four others quite obscure) [...]
”Every human face is a hieroglyph which can be deciphered, indeed whose key we bear ready-made within us” ( Schopenhauer ) From the ancients onward, Europeans in particular have puzzled over the face, devising methods for interpreting its secret language. The classical science of physiognomics involved deciphering an individual nature by comparing his or her [...]
Someone told me It’s all happening at the zoo. I do believe it, I do believe it’s true. Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Whoooa. Mmmmm. The monkeys stand for honesty, Giraffes are insincere, And the elephants are kindly but They’re dumb. Orangutans are skeptical Of changes in their cages, And the zookeeper is very fond of rum. Zebras [...]
