#including some historical uk newspapers

[micewithknives]

For Australia we have Trove which is our historic newspaper archive (and other random fun things). 10/10 recommend. It has a bunch of local newspapers digitised as well, so you get to find out all the town gossip in your family history

my own grandfather's obituary was fucking paywalled because it was originally only in print and then digitized, and the newspaper that ran the original obituary has a paywalled website. my grandfather's obituary is paywalled. he died when i was a toddler. i don't know where he was is buried. and the only record of his obituary is paywalled. like, i know it's a minor thing and i can easily get past this. but damn it feels a bit dystopian, don't you think?

[mariacallous]

“There are only so many books on Ukraine we can review each month,” an editor from a major British newspaper tells me at one of the country’s largest literary festivals. He looks a bit uncomfortable, almost apologetic. He wants me to understand that if it were up to him, he’d review a book on Ukraine every day, but that’s just not how the industry works.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, I’ve had a glimpse into how several industries work: Publishing, journalism, and the broader world of culture, including galleries and museums. Even before the big war, I knew more than I wanted to about how academia works (or rather doesn’t) when it comes to Ukraine. A common thread among all these fields is the limited attention they allocate to countries that do not occupy a place among the traditional big players of imperial politics.

Cultural imperialism lives on, even if its carriers often proclaim anti-colonial slogans. It thrives in gate-keeping, with editors and academics mistrusting voices that don’t sound like those higher up the ladder, while platforming those who have habitually been accepted as authoritative. “We’ve done Ukraine already” is a frequent response whenever you pitch an idea, text, or public event centering the country.

The editor who can’t keep publishing reviews of Ukraine-related books walks away, and I pick up a copy of one of the UK’s most prominent literary magazines to see their book recommendations. Out of a handful of reviews, three are on recent books about Russia. It seems like the space afforded to Russia remains unlimited. I close the publication to keep my blood pressure down.

Keeping my blood pressure down, however, is challenging. When my social media feeds aren’t advertising another production of Uncle Vanya, they’re urging me to splash out on opera tickets for Eugene Onegin. What happened to the dreaded “cancelling” of Russian culture? The Russia section in most bookshops I visit in the UK is growing daily with everything from yet another translation of Dostoevsky to accounts of opposition figures killed or imprisoned by the Kremlin.

The international media focus on the August 2024 release of Russian political prisoners was yet another example of how the more things change, the more they stay the same. While these released prisoners were provided with a global media platform to call for an end to “unfair” sanctions on “ordinary Russians,” there was no mention of the thousands of Ukrainian civilians who continue to languish in Russian jails.

The ongoing international emphasis on all things Russian goes hand in hand with a reluctance to transform growing interest in Ukraine into meaningful structural changes in how the country is perceived, reported on, and understood. Although there has been some improvement in knowledge about Ukraine since 2022, the move is essentially from having no understanding to having a superficial grasp.

Each time I read a piece on Ukraine by someone not well-versed in the country’s history and politics, my heart sinks. The chances are it will recycle historical cliches, repeat Kremlin propaganda about Russophone Ukrainians, or generalize about regional differences. And to add insult to injury, such articles also often misspell at least one family or place name, using outdated Russian transliterations. A quick Google search or a message to an actual Ukrainian could prevent these errors and save the author from looking foolish. Yet aiding this kind of colonial complacency seems to bother neither the authors nor the editors involved.

I often wonder what would happen if I wrote a piece on British or US politics and misspelt the names of historical figures, towns, and cities. How likely would I be to get it published? And yet the same standards do not apply when it comes to writing about countries that have not been granted priority status in our mental hierarchies of the world. We can misspell them all we like; no one will notice anyway. Apart from the people from those countries, of course. And when an exasperated Ukrainian writes to complain, I can almost see the editors rolling their eyes and thinking, “What does this perpetually frustrated nation want now? We’ve done Ukraine. Why are they never satisfied?”

It is not enough to simply “do Ukraine” by reviewing one book on the war, especially if it’s by a Western journalist rather than a Ukraine-based author. It’s not enough to host one exhibition, particularly if it is by an artist or photographer who only spent a few weeks in the country. Quickly putting together a panel on Russia’s war in response to a major development at the front and adding a sole Ukrainian voice at the last minute doesn’t cut it either. This box-ticking approach is unhelpful and insulting.

It is important to acknowledge that some Western media outlets have significantly enhanced their coverage of Ukraine over the past two and a half years. They have typically done so by dedicating time and resources to having in-house experts who have either reported from Ukraine for many years, or who are committed to deepening their knowledge enough to produce high-quality analysis. However, many of these outlets still seem compelled to provide platforms for individuals entirely unqualified to analyse the region. Surely this isn’t what balance means?

Since February 2022, more than 100 Ukrainian cultural figures have been killed in the war. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, by May 2024, over 2,000 cultural institutions had been damaged or destroyed. This includes 711 libraries, 116 museums and galleries, and 37 theatres, cinemas, and concert halls. In May 2024, Russia bombed Factor Druk, the country’s biggest printing house.

When I attended this year’s Kyiv Book Arsenal, Ukraine’s largest literary festival, each panel began with a minute of silence to honor the memory of colleagues killed in the war. All this is in addition to mounting military losses, many of whom are yesterday’s civilians, including journalists and creatives who have either volunteered or been drafted into the army. This is the current state of the Ukrainian creative industry.

To save time for Western editors, publishers, and curators, let me clarify what all of us perpetually frustrated Ukrainians want. We would appreciate it if they turned to actual Ukraine specialists when working on Ukraine-related themes. Not those who suddenly pivoted from specializing in Russia, or who feel entitled to speak authoritatively because they discovered a distant Ukrainian ancestor, or those who have only recently shown interest in Ukraine due to business opportunities in the country’s reconstruction. We would be grateful if they took the time to seek out experts who have been studying Ukraine long before it became fashionable, who understand the country in all its complexity, and who care enough to offer Ukrainians the basic dignity of having their names spelt correctly.

I like to fantasise about a time when editors of top Western periodicals will choose to review books on Ukraine not simply because the country is at war and they feel obliged to cover it now and again, but because these books offer vital insights into democracy, the fight for freedom, or the importance of maintaining unity and a sense of humor in times of crisis. I hope for a day when galleries will host exhibitions of Ukrainian art, not just because it was rescued from a war zone, but because the artists involved provide fresh perspectives on the world.

I also dream that we, the perpetually frustrated Ukraine specialists, will eventually be able to focus on our own scholarship and creativity rather than correcting the mistakes and misleading takes of others. This will happen when cultural institutions, publishing houses, universities, and newspapers acquire in-house experts whose knowledge of Ukraine and the wider region extends beyond Russia.

Dr Olesya Khromeychuk is a historian and writer. She is the author of The Death of a Soldier Told by His Sister (2022). Khromeychuk has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Prospect, and The New Statesman, and has delivered a TED talk on What the World Can Learn From Ukraine’s Fight for Democracy. She has taught the history of East-Central Europe at several British universities and is currently the Director of the Ukrainian Institute London.

[probablyasocialecologist]

An innovation that propelled Britain to become the world’s leading iron exporter during the Industrial Revolution was appropriated from an 18th-century Jamaican foundry, historical records suggest. The Cort process, which allowed wrought iron to be mass-produced from scrap iron for the first time, has long been attributed to the British financier turned ironmaster Henry Cort. It helped launch Britain as an economic superpower and transformed the face of the country with “iron palaces”, including Crystal Palace, Kew Gardens’ Temperate House and the arches at St Pancras train station. Now, an analysis of correspondence, shipping records and contemporary newspaper reports reveals the innovation was first developed by 76 black Jamaican metallurgists at an ironworks near Morant Bay, Jamaica. Many of these metalworkers were enslaved people trafficked from west and central Africa, which had thriving iron-working industries at the time. Dr Jenny Bulstrode, a lecturer in history of science and technology at University College London (UCL) and author of the paper, said: “This innovation kicks off Britain as a major iron producer and … was one of the most important innovations in the making of the modern world.” The technique was patented by Cort in the 1780s and he is widely credited as the inventor, with the Times lauding him as “father of the iron trade” after his death. The latest research presents a different narrative, suggesting Cort shipped his machinery – and the fully fledged innovation – to Portsmouth from a Jamaican foundry that was forcibly shut down.

[...]

The paper, published in the journal History and Technology, traces how Cort learned of the Jamaican ironworks from a visiting cousin, a West Indies ship’s master who regularly transported “prizes” – vessels, cargo and equipment seized through military action – from Jamaica to England. Just months later, the British government placed Jamaica under military law and ordered the ironworks to be destroyed, claiming it could be used by rebels to convert scrap metal into weapons to overthrow colonial rule. “The story here is Britain closing down, through military force, competition,” said Bulstrode. The machinery was acquired by Cort and shipped to Portsmouth, where he patented the innovation. Five years later, Cort was discovered to have embezzled vast sums from navy wages and the patents were confiscated and made public, allowing widespread adoption in British ironworks. Bulstrode hopes to challenge existing narratives of innovation. “If you ask people about the model of an innovator, they think of Elon Musk or some old white guy in a lab coat,” she said. “They don’t think of black people, enslaved, in Jamaica in the 18th century.”

[judassmyvirtue]

Hey folks, just dropping some resources here for those of you who, like me, are always on the hunt for free reading material, whether it's for research or just to satisfy your curiosity. Check these out:

Library of Congress: Absolute goldmine for academic researches and historical documents. You can spend hours diving into their collections.

Z-library: A treasure trove of books, articles, and papers on pretty much any topic you can think of. Quick downloads, no fuss.

Project Gutenberg: Free e-books galore, especially if you're into classics. Saved me from many a boring commute.

Internet Archive: A digital library offering free universal access to books, movies, and music, plus archived web pages. Endless hours of browsing joy.

Google Books: Sometimes you just need a quick peek inside a book without committing to buying it. Google Books has got your back.

Google Scholar: It scours through scholarly sources, journals, theses, and more. Just be ready to sift through some dense material.

JSTOR: Another heavyweight in the academic world. JSTOR is packed with scholarly articles, books, and primary sources across various disciplines. Some stuff may be behind a paywall, but there's still plenty to explore for free.

Newspaper Archive: Want to browse through historical newspapers? This site has a massive collection spanning centuries and covering a wide range of topics. Perfect for digging up primary sources.

Newspapers.com: Need more historical newspapers? Look no further.

Perseus Digital Library: Focuses on ancient Greco-Roman materials, perfect for those deep dives into classical history.

Digital Public Library of America: Another treasure trove of digitized materials, including photos, manuscripts, and more.

Europeana: European cultural heritage online. Images, texts, the whole shebang.

DOAJ: Open access journals. DOAJ indexes and provides access to high-quality, peer-reviewed open access research journals.

Open Library: Another digital library offering over 1.7 million free eBooks.

Librivox: Audiobooks for when your eyes need a break.

National Archives (UK): Offers access to a wealth of historical documents, including government records, maps, photographs, and more.

Sci-Hub: For the rebels. Access to scholarly articles.

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB): Looking for free scholarly books? DOAB has got you covered with a vast collection.

Digital Commons Network: Free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide.

Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR): Find open access repositories worldwide.

Gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France): French flair for your research.

DigitalNZ: Your gateway to New Zealand's digital heritage.

[dragoneyes618]

There’s a popular slogan in Israel that appears on car stickers, jewelry and suchlike: Ein Li Eretz Acheret, “I have no other country.” The phrase comes from the title of an iconic and extremely moving song written by Ehud Manor, with music composed by Corinne Allal, and originally recorded in 1986 by Gali Atari; we will mention those names again later. Its opening lines and chorus are Ain li eretz acharet, gam im admati bo��eret, “I have no other country, even if my land is burning.”

A neighbor of mine, who was experiencing considerable war anxiety about the land burning, told me that he didn’t relate to it at all. He said, “But I do have another country. I can go back to Teaneck!” And he said that if things got worse, he would seriously consider doing so.

At the beginning of the war, I was wondering the same thing. I do have another country – two, actually. I have UK citizenship and my wife has U.S. citizenship, and our children have both. Maybe we should go back to live somewhere safer? One of the commentators on the previous post was talking about Lakewood as being a safe and excellent place to live with a rich Jewish life.

Now I could continue by talking about how special and beneficial it is to live in Israel, about how it’s both the Promised Land and our historic homeland, about how it’s the only country with Jewish sovereignty. Which would all be true. But there’s a different point that I want to discuss in this post.

Yes, I do have another country that I could go to (though it wouldn’t be at all straightforward, especially for my children). So do lots of people in Ramat Beit Shemesh and the rest of Israel.

But there’s also lots and lots and lots of people who don’t.

There are millions of Jews in Israel who just don’t have anywhere else to go. There are those who simply don’t have the money for it and would find it too difficult to find employment in a country where they don’t even speak the language. There are those who are too old or ill or who have young children that would suffer from a move. There are those who have crucial responsibilities here. There are those who are just too deeply embedded here.

Even more to the point, there are also millions of Jews who literally don’t have any passport other than their Israeli one. What other country will let them in? The Jews who came from Iran and Egypt and Syria and Yemen are certainly not able to go back to those countries! Nor are Russia and many European countries a safe place for Jews. And even countries which are relatively safe and allow some immigration are not going to accept millions of Jews (and if they did, those countries would likely quickly become not very safe for Jews).

In fact, that’s one of the main reasons why Israel came to exist in the first place. As antisemitism grew in Europe, many Jews realized that they needed to get out, but simply had nowhere to go. Twenty years before the Holocaust, at least 100,000 Jews were massacred in pogroms in the Ukraine, which also created 600,000 Jewish international refugees and millions more who were displaced and threatened.

At this point, many people realized that an even greater catastrophe might happen. But the countries to which the largest numbers of Jewish refugees were fleeing all revised their immigration policies to prevent further Jewish immigration. This included not only Poland and Germany (which obviously wouldn’t have been a good long-term solution anyway), but also the United States, Argentina, and British Palestine. In the U.S., Henry Ford’s newspaper published pamphlets about the Jewish problem, claiming that the national debt was Jewish-inspired to enslave Americans and other such hateful slurs to keep Jews out.

Then things got even worse in Europe, with the rise of Hitler. Some people managed to get out. The parents of Ehud Manor, writer of Ain Li Eretz Acheret, fled Belarus and managed to get into Palestine.

Yet still no country was willing to take in millions of Jews. The U.S. convened the Évian conference, bringing together 32 countries to find a home for Jewish refugees. But aside from the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, no country, including the U.S., was willing to accept Jewish refugees in any remotely significant number. Consequently, millions of Jews were killed in Europe.

And even after the horrors of the Holocaust, many Jewish survivors still had nowhere to go! Some of them went back to their home towns in Poland and were killed in a pogrom. Others languished in Displaced Persons camps for years, some of which were actually in concentration camps. My late mother-in-law spent the first years of her life in a DP camp; her parents were lucky enough to have a relative in the U.S. who eventually managed to bring them over, but most Jews did not have such an option.

Many Jews, very understandably, realized that a Jewish homeland was needed. It wasn’t about it necessarily being the safest place for a Jew to live. Everyone always knew that Palestine was in a hostile and dangerous part of the world, and that there would be a challenge with the resident Arabs (though it was generally assumed that some sort of compromise would be worked out; there was no broad plan to drive them out). And on the eve of the War of Independence, it was assessed that there was only a 50-50 chance of survival!

Israel has not yet been, and still is not, the safest place in the world for Jews. But not everyone has the option to live in the safest place in the world – many people just need somewhere that is safer than where they currently live. And in any case, having a homeland is not about attaining the greatest safety – it is about having a home, a place that Jews historically belong, a place that Jews can always come to when they fear persecution or experience discrimination, where we can take responsibility for our own safety, and where we can put being Jewish into action and expression.

While Israel won the War of Independence – at a cost of 1% of its population – this created a crisis for nearly a million Jews in Muslim countries, who were persecuted and had to make immediate use of Israel as a refuge. The parents of Gali Atari, singer of Ain Li Eretz Acheret, fled Yemen for Israel, while composer Corinne Allal’s family fled from Tunisia. But it should be born in mind that even if Israel had not come into existence, the existence of Jews in Muslim lands was difficult and very precarious.

And so we reach the situation that we are in today. Israel is home to over seven million Jews. Most of them do not have another country to go to, even if they wanted to (which they don’t). Ain lahem eretz acheret.

(As Haviv Rettig Gur notes, this is the fundamental mistake made by many Palestinians and their supporters, who believe that they can rid of the Jews with violence just as the Algerians successfully used violence to get the French colonialists to go back to France. They don’t grasp that most Jews just don’t have a country to go back to, and thus violence won’t achieve anything and will even be counter–productive.)

Now, there are some Jews who only look at things in terms of their own personal interests. “Where is a safe place for me to live? What is a spiritually safe environment for my children?” And if, as a result, others are less safe physically and spiritually and have to take on an even larger cost to their families and jobs and religious life, then that’s just too bad.

But others feel a sense of responsibility to the rest of our people. It’s not “me” and “them” – it’s us. The correct formulation is not ain li eretz acharet or ain lahem eretz acharet. It’s ain lanu eretz acheret.

Millions of Jews need Israel. And Israel needs a strong army and a strong economy to finance it and a flourishing national Jewish life. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to help with that.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: You’re one of the smartest and well-grounded defenders of conservatism I have read here but I’m curious how you would defend the British monarchy. What would you say to those critics who think the coronation of King Charles III and the monarchy in general is just a waste of time as its rituals are out-dated and therefore has no symbolic value? How will you and your family be celebrating the coronation of King Charles III?

Thank you for your kind words, however undeserved. I’ve already started celebrating the coronation. I was in London earlier in the week seeing family and friends and I was just taking in the magnificent royal pageantry makeover of central London. One of my gentlemen’s club is in Pall Mall (it feels weird to say that as a woman) and just walking down there up to Fortnum & Mason and Hatchards bookstore in and around Piccadilly and Green Park gave me goosebumps. I only wish I was there longer but alas I had to get back to Paris; but at least I bought some food and tea stash from Fortnum & Mason to bring back to friends.

I’ll be properly celebrating the coronation by hosting a ’street party’ on our French vineyard with my cousins and inviting some of the British expats and French neighbours to celebrate with lots of fine wine and champers in full flow. Like millions of others, my immediate family are doing their own thing to celebrate the coronation. Overall, it should be a great day. And historic too. I have a spring in my step even if the very next day I have the weight of work on my shoulders as I rush to the airport the very next day to step back on the punishing corporate treadmill. 

On the face of it, the British monarchy runs against the spirit of the times. Deference is dead, but royalty is built on a pantomime of archaic honourifics and frock-coated footmen. In an age of meritocracy, monarchy is rooted in the unjustifiable privilege of birth. Populism means that old elites are out, but the most conspicuous elite of all remains. Identity politics means that narratives are in, but the late queen kept her feelings under her collection of unfashionable hats. By rights, support for the crown should have crumbled under Elizabeth and especially under Charles. Instead, the monarchy has thrived. And it continues to thrive and thus maddening the bourgeois woke elites and perplexing race grifting decolonisation academics. And yet millions of Britons and many others around the world will tune in and celebrate the coronation of King Charles III. Unless your head is firmly embedded in the pages of the Guardian newspaper, poll after poll has shown the majority of Britons have supported the monarchy as an institution and the republican movement in the UK is a joke. Clearly the majority of Britons don’t see the monarchy as a waste of time or its rituals out-dated and nor having symbolic value? Why is that?

Most of the criticisms of monarchy are no longer valid today, if they were ever valid. These criticisms are usually some variation of two ideas. Firstly, the monarch may wield absolute power arbitrarily without any sort of check, thus ruling as a tyrant. However, in present era, most monarchies rule within some sort of constitutional or traditional framework which constrains and institutionalises their powers. Even prior to this, monarchs faced significant constraints from various groups including religious institutions, aristocracies, the wealthy, and even commoners. Customs, which always shape social interactions, also served to restrain. Even monarchies that were absolute in theory were almost always constrained in practice.

In Britain even the monarch was subject to the law from medieval times. As Sir Edward Coke put it in the famous 1610 Proclamations case, “the King hath no prerogative but that which the law of the land allows him”. If anyone doubts these issues are still relevant, the Supreme Court quoted these very words in its 2019 judgement on Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament. And the pre-existing law referred to, that “common law of the land”, went back - both in legal myth and in the popular mind - to Anglo-Saxon times, the era of Athelstan and St Edward (whose crown King Charles will wear).

A second criticism is that even a good monarch may have an unworthy successor. However, today’s heirs are educated from birth for their future role and live in the full glare of the media their entire lives. More importantly, because they have literally been born to rule, they have constant, hands-on training on how to interact with people, politicians, and the media. This constrains bad behaviour, in theory. But it doesn’t always of course - just look at the antics of Prince Andrew and Prince Harry. Whatever your views of these people they are essentially peripheral figures to the central and singular importance of the monarch himself. The late Queen rarely put her foot wrong.

Even detractors of the monarchy had to admit the Queen herself conducted herself admirably. Christopher Hitchens, hardly a pro-monarchist but a staunch republican, was spot on when he shrewdly said, “the British monarchy doesn't depend entirely on glamour, as the long, long reign of Queen Elizabeth II continues to demonstrate. Her unflinching dutifulness and reliability have conferred something beyond charm upon the institution, associating it with stoicism and a certain integrity. Republicanism is infinitely more widespread than it was when she was first crowned, but it's very rare indeed to hear the Sovereign Lady herself being criticised, and even most anti-royalists hasten to express themselves admiringly where she is concerned.” Hitchens inadvertently highlighted an unseen truth about the longevity and relevance of the monarchy which is it has never been about the glamour or the gossip but about its symbolism which are deeply rooted in the ancient history of these lands.

Critics may decry nostalgia for monarchy but they are missing the wider point which is the monarchy is at the beating heart of modern constitutional democracies. As in previous centuries, monarchy will continue to show itself to be an important and beneficial political institution wherever it still survives.

Look around and you’ll see that constitutional monarchies are undoubtedly the most popular form of royal leadership in the modern era⁠, making up close to 70% of all monarchies. This situation allows for democratically elected governments to rule the country, while the monarch performs ceremonial duties. Most monarchs are hereditary of course but I would argue in republics like the US and France for instance one has a ‘republican monarchy’. The presidency has all the symbolic trappings of a monarch and plays that unifying role for the nation. As an aside it’s interesting to note that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, technically serves as a Co-Prince of Andorra - a fact I enjoy making my good French republican friends squirm in discomfort. But France remains resolutely a republic despite many other European countries being a constitutional monarchy.

Monarchy has a long history in Europe, being the predominant form of government from the Middle Ages until the First World War. At the turn of the twentieth century every country in Europe was a monarchy with just three exceptions: France, Switzerland and San Marino. But by the start of the twenty-first century, most European countries had ceased to be monarchies, and three quarters of the member states of the European Union are now republics. That has led to a teleological assumption that in time most advanced democracies will become republics, as the highest form of democratic government.

But there still remains a stubborn group of countries in Western Europe which defy that assumption, and they include some of the most advanced democracies in the world. In the most recent Democracy Index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, six out of the top ten democracies - and nine of the top 15 - in the world were monarchies. They include six European monarchies: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom.

It remains a historical paradox. These monarchies have survived partly for geopolitical reasons, most of the other European monarchies having disappeared at the end of the First or Second World Wars. Their continuance has been accompanied by a steady diminution in their political power, which has shrunk almost to zero, and developing roles that support liberal democracy. What modern monarchies offer is non-partisan state headship set apart from the daily political struggle of executive government; the continuity of a family whose different generations attract the interest of all age groups; and disinterested support for civil society that is beyond the reach of partisan politics. These roles have evolved because monarchy depends ultimately on the support of the public, and is more accountable than people might think.

Understanding this paradox of an ancient hereditary institution surviving as a central part of modern democracies is a key part of understanding why monarchies persist and will continue to exist.

I would argue though that even within the modern constitutional monarchy, the British monarchy uniquely stands out from all the other European ones such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, and Spain.

David Starkey, despite being curmudgeonly and provocative with his outsized remarks remains one of our finest medieval and royalist historians. He has always been particularly good at explaining the shifting tone of monarchical power in Britain. After the straightforward Anglo-Saxon model, English kings had to incorporate the Norman way of doing things, with its "chivalric virus"; we then see the Tudors appear with their imperialist vision, followed by the disastrous Stuart belief in the divine right of kings, which James I subscribed to intellectually, and which Charles I paid for with his head. After that we see Hanoverian mediocrity, followed by Victorian pomp, and Windsor flexibility – changing nationality and name as wars with Germany, their ancestral home, demanded.

From the beginning, Starkey argues, England’s monarchy has been unlike any other, divorced from imperial Roman traditions and based on an unspoken contract between king and people, and so reflecting a deep sense of patriotic exceptionalism. From Alfred, who effectively invented the idea of an English nation, to George III, who became the incarnation of bluff, beef-eating John Bull during the Napoleonic Wars, and on to George VI, the personification of quiet determination during Britain’s darkest and finest hours, successful kings have come to embody a wider spirit of national defiance. Perhaps that explains why, for all his faults, we remain fascinated with Henry VIII: he may have been a monster, but he was proudly, unapologetically, our monster. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 which really was one of this nation’s finest hours that did much to lay the seeds of our modern constitutional monarchy that we have today. Compared with the blood-soaked warrior kings of the past our recent monarchs have been personally colourless and politically irrelevant, except at key moments to unify a nation on its knees (against the imminent Nazi invasion during World War Two and the Blitz) and provide a point of continuity in the face of massive societal and economic change.

But does this history make Britain’s monarchy unique. Yes, it does. It’s not just the history but the rituals that define the monarchy in Britain that make it so unique today. Indeed far from being out-dated and empty of any symbolic value, the uniqueness of its rituals make the monarchy in Britain stand out because it’s precisely because of its Christian influenced rituals are embedded in the DNA of the monarchy tied to the history of these sceptred isles as Shakespeare put it.

G.K. Chesterton wrote that “the opponents of ritual attack it on the ground that it becomes formal and hollow. So it does. But ritual only becomes formal and hollow where men are not sufficiently ritualistic.” What did he mean by that? A clue can be found in publication of The Black Book back in 1820 which was radical critique of the corruption and power of the English Establishment. It made this comment on royal ritual: “Pageantry and show, the parade of crowns and coronets, of gold keys, sticks, white wands and black rods; of ermine and lawn, maces and wigs, are ridiculous when men become enlightened, when they have learned that the real object of government is to confer the greatest happiness on the people at the least expense.” Forty years later, Lord Robert Cecil, the future third marquess of Salisbury, having watched Queen Victoria open parliament, wrote with scarcely more approval: “Some nations have a gift for ceremonial. No poverty of means or absence of splendour inhibits them from making any pageant in which they take part both real and impressive. Everybody falls naturally into his proper place, throws himself without effort into the spirit of the little drama he is enacting, and instinctively represses all appearance of constraint or distracted attention.”

As Sir David Cannadine, the great British historian, suggests, the elite's desire to temper the radical consequences of democracy was a crucial reason for their invention of so many royal rituals since the later nineteenth century. Indeed, for Cannadine, it is precisely the 'invention' and performance of royal rituals and Christian traditions, perfected at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, which prevented the British monarchy from suffering the same fate as its Austrian, Prussian and German equivalents.

The Queen's coronation in 1953 was the first major international event to be broadcast on television, with an estimated 20.4 million viewers in the UK alone, 56% of the adult population. The coronation was the first media event seen by the majority of the population, and was for many their first experience of 'watching the box'. What people saw or were presented in the case of the British monarchy, were many references to its past by pointing out similarities between Elizabeth II and her famous predecessor Queen Victoria, by highlighting the longevity of rituals, or by implementing (seemingly old, but often invented) traditions in royal events like jubilees. In all of these cases, a diachronic genealogical link to the past is established in order to point to the institution's continuity, stability and anchorage in British history.

But Chesterton is onto something that has never really been talked about when we look what is behind the Christian symbology of rituals (real or invented).

The uncomfortable truth - for republicans and others of no Christian faith - is that Britain’s monarchy stands as the world’s only remaining state religious institution. The coronation is more than mainly a religious ceremony, as if that remaindered it for everyone not religious. It is a symbol among much else of the world’s oldest and only global narrative: God’s story. It goes all the way back to the crowning of Edgar by St. Dunstan in AD 973, drawing, it is said, an on even older Frankish ceremony. It takes place in Westminster Abbey, the national shrine. The oath is administered by the highest clergyman in the land. His office takes precedence even over the monarch himself. There is not just the formula “So help me God” repeated as does the U.S. president at the end of every secular statement; there is not simply an oath “upon my honour and integrity,” as in Turkey, or upon the honour of the nation, as in France.

The new queen in 1953 was asked, “Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the laws of God and the true profession of the gospel?” And she, and now as Charles will, pledged to do this, kneeling at the altar of the greatest temple in the land, hand upon Bible; “the most valuable thing this world affords,” the priest intones. And of which the priest then adds:

Here is wisdom. This is the royal law. These are the lively oracles of God.

Then, in the even more amazing rite of unction that stretches in one unbroken line from the anointing of Solomon by Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet in the Hebrew Bible, the king is anointed with oil under a gold awning in a ceremony of the utmost holiness and away from the gaze of onlookers (it will not be televised). The archbishop hands him the symbols of his rule:

Receive this orb set under the cross, and remember that the whole world is subject to the power and empire of Christ our redeemer.

It is this that is the radioactive heart of Britain’s monarchy, and the secret of its strength. I think King Charles knows this. And so King Charles III will, I hope, defend faith in such a way that accounts for the universal and particular, all the while remaining committed to Christianity, the fabric of Britain’s history and heritage.

Both the monarchy and its rituals are together a protection against tyranny and a remedy for weakness. For, long forgotten by secular pundits, it models itself on the Christian belief that authority is what it is because it has been crucified; that only Christ the servant king is truly powerful, and because all are fallen, all can be restored only through him. The eternal Light that will outlive the rise and fall of worldly civilisations is just what the nations of the world need to hear.

Coming back down to more earthly concerns, the British public look to the monarchy to represent continuity, stability and tradition, but also want it to be modern, to reflect modern values and be a focus for national identity, inclusive of creed, colour, and sexual orientation. The monarchy provides the poetry and the government provides the prose.

Writing in the 1860s, Walter Bagehot, The Economist’s greatest editor, noted that under Britain’s constitutional monarchy “A republic has insinuated itself beneath the folds of a monarchy.” The executive and legislative powers of government belonged to the cabinet and Parliament. The crown was the “dignified” part of the state, devoted to ceremony and myth-making. In an elitist age, Bagehot saw this as a disguise, a device to keep the masses happy while the select few got on with the job.

You do not need a monarchy to pull off the separation, obviously. Countries like Ireland rub along with a ceremonial president instead. He or she comes from the people and has, in theory, earned the honour. A dud or a rogue can be kicked out or prosecuted. To a degree, history lays down the choice - it would be comic to invent a monarchy from scratch.

However, constitutional monarchy has one advantage over figurehead presidencies that is the final reason behind our British monarchy’s surprising success: its mix of continuity and tradition, which even today is tinged with mystical vestiges of the healing royal touch. All political systems need to manage change and resolve conflicting interests peacefully and constructively. Systems that stagnate end up erupting; systems that race away leave large parts of society left behind and they erupt, too. Look at France, a country I live in now and I love, it had a revolution to overthrow a king only to end up with an emperor who made war on Europe, and left a country that has gone through as many republics as often I’ve changed my underwear in a working week.

Under our late Queen Elizabeth II, Britain changed unrecognisably. Not only had it undergone social and technological change, like other Western democracies, but it was also eclipsed as a great power. More than once, most recently over Brexit, politics choked. During all this upheaval, the continuity that monarchy displays has been a moderating influence. George Orwell, no establishment stooge, called it an “escape-valve for dangerous emotions”, drawing patriotism away from politics, where love of country can rot into bigotry. Decaying empires are dangerous. Britain’s decline has been a lot less traumatic than it might have been.

Elizabeth’s sleight of hand was to renew the monarchy quietly all the while, and King Charles’s hardest task will be to renew it further. The prospect is daunting, but entirely possible. My money is on the monarchy.

God save the King!

Thanks for your question.

[scrollonso]

About the "I can understand why he [Daniil] chose to stay standing considering his situations but unsure how the others justify their choice".

It is possible the (initially six, more later) who didn't kneel could have had each had subtly different reasons/combinations of reasons. Some never attempted to explain why they stopped kneeling, so we'll probably never know. Others either explained (including all the initial non-kneelers), or events around the time/other drivers' explanations/circumstances relating to the request suggest possibilities.

Of course, it is impossible to rule out actual racism, and some of the drivers said things that suggested some insufficiently-examined attitudes were at play. Two said things I regarded as outright racist. However, anti-racism is itself an iterative process and we know a lot of them were starting from a low base; most wouldn't have had occasion to put much discretionary thought into the topic before 2020 beyond "racism = bad". (In most countries represented by F1 drivers, the way racism is presented to white people tends to make it sound more like a peripheral issue, in some cases a semi-historical one). There were no American drivers and Lewis Hamilton was the only Black driver on the grid, hence why so much of the racism focus ended up on Lewis and Lewis alone.

Other causes known at the time:

International semiotics - single different meaning of kneeling. I'm starting with this because Daniil quoted it as his official reason for not kneeling. The kneel originated in the USA because, among other things, in the USA, kneeling has long been the unofficially accepted means of respectfully protesting something (in quarters which accepted that protests could be done at all when national anthems are playing). Specifically, that in Russia kneeling is something one does towards God or one's national representation (e.g. flag) If this is a common belief in Russia (I've not looked into this for Russia specifically), Daniil kneeling would lead to confusion and people getting the wrong message. Daniil did not want to suggest that racism is worthy of worship or fealty! Not every country is as knowledgeable about USA cultural facets, or as keen to adopt them for particular causes, as the UK is.

International semiotics - multiple different meanings of kneeling in the same place. Italy has a more complex version of the issue. I had the misfortune to be stuck in a social media argument between three Italians who had different, incompatible meanings to kneeling. One accepted the USA version wholeheartedly and was criticising Charles Leclerc for not kneeling. Another considered the kneel to be a submissive act implying anti-Italophone sentiment, in this context in the shadow of the Anglophone request (in other words, racism against Italians), and thus criticised Sebastian Vettel for kneeling. A third one was negative about kneeling, but more mildly because they felt there was too much social pressure to kneel and that this nullified any possible meaning for kneeling or not kneeling. I saw more one-sided versions of this happening in newspapers, and the Italian-based teams, drivers and backers (think Ferrari, Alpha Tauri - so, this also covers Daniil -, Antonio Giovinazzi and Alfa Romeo) would have seen these. It is hard to imagine a bigger fail on a subject than failing to be seen as anti-racist due to using a gesture seen as racist and claiming it is for anti-racist means. It turned out there was no way to win that argument with the whole Italian population, and probably no way to avoid what eventually happened (the kneeling/not-kneeling issue ended up discussed in the Italian government, with at least one representative loudly stating the "standing is the proper way to avoid being racist" stance. This would probably have gone better had said representative not bundled a whole bunch of racist cant into other parts of their speech!).

Partially equivalent local semiotics - In the USA, kneeling is the accepted form of protest during a national anthem. In Western Europe, the accepted form of protest is looking down while standing. Partly this is due to the ambiguity of the gesture's meaning - it is also a gesture of solemnity and respect (such as typically seen on Remembrance Sunday parades commemorating the end of World War I). Drivers may well have used it as an easy translation, especially if they were unsure whether the people at home would have understood the kneel in the manner the kneeling protesters intended. The anti-racism part would have been lost in translation but not the "respectful protest" element.

Drivers protecting their teams and possibly each other - Ferrari may have inadvertently done the best compromise strategy in the light of the previous two points. By ending up with one driver kneel, the other stand and both narrating why, it meant any given source could complain all it wanted about one driver without being able to say Ferrari as a whole was racist. The message got through. It also had the side effect that some of the criticism that would have been put onto Vettel was put into praising Leclerc instead, which helped protect Vettel's protest (it's not clear if that part was intended in the plan, but I'm 99% sure that protecting Ferrari did in Charles' case). Other teams where the drivers had split stances may also be explicable this way.

Distrust of BLM. Even at the beginning, a couple of the people who knelt said they wanted to distance themselves from BLM. It didn't help that at one point, the UK branch of BLM advocated violence (in the specific context of responding to an initiation of violence by police at a London protest, to protect self and others immediately around them). After that statement, several more drivers joined in and if I remember rightly, two of the drivers stopped kneeling. It was no good explaining to them that BLM was a franchise and not the organising force behind the kneeling movement, when the UK branch was the one the drivers not called Lewis Hamilton knew most about.

Pressure from teams. When I said Ferrari inadvertently did their best compromise strategy, this is because Fiat is known to have banned the kneeling gesture in its company during the hottest part of the kneeling protest.

Pressure from the FIA and Liberty. Both wanted their way, and only their way, of fighting/"fighting" racism accepted. Neither wanted anyone kneeling at all, much less in a way that TV could easily broadcast.

Protecting the right to choice in how anti-racism was marked. Liberty assured drivers they would be permitted to mark the anti-racism gesture any way that motivated them, provided it was clear they wished to end racism. Some drivers (notably Kimi Raikkonen) considered this freedom worth protecting. A couple of the drivers who did kneel mentioned that one reason they did so was because it was voluntary (either because they didn't like the idea of being forced into a stance or because they felt having the choice of how to position oneself lent meaning to their choice to kneel). Without that choice, it's probable fewer people would have knelt.

As you can see, there were quite a lot of reasons why people chose different stances for their anti-racism protest. I get the impression even the drivers who did racist things during the protest were less racist than the FIA and Liberty during that time.

very well worded,, unsure how to respond but i agree with everything you said!!

[ingek73]

After Harry’s phone hacking victory, is it last orders for tabloid top brass?

Some commentators now believe that the duke’s crusade against the popular press will finally bring about a reckoning

Inside the ballroom of the Hilton Bankside on Thursday evening, the mood among journalists was high. Prizes were being handed out, celebratory toasts were made and backs were slapped. Officiating at the annual press awards jamboree was a bow-tie-wearing Dominic Ponsford, the editor-in-chief of the industry journal behind the event, who even took a moment to joke about past clashes with Prince Harry, the fabled “ginger whinger”.

Seated at the tables around him were many of those newspaper editors and columnists who have been publicly warring with the King’s errant second child, including Piers Morgan, the former gossip journalist, talent show judge, ex-editor of the Daily Mirror and television presenter. At one point towards the end of the night the group of singers hired to jolly up the lengthy proceedings, burst into the chorus from the song The Final Countdown. Great fun.

But a day later and some in the room are facing their own ominous countdown, or at least a potential final reckoning. Could the landlord at that famous “last chance saloon”, the watering hole at which Home Office minister David Mellor once warned the “gentlemen” of the popular press they were drinking in, really be shouting out “Time, please” once again, twenty years on?

The ruling from Mr Justice Fancourt in the High Court on Friday, one which found the Duke had been subjected to damaging, illegal press activity between 2003 and 2009, has had some immediate effects. The Mirror Group of newspapers, in the frame during the legal proceedings, “apologised unreservedly” for “historical wrong-doing” later that day. But the impact of Fancourt’s 386-page judgement on the reputations of other British newspaper businesses may take a little longer to show.

“Thank goodness for Prince Harry. The police now need to look at this and promptly,” said Brian Cathcart, the media campaigner and Hacked Off founder. “There are many people involved who are still in prominent, opinion-forming positions on newspapers.”

Dr Evan Harris, a former director of Hacked Off who has spent the last few years carrying out legal analysis for the claimants in the hacking litigation, also believes the torch of justice has just been relit by the duke. “Since the contentious decision by the Crown Prosecution Service in 2015 that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute any Mirror journalist or executive for phone hacking, tens of thousands of documents have been disclosed in this litigation, and as they were deployed in open court, many key documents are available to the police to see.”

There are also dozens of new witnesses and extensive judicial findings, Harris added. “The claimants stand ready to assist the police and CPS with identifying such material relevant to the original criminal conduct and to the new questions of perjury and perverting the course of justice,” he said.

Writing in Prospect magazine, its editor, Alan Rusbridger, who edited the Guardian when it broke the hacking story in 2009, argues that Fancourt’s words have cut through years of deceit. “We know that newspaper managements at two of our biggest media companies have consistently concealed and denied the truth about what went on,” he wrote. “They have issued dishonest statements and have lied to parliament, the stock exchange, to other journalists, to regulators and even the Leveson inquiry, set up to establish the truth. And now some have been caught telling porkies in court.”

Nick Davies, who first broke the hacking scandal while at the Guardian, was quick to express his more limited hopes for change on social media. “If the UK were just and democratic, Murdoch’s Talk TV would now have to consider suspending Piers Morgan and Richard Wallace, and the Met police would have to scope an investigation into Mirror Group crime. If,” he wrote.

More than a billion pounds has already been paid out in costs and damages, Rusbridger emphasised, without any admissions of guilt implicating senior editors or owners. And key emails have been deleted and documents lost. Speaking to the Observer this weekend, he added: “The press managed to sidestep the second part of the Leveson inquiry, which was supposed to deal with past wrongdoing. So it’s now been left to individual litigants to drag the truth out into daylight. It’s not very satisfactory, and probably can’t be fully achieved until everyone involved in past misdeeds has moved on – or been moved on.”

One of the stories produced in evidence during the recent MGN phone hacking trial. Photograph: PA

The focus is now likely to switch to the Daily Mail, against which the Duke of Sussex still has many outstanding allegations. It could even be the beginning of what critics of British “tabloid culture” are heralding as an era of serious redress that, for them, would make up for the dropping of the planned second part of the Leveson inquiry, a decision taken against the judge’s wishes by former Tory culture secretary, Matt Hancock. Murdoch’s newspaper group, owner of the Sun, does look vulnerable. Many of those implicated in the judge’s ruling are working there. Former editor of the rightwing popular titles the Sun and the defunct News of the World, Rebekah Brooks, who once avoided disgrace, is now CEO of News UK. This weekend her rehabilitation looks wobbly.

Morgan, now a presenter on Murdoch’s Talk TV, gave an angry doorstep statement on Friday and still appears to be banking on dodging bullets. His carefully worded defence did not deny knowledge of the practice of phone hacking and so did not contradict the judgement, as the performer and campaigner Steve Coogan, who settled a claim in 2017 for a six-figure sum, wryly noted on Saturday morning. More optimistically, Coogan added that there now seems a chance that the protective “omertà” guarding the guilty editors has begun to weaken.

He told the Observer yesterday: “We now have a high court judge making clear that a judge-led public inquiry was misled by multiple witnesses , namely Sly Bailey, Paul Vickers, Lloyd Embley, Piers Morgan, Tina Weaver, Neil Wallis and Richard Wallace, and of course that public inquiry was cancelled halfway through, against the wishes of Sir Brian Leveson, by Matt Hancock at the behest of the newspapers – including Mirror Group – who were being investigated.”

Prince Harry has described his chief virtue as patience, but Coogan now calls him “brave” for breaking the “Faustian pact” he claims some royals have had with the press, drawn up for reasons of self-preservation.

Prince Harry’s attitude diverged from the family path well before the birth of his sonArchie in 2019, but he became much bolder after that. Later that year his wife, Meghan Markle, announced that she was suing the Mail on Sunday for printing parts of her letter to her estranged father and the duke also revealed he was taking action over alleged phone hacking.

Two years ago, the Prince won an apology from the Mail on Sunday over an article claiming he had turned his back on the military and the high court in London ruled that the same paper had breached Meghan’s privacy by publishing extracts from her letter. A year ago Harry started a libel claim against the Mail on Sunday over an article claiming he had tried to keep official protection for his family and then, in October last year, he joined the singer Elton John and others in suing the publisher of the Daily Mail, alleging phone tapping and other breaches of privacy.

The Duke’s unexpected, even historic, appearance at the high court at the beginning of his lawsuit against the Daily Mail’s publisher took place in March, and then, in early June, he arrived to give evidence at the Mirror Group phone hacking trial, arguing that about 140 articles published from 1996 to 2010 contained information obtained via unlawful methods.

There are accusations of vendettas on both sides, of course. It is a term the duke used on Friday when speaking of the vitriol he had detected, ever since he was first exposed by the tabloids as a teenager for smoking cannabis and then for rowing with his brother about whether or not to meet up with Paul Burrell.

Both of these gobbets of information reached the public through illicit means, according to the Fancourt verdict. Yet a former executive at Reach, the national news group that owns the Mirror, suspects the duke and his fellow campaigners are being disingenuous. He may not have gone as far as Morgan, who called the “California-tanned” Duke “greedy” yesterday, but he does believe the celebrity campaigners are out for revenge. “They are settling scores. We all know that, whatever they say in public about their motivation,” the former editor said.

Other more measured defenders of the press, such as Sir Alan Moses, a former chairman of the Independent Press Standards Association, are concerned about attempts to set up a phoney “licensed press” that would operate only within government restrictions. Speaking on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this weekend, he said the press should ideally be “unruly”, although subject to the law. There was, Moses argued, an exceptional case to be made for the industry to protect freedom of expression.

For the experienced Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee, the prize of a reformed press can now at least be glimpsed, although a fatal wound inflicted to an ailing newspaper title would not be a good thing: “I am delighted to see press standards called to account and I hope that the people behind this do now get called to account,” she said. “IPSO and press regulation are a disgrace for not investigating this themselves years ago. But it would be a tragedy if we lost the Mirror as a result, an all too rare non-Tory newspaper.”

[illegally-blind-and-deaf]

On the topic of Tintin backstories

Ok look it's midnight so this will be dumb Bea ramblings but I've discovered that you can ramble on this website and no one bays an eye, so-

There are many may many many many many MANY different possibilities for Tintin and his childhood cause WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN NOTHING ON THE LAD (we don't even know his NAME for heavens sake-)

So, as per usual, I had made up about 49762.

Not actually, but it feels like it.

Anyway here they are, or at least some of them

As is rather common with the fandom, (and the majority of these headcanon,) he's an orphan. The fun thing is HOW he became an orphan and the result of that. One of the most basic ideas I had was him losing his parents tragically at a young age, probably in a house fire or something of the sort and living in an orphanage or a children's home with nothing but half of his name, hence the name Tintin. It's not a pleasant ride and he ditches at like 13 (It's 1945, it's a wild time an no one is batting an eye at a 13 year old renting an apartment because the world just tried to kill itself this is nothing)

Other possibilities include losing his dad in the early stages of WW2 and his mother later on, whether it's by a bomb (I have two different bomb scenarios,) or by the Nazis directly because WHO DOESN'T LOVE A GOOD HISTORICAL MOMENT IN HERE (also if he did lose his mother to the Nazis, it would probably be because she was helping kick Nazi butt, which suits Tintin's character quite well if you ask me)

Spiralling on from the bomb ideas, Tintin and mother trying to escape occupied Belgium, bombing raid on refugees, shellshocked Tintin who's gone amnesiac because of the trauma trying to navigate the UK (yes it's a fic I'm writing)

Now where did Tintin learn to completely kick butt? The Belgian resistance in ww2, obviously. Could also be how he gets into reporting as well because there were a bunch of undercover newspapers (and Le Faux Soir which was such a passive aggressive act honestly), but also in the ACTUAL resistance cause there were quite a fee schoolboys who helped out. Also, small kid with a lot of spunk who's witty, intelligent and completely unfazed by everything except spiders? Yeah he's perfect, no one would suspect him. He'd do amazing in the Belgian resistance, and so he decides to keep kicking evils butt after the war too. (Also could be how he learnt how to operate a radio...)(little Tintin hiding in an attic somewhere decoding a message coming through the radio is such a powerful image for me LITTLE TINTIN RADIOING THE BRITISH FOR THE FAIX SOIR CAMPAIGN AH- THE ANXIETY-)

Stemming off from the resistance idea, Tintin discovering that he's wanted by the Gestapo for some resistance activity (probably the 20th convoy incident because where there's a train going wrong there's a tintin) and sneaking into France because no one would think that a 12/13 year old would so casually run across the border like that... Anyway- Tintin joining the much larger resistance in Paris, Tintin joining one of the Maquis after the raids in Paris on the resistance, Tintin running around the French countryside with a beret and a gun causing absolute chaos for the Nazis... thats a fun thought honestly. (Also when Tintin interviews a pilot??? And American pilot who crashes and they just adopt into their Maquis?)

ANYWAY, GOING BACK TO ORPHAN TINTIN: Moves in with an emotionally/mentally abusive uncle who makes him feel as though he is worthless and not good enough- Tintin unconsciously believes that even when he thinks he's over it all because when he fails on one of his cases he just keeps posing and pushing until he literally breaks down because if he fails then who is he? (Basically, he thinks that he's only worth a lot because of his career and fame and that if he messes up, he's worthless again and he's lost it all)

And now to a very DIFFERENT idea: Tintin's parents are alive and well but holy heck are they manipulative little millionaires who hate their son because he's too loud/obnoxious/childish/quiet/reserved (he's too everything apparently) and so he runs away CAUSE WHAT ELSE DO YOU DO WHEN YOURE AN IMPULSIVE CHILD he hates wearing an actual suit because it makes him feel like he's back there again and when Haddock makes him wear one for a silly dinner party Tintin suddenly becomes this snarky, abrasive person and Haddock is like "who are you an what have you done to my angel"

I also had a bunch of AU ideas, one of them being that he's Russian (technically ukranian but it's the Stalinist Soviet Union, so if he says that he gets shot,) and he's the very younger brother of Lyudmila Pavlichenko (I really hope I got that right) and he sneakily enlists for the Soviet army in ww2 and follows his super amazing sniper sister around and learns from her until the battle of sevastopol where he thinks she's been killed (she was just injured) and he gets captured by the Germans but RUNS AWAY and ends up wandering through Nazi-occupied, snowy Europe and eventually collapses by a road in a random country and is picked up by none other than MRS FINCH (I love her too much she + Mrs Hudson + Mrs Hall= chefs kiss) who nurses him back to health and helps him get a fake ID and teaches him French cause heck yeah is she in the resistance babyyyyyyy

I also had another AU idea where him to was born in Germany and he and his blind mother moved to live in country side Belgium after his dad gets arrested or smthing I haven't fleshed it out yet but basically they have a massive fight because he wants to know why she won't let him support his home country (I.e. Germany, I.e. Tintin's a clueless kid who doesn't understand what's happening), she's so exhausted and tired because Belgium's been occupied and she s scared and she ends up saying something about how she will always love him but there may come a point where she cannot welcome him with open arms again (implying that if he becomes a Nazi, she won't have it,) he runs off, comes back later to find that she's been taken away to "a special institution to help people in her condition" I.e. she's been taken away to get killed cause she's blind and Tintin from that point onwards is like "I'm such an idiot and I must do everything to prove to my mothers ghost that I am not a nazi" and yeah idk lol

Right I'm going to bed the end.

And yes, I have spent waaaay too many hours scouring the internet of Belgian live under German occupation (Did you know that they opened a hitlerjugend for Flemish boys in the 2nd half of the war? I did not)

If you wanna know more about the resistance things I mentioned, don't be afraid to ask, just expect a really long reply lol

[justforbooks]

Few songwriters have been able to enjoy hits across six decades, as well as the bonus of a dramatic revival of interest in their work during the later years of their careers. Burt Bacharach, who has died aged 94, could claim both.

With his writing partner Hal David, Bacharach launched himself into the front rank of pop songwriters with a brilliant streak of hits for Dionne Warwick during the 1960s, beginning in 1962 with Don’t Make Me Over and proceeding through (among others) Walk on By, Anyone Who Had a Heart, I Say a Little Prayer, Trains and Boats and Planes, and Do You Know the Way to San Jose. All became standards in Bacharach’s chosen pop-easy-listening genre, and meanwhile he was turning out equally durable classics for a string of different artists. Tom Jones never particularly liked What’s New, Pussycat?, the Oscar-nominated theme from the 1965 film of the same name, but acknowledged its enduring popularity.

Herb Alpert topped the US chart with the winsome ballad This Guy’s in Love With You, Jackie DeShannon did likewise with What the World Needs Now Is Love, and BJ Thomas was the lucky recipient of Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, from the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (which brought Bacharach and David Oscars for best theme song and best original score). Bacharach was an Oscar-winner for a third time in 1982, with Arthur’s Theme from the film Arthur.

The son of Bert Bacharach, a sports star turned nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, and Irma Freeman, an artist and songwriter, Burt was born in Kansas City, Missouri. The family moved to Kew Gardens in Queens, New York, when he was a child. At the insistence of his mother, Burt studied the cello, drums and piano. His ears were opened by the innovative harmonies and melodies of jazz musicians of the day such as Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker, and he played with several jazz combos before enrolling in music courses at the Mannes School of Music, New York, and at McGill University in Montreal.

He served in the US army (1950-52), and while acting as a dance band arranger in Germany he met the singer Vic Damone. Back in the US after his discharge, Bacharach worked as piano accompanist to Damone and to numerous other artists on the club circuit. One of them was the actor and singer Paula Stewart, whom he married in 1953.

He was fortunate to fall into one of the all-time great songwriting partnerships with David, whom he first met at the New York songwriting beehive, the Brill Building (also to be the home of other renowned songwriting duos including Leiber & Stoller, Goffin & King and Pomus & Shuman). David had been writing hits for such luminaries as Sarah Vaughan and Frank Sinatra since the late 40s. Bacharach and David scored their first big commercial coup when the country singer Marty Robbins took their song The Story of My Life into the US Top 20 in 1957. A cover version by Michael Holliday reached No 1 in the UK the following year, and Perry Como brought them another smash with his recording of Magic Moments, which spent eight weeks at No 1 in Britain.

After the breakdown of his marriage (he and Stewart divorced in 1958), Bacharach travelled to Europe to become pianist and bandleader for Marlene Dietrich, a role he would sustain until 1964. By 1961 he was back in New York, and wrote some material for the Drifters, as well as the Chuck Jackson hit Any Day Now before resuming his partnership with David. Their song (The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance, inspired by the John Wayne/James Stewart western, became a US No 4 hit for Gene Pitney in 1962. Pitney did better still with the duo’s composition Only Love Can Break a Heart, which reached No 2 later that year.

Then came Bacharach and David’s historic hook-up with Warwick. She was a member of the Drifters’ backing group, the Gospelaires, and the songwriters invited her to make some demo recordings at their office at the publishers Famous Music, in the Brill Building. One of them was for Make It Easy on Yourself, which became a big hit for Jerry Butler. David recalled: “She said, ‘I thought that was my song!’ We said, ‘No, you just made a demo’. She was really very hurt and angry. Then we realised here’s this wonderful singer and we’re using her to make demos – she could be a star!”

So it proved, and the hits with Warwick became their calling card. They wrote and produced 20 American Top 40 hits for her over the ensuing decade, including seven that reached the Top 10. One of these songs, I Say a Little Prayer, also gave Aretha Franklin a US Top 10 hit and her biggest solo hit in Britain, where it reached No 4. Throughout the 60s anything Bacharach and David touched became commercial gold dust. They wrote film scores for What’s New, Pussycat?, Alfie and Casino Royale, and scored the successful Broadway musical Promises, Promises, whose title song provided another hit for Warwick and spun off a chartbuster for Bacharach himself with I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.

The writers always had a soft spot for the UK, probably because so many British-based artists had No 1 hits with their material, including Cilla Black – whose version of Anyone Who Had a Heart was her breakthrough hit – Sandie Shaw, the Walker Brothers and Frankie Vaughan.

The Carpenters ushered in the 70s with (They Long to Be) Close to You, a US No 1 which also reached No 6 in the UK, but although Bacharach’s 1971 album (called just Burt Bacharach) became a sought-after collector’s item, the decade would prove disappointing. In 1973 Bacharach and David collaborated on a new musical version of the 1937 film Lost Horizon, but it was a commercial disaster that prompted angry splits between Bacharach, David and Warwick, and involved them in a spate of lawsuits. The writers parted company after a disagreement over royalties. Bacharach’s second marriage, to the actor Angie Dickinson, whom he had married in 1965, began to come apart, although they did not divorce until 1980.

It was not until the early 80s that Bacharach’s magic touch returned, when he won the Oscar for best original song for the chart-topping theme from the film Arthur, which he had also scored. One of its co-writers was the lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, whom Bacharach married the following year. The couple went on to write Making Love for Roberta Flack and Heartlight for Neil Diamond. In 1986, Bacharach enjoyed one of his best ever years, achieving two US No 1s with That’s What Friends Are for, recorded by Warwick with Elton John, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder as a charitable fundraiser for Aids, and the Patti LaBelle/Michael McDonald recording of the lachrymose On My Own.

In 1991 his marriage to Bayer Sager ended, and two years later he married Jane Hansen. In a 2015 interview, Bacharach – who was nicknamed “the playboy of the western world” during the 60s – admitted: “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody, but when you wind up being married four times, there are a lot of bodies strewn in your wake.”

During the 90s, Bacharach and David reunited with Warwick for Sunny Weather Lover, from her album Friends Can Be Lovers, and Bacharach wrote songs for James Ingram and Earth, Wind & Fire. In 1995 he co-wrote God Give Me Strength with Elvis Costello for Allison Anders’ film about the Brill Building era, Grace of My Heart, and this resulted in the Costello-Bacharach album Painted from Memory (1998).

Bacharach’s contribution to pop history was acknowledged in a 1996 BBC documentary, Burt Bacharach – This Is Now, and he would find himself being hailed as an icon of cool by bands as varied as Oasis, REM, Massive Attack and the White Stripes. In 1997, an all-star cast including Costello, Warwick, Chrissie Hynde, Sheryl Crow and Luther Vandross banded together at the Hammerstein Ballroom, New York, for a serenade of Bacharach’s songs called One Amazing Night, and the Rhino label issued The Look of Love, a three-disc compilation of his music.

Bacharach’s profile received a huge boost from his appearances in all three of Mike Myers’s 60s-spoofing Austin Powers films. He earned an Oscar nomination for the song Walking Tall, his first collaboration with the lyricist Tim Rice, which was performed by Lyle Lovett on the soundtrack of Stuart Little (1999).

His 2005 album At This Time unusually found Bacharach writing lyrics as well as music and even provoking some controversy by touching on political themes. “All my life I’ve written love songs, and I’ve been non-political,” he said. “So it must be pretty significant that I suddenly have strong feelings of discomfort with the state of the world, and what our [US] administration is doing.” This did not prevent the album from winning the 2006 Grammy award for best pop instrumental album.

In 2008 he opened the BBC Electric Proms at the Roundhouse, in London, with Adele and Jamie Cullum among his supporting musicians. His autobiography, Anyone Who Had a Heart: My Life and Music, was published in 2013, and in 2015 he performed at the Glastonbury festival. He continued to tour past his 90th birthday, with concerts in the UK, US and Europe in 2018 and 2019.

In addition to his Oscars and six Grammy awards (plus a lifetime achievement award in 2008), he was awarded the Polar music prize in Stockholm in 2001. In 2011, the Library of Congress awarded Bacharach and David the Gershwin prize for popular song.

A daughter, Nikki, from his second marriage, died in 2007. He is survived by Jane, their son, Oliver, and daughter, Raleigh, and another son, Cristopher, from his third marriage.

🔔 Burt Freeman Bacharach, songwriter, singer and musician, born 12 May 1928; died 8 February 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[mariacallous]

As the new year started, a correction appeared below a story on the Guardian’s website that left some readers baffled and amused. It read: “This article was amended on 3 January 2023. The original furniture said the fireworks display was on Christmas Eve.”

“Oh, please do put a correction beneath this correction,” wrote one reader, “Unless you actually have a talking armoire in the Guardian offices.”

Another message, headed, “Please correct today’s fab Grauniad bloomer!”, went on to guess at what was meant: “‘Furniture’, should read, I surmise, ‘feature’.”

Actually, no. “Furniture” was exactly what was meant by the journalist who added that footnote, since it is a term (fully “page furniture”) used to describe the various elements on a print or web page, such as headlines and picture captions, apart from the article text and photos. Whether the word ought to have appeared is another matter. In writing corrections and corresponding directly with readers we usually avoid industry jargon. We also aim to be more precise. Accordingly, the footnote was revised to say: “The original subheading said the fireworks display was on Christmas Eve.”

Clarity does nonetheless mean readers are deprived of some colourful vernacular, and for those who would enjoy greater familiarity with it, here is a bit more.

Individual items of furniture have their own names. The explanatory text below a headline – described in that footnote as a subheading – is typically referred to between journalists as a “standfirst”. Or it is in the UK, at least. Naturally there are differences between nations and news organisations in the English-speaking world, so in Australia, for example, I’m told it is more commonly called the “write-off” (aka “woff”) or teaser, while in North America it is more likely to be the “deck”. On that side of the Atlantic, the caption below a picture also becomes a “cutline”.

Other bits of furniture include the dateline, which says where a journalist is reporting from – historically with the date of dispatch, eg “Buenos Aires, 1 March”; the pull quote, which is a quote extracted from an article and displayed prominently in the layout; and the crosshead, a short heading between paragraphs that breaks up a long piece. Fear not, there’s one coming below.

But “furniture”, although well used, is not known in all newsrooms, and I am curious to know whence and when it arrived. Tony Harcup enshrined the term in 2014 in his comprehensive A Dictionary of Journalism, and it is certainly referenced as though established in media books from the mid-1990s. Some earlier sources I have seen suggest it had been a phrase used for non-text elements of page design, such as rules and symbols, but no doubt someone with a long memory will set me straight.

Harold Evans’ five-volume Manual of English, Typography and Layout, published in 1972, has an extensive glossary that makes no mention of page furniture. Instead, it has an entry for “furniture” with quite a different meaning back then: it was the little pieces of wood or metal used to fill in blank spaces between the type in the days of hot metal printing.

Some language from a bygone age happily endures: the term “off-stone”, the time at which newspaper pages go to print, is still in daily use here and derives from the large stone (later steel) surface on which pages were once made up.

I am grateful to a number of journalists who responded enthusiastically when I sought help with this column (any mistakes are of course mine alone), and was especially taken with being introduced to “dinkus”, an Australian news industry term for the small photo of an article’s author, which in other places is known as a headshot or byline picture. (More generally a dinkus is a small ornamentation, usually three asterisks, that break up sections of a book chapter, article or other written text.)

In the UK, the first paragraph of a story is generally called the “intro”, while in the US and Canada in particular it is usually the “lead” or “lede”. Both give rise to expressions used on occasions when the most significant detail is lurking lower down the story: that is called “burying the lede” or a “dropped intro”. Either can be applied quite usefully outside newsrooms, I find.

But multiple terms for the same thing are not always helpful. The unbylined (no name attached) article that gives the opinion of the newspaper can be called an editorial, leader, leading article or leader column, and we have used all four terms in the Guardian’s corrections column. For consistency – and because it appears to be the most familiar internationally – we will from now on use only “editorial”.

For your information

As a postscript, I was fascinated when reading Evans’ glossary to find, just below “furniture”, an entry for “FYI”. He explained “for your information” was a wire service abbreviation. It had never occurred to me that this initialism, familiar from text messages and work emails, had its origins in news reporting. With help from archivists at Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, and a willing executive at the UPI news agency, I have been on its trail.

The earliest reference I can find is a 1915 cutting from the Salt Lake Telegram newspaper, where a business journalist dropped “FYI” into an article, then explained its meaning to readers, adding: “It’s just a little thing that saves space on a telegraph message”. (In those days telegraph companies charged by the word.) But he complained it “jolted” him when he first saw it, and that it was not “in the book”.

The book may have been Phillips Telegraphic Code, first published in 1879 to assist the rapid transmission of press reports from wire services to client newspapers. Francesca Pitaro, archivist at AP, kindly checked the 1914 edition and found no mention. Did the abbreviation arrive only in 1915, or did it spring independently? If we find out, I’ll report back; just FYI.

[trendingtopicbg]

Best Classified ads website in Uk

How to Leverage Free Classified Ads for Effective Online Advertising

1. Introduction

Classified ads have long been a staple in the advertising world, helping businesses and individuals connect with potential buyers, sellers, and clients. In today’s digital age, free classified ads have become a powerful tool for online advertising. Whether you're a small business owner looking to advertise your business for free or an individual trying to sell a second-hand item, classified ads offer a cost-effective solution. This article explores the ins and outs of using classified ads, especially free ones, to maximize your advertising potential.

2. Understanding Classified Ads

Classified ads are short advertisements placed in a specific section of a publication or website, usually categorized by type. Historically, these ads appeared in newspapers and magazines, but the advent of the internet has transformed them into a digital powerhouse. Online classified ads allow users to post ads for everything from job vacancies to property sales. The key advantage of classified ads is their ability to reach a targeted audience, making them an excellent tool for both individuals and businesses.

3. Types of Classified Ads

Classified ads can be broadly categorized into general and niche ads:

General Classified Ads: These cover a wide range of categories including items for sale, real estate, vehicles, and personal classifieds.

Niche Classified Ads: These focus on specific categories such as job ads, pet classifieds, and vehicle listings. For instance, websites like Freeads Pets cater specifically to pet-related ads, making it easier for users to find relevant listings.

Understanding these categories helps advertisers target their audience more effectively and choose the right platforms for their ads.

4. Benefits of Free Classified Ads

Using free classified ads offers numerous benefits:

Cost-Effectiveness: As the name suggests, these ads are free to post, making them an ideal choice for small businesses and individuals with limited advertising budgets.

Wide Reach: Classified ads can reach a broad audience, especially when posted on popular platforms.

Local Targeting: Many classified ads sites allow users to target local audiences, making it easier to connect with nearby customers.

Success Stories: Numerous businesses have successfully used free classified ads to boost their visibility and sales. For example, a local cleaning service might use free local classified ads to attract new clients in their area.

5. Top Classified Ads Posting Sites

There are numerous platforms where you can post free classified ads. Here are some of the top ones:

Adspage.uk: One of the most well-known classified ad sites, covering a wide range of categories.

Using multiple platforms can help broaden your reach and increase the chances of your ad being seen by the right audience.

6. Strategies for Effective Advertising with Classified Ads

To make the most of classified ads, follow these strategies:

Compelling Titles and Descriptions: Craft attention-grabbing titles and detailed descriptions to attract potential buyers.

High-Quality Images: Use clear and attractive images to make your ad stand out.

Categorization and Tagging: Properly categorize and tag your ads to ensure they appear in relevant searches.

Timing and Frequency: Post ads during peak times and refresh them regularly to keep them visible.

7. Maximizing Exposure on Classified Ads Sites

Increase the visibility of your classified ads with these tips:

SEO for Ads: Optimize your ad content with relevant keywords to improve its search engine ranking.

Social Media Sharing: Share your classified ads on social media platforms to reach a wider audience.

Customer Reviews: Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews, enhancing your credibility.

Regular Updates: Keep your ads updated with the latest information and new images to maintain interest.

8. Case Studies

Examining real-life examples can provide valuable insights:

Local Cleaning Service: A small cleaning business used free local classified ads to attract new clients and saw a significant increase in inquiries.

Pet Adoption Agency: By utilizing pet classifieds on Freeads Pets, an adoption agency successfully found homes for many pets.

Used Car Dealer: A dealership advertised their cars on Gumtree and Craigslist, reaching a large audience and boosting sales.

These case studies highlight effective strategies and outcomes, offering inspiration for your own advertising efforts.

9. Challenges and Solutions

Advertising with classified ads can come with challenges:

Ad Saturation: Many ads can make it hard for yours to stand out. Solution: Use compelling content and high-quality images.

Scams: Some platforms are prone to scams. Solution: Use trusted sites and verify potential buyers or sellers.

Low Response Rate: Not all ads get immediate responses. Solution: Refresh your ads regularly and experiment with different posting times.

Addressing these challenges with proactive solutions can enhance the effectiveness of your classified ads.

10. Future Trends in Classified Ads Advertising

The future of classified ads looks promising with several emerging trends:

Increased Use of AI: Artificial intelligence can enhance ad targeting and personalization.

Mobile Optimization: With more users accessing ads via smartphones, mobile-optimized ads will become crucial.

Integration with Social Media: Expect more integration between classified ads and social media platforms for broader reach.

Staying informed about these trends can help you stay ahead and make the most of classified ad advertising.

11. Conclusion

Free classified ads are a powerful tool for businesses and individuals looking to advertise cost-effectively. By understanding how to use them strategically, you can reach a targeted audience and achieve your advertising goals. Whether you're posting a job ad, selling a car, or promoting your local business, classified ads offer a versatile and efficient way to connect with potential customers.

12. Additional Resources

For more information and resources, check out the following:

Ad Posting Tools: Tools like Canva for creating eye-catching ad images and titles.

Further Reading: Books and articles on effective advertising strategies.

Support Services: Professional advertising services that can help manage and optimize your ads.

By leveraging these resources, you can enhance your advertising efforts and achieve greater success with free classified ads.

[psychologeek]

All over the world, in a matter of fact.

Just some of the highlights:

In Tunisia, Anti-Israel rioters vandalized and burned down the historic el-Hamma synagogue.

In Germany, Molotov cocktails were thrown at the Kahal Adass Jisroel synagogue.

star of David and swastikas were sprayed on Jewish buildings and synagogues.

Uk: 320 antisemitic incidents since Oct. 7, an increase of 581%.

17/10:

Calgary, Canada - A man threw eggs at the Holocaust Memorial Monument and at passing vehicles, while shouting antisemitic slogans.

Turkey - The influential Yeni Akit daily newspaper published an op-ed calling on the Turkish government to strip Turkey's Jews of their citizenship.

14/10:

Paris, France - French Minister of Interior Gérald Darmanin announced that 189 anti-Semitic acts had been recorded in one week and 65 arrests had been made.

London, UK - During a large pro-Palestinian demonstration, chants of "Khaybar Khaybar ya yahud" were heard in various locations.

Glasgow, Scotland - A Pro-Palestinian protester told Jews on the street, “Don’t forget where you went in 1940. Ha! Don’t forget where the Jews went in 1940.”

10/10:

France  - Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, announced that police had recorded 1,000 antisemitic incidents in 48 hours, including 50 that were “particularly serious.” Among them he noted: “People going to synagogues, many of them, shouting threats. There have been 16 arrests in the last two days. Drones entering schoolyards with a camera. But also slogans, graffiti, threatening letters.” 

BREAKING: A Detroit synagogue president, Samantha Woll, was found stabbed dead this morning outside her home in the city’s Lafayette Park neighborhood. She was just 40 years old.  While the motives behind her death are yet unclear, it is worth noting that violent antisemitism has been on the rise across the US. May her memory forever be a blessing. This is a developing story.

[xtruss]

Sultry Klimt Portrait Smashes European Auction Record, Selling For £85.3m in London

The night's star lot made up nearly half of the £199m total for Sotheby's Modern and contemporary evening auction

— Kabir Jhala | 27 June 2023

Helena Newman, Sotheby’s chairman for Europe and worldwide head of Impressionist and Modern art, at the rostrum to sell Gustav Klimt's Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) (1917). Photo: Haydon Perrior; courtesy of Sotheby's

To some fanfare but little surprise, the last portrait ever painted by Gustav Klimt has sold for a record auction price in Europe, fetching £85.3m (with fees) at Sotheby's Modern and contemporary art evening sale in London this evening (27 June).

Klimt's Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) (1917), executed the year before the artist's death, was the night's star lot and accounted for close to half of the Modern and contemporary evening auction's £199m total (with fees), which narrowly surpassed the upper end of its £155.5m to £197.5m pre-sale estimate (calculated without fees). This is Sotheby's second-highest total for an evening sale in London, after one in March 2022 that made £222m.

Lady with a Fan's consignment made headlines when it was announced earlier this month: its estimate, "in excess of £65m", was the highest of any work offered at auction in the UK and in Europe. Guaranteed by both an irrevocable bid and a third-party guarantee, it was sure to sell. And so it did, hammering at £74m to the well-known adviser Patti Wong—formerly chairperson of Sotheby's Asia—bidding live in the New Bond Street salesroom on behalf of a Hong Kong-based client.

Providing some welcome punctuation to a largely flat portion of the auction that saw thin bidding and several works passed or sold below estimate, the Klimt received initial attention from two bidders in the room and two more on the phones. This four-step quickly turned into a two-way tussle between Wong and the underbidder, liaising on the phone with Sotheby's Asia deputy chairman Jen Hua. After a heated ten minutes steered by auctioneer Helena Newman, Sotheby’s chairman for Europe and worldwide head of Impressionist and Modern art, Hua dropped out of the race at £73.5m.

Klimt's Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) (1917). Courtesy of Sotheby's

The Klimt painting surpasses the previous title holder of Europe's most expensive work sold at auction—Alberto Giacometti's 1961 sculpture L'Homme Qui Marche I, which made £65m (with fees) at Sotheby's London in 2010. Historic auction records are not adjusted for inflation, nor fluctuations in currency strength.

Depicting a woman with her kimono slipping off her shoulder, the sultry portrait is "Klimt experimenting and pushing the boundaries", Newman previously told The Art Newspaper. After the sale, she said that she was "unsurprised" by the amount of attention it received from Asian bidders considering its Chinese and Japanese motifs.

Sotheby’s last sold this painting almost 30 years ago, in 1994, for $11.6m (with fees), as part of the collection of Wendell Cherry, the American entrepreneur and art collector. It was consigned by the same family who bought it in 1994; Sotheby's did not disclose their reason for selling it.

Klimt's auction record stands at $104.5m, achieved at Christie's New York last November by the 1902 landscape painting Birch Forest, which came from the Paul G. Allen's collection.

Saving face

The Modern and contemporary art sale opened with a specially themed 24-lot sub-auction—Face to Face—focusing on portraits from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, tied to the recent re-opening of London's National Portrait Gallery. This included two paintings by the 92-year-old German-British artist Frank Auerbach, one of which broke his auction record when it sold at £5.6m (with fees).

But tonight's successes are largely those of the headline-grabbing Klimt, which kept a middling sale afloat: just two other eight-figure lots came to the block, both paintings carrying £8m to £12m estimates. A nude portrait by Lucian Freud, consigned by the same owner of the two Auerbachs, received just two bids, one likely from its third party guarantor via specialist Tom Eddison. It hammered to a bidder in the room at £8.1m. Meanwhile Cy Twombly's Untitled (1970) went with just one bid to its third-party guarantor, for £7.8m. More than one in every three lots tonight was guaranteed.

Just prior to the record-breaking Klimt, the sale suffered a slump that saw a several works hammer below their low estimates, including a 2016 acrylic on PVC panel painting by Kerry James Marshall. Shortly after, two seven-figure oil paintings, one by Edvard Munch and the other by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, failed to find homes, contributing to a less-than-stellar 86% sell-through rate.

"Buyers for several seasons have been more price sensitive," Newman said after the sale regarding the question of whether the market is undergoing a correction. But "tonight was a strong affirmation of strength in the market", she continued, adding that the imperfect sell-through rate was due to a relatively large volume: "The results were still strong for an evening sale, one of our best yet."

Arthur Jafa's Monster (2016)

The Modern and contemporary evening auction was preceded by The Now sale, featuring 14 works made in (or almost in) this century, many by rising market stars such as Julien Nguyen and Caroline Walker, as well as more established names like Günther Förg. That sale achieved £8.7m (including fees) against an estimate of £6.6m to £9.9m; three lots were withdrawn and one was passed. One of the two guaranteed lots from this sale, a 2018 painting by Mark Bradford, hammered with just one bid at its £2.5m low estimate.

In this leg, bidders were offered some exciting and intriguing works, such as Sarah Lucas's humorous and idiosyncratic painted bronze sculpture Tit Cat Down, which was shown in her 2015 British Pavilion show at the Venice Biennale. Another Venice star, Simone Leigh, who won the Golden Lion for her best participation in the 2022 biennial's central exhibition, saw her sculpture Mandeville hammer at £380,000, near its £400,000 high estimate.

New auction records were also set for two critically acclaimed artists: Arthur Jafa, whose arresting photographic self-portrait Monster (2018) made £110,000 against a £60,000 high estimate, and Michel Majerus, whose 1999 painting referencing Jean-Michel Basquiat, MoM Block Nr. 57, made £520,000 against a high estimate of £300,000. Majerus, who died in a plane crash in 2002, has recently been the subject of numerous exhibitions across Germany and the US, spearheaded by his galleries Matthew Marks, neugerriemschneider and Max Hetzler, which hope to position him as one of this century's greatest artists—and with a market to match.

But hammer prices at ten times the estimates were not seen during this The Now sale, as has previously been the case for this category. While this suggests a continued cooling of a once-red-hot market that reliably front-loaded evening sales, it is difficult to discount the pull of The Now altogether. As a Sotheby's spokesperson says: "Not a single lot with a low estimate of $1m or more by a young contemporary artist has failed to find a buyer at auction over the past five years."

[crackednailsandsplitends]

We are Lucky to Live In A Place With So Much Natural Beauty

The Guardian newspaper recently published an article about my hometown, Lowestoft, and how stunning the town centre and our golden beaches are. As a resident of this beautiful town, I completely agree with their sentiment. We are lucky to live in such a stunning location, with no shortage of amazing natural surroundings.

One thing the Guardian missed, however, was the other side of town that is part of The Boards National Park. This area is steeped with marshes and nature reserves, which adds to the overall richness and diversity of Lowestoft's and its surrounding area natural environment. It’s a shame that this aspect wasn't included in the article because it also offers a unique perspective on the town's natural beauty. 

The golden sandy, award winning, beach is just a 15-minute walk from my house, and the walk takes us through Gunton Meadow Nature Reserve, and then woods and the warren. It’s a delightful walk that showcases the stunning natural scenery that surrounds us. Alternatively, we can take a five-minute drive and take our kayaks and paddle boards out on The Broads. We also have Fritton Forest, Carlton Marshes and Lound Lake nature reserve all just a five-minute drive away, so we are truly spoilt for choice. 

The Boards is a vast network of rivers and lakes that span across Norfolk and Suffolk counties. Full of luxury cruisers, sailing boats and so much more, all cruising up and down the broads looking for a slice of tranquillity. The broads is also perfect for kayaking and paddle boarding. There are many special spots to visit, historic water mills, quaint riverside pubs, or a simple jetty where we stop, have a picnic and the kids play in the water. Day or early evening in the summer months, is just perfect. The kids love it too, it’s an adventure every time we go out.

Living in a place where I feel spoilt for choice in terms of natural surroundings is a real privilege. The abundance of natural beauty allows residents and visitors alike to immerse themselves in the wonders of nature and enjoy a fulfilling and enriching lifestyle. It provides opportunities for exploration, relaxation, and a deeper connection with nature. I truly appreciate and take advantage of these surroundings, especially with my ill health as I use it as medicine to harness the therapeutic benefits that nature offers; nature truly has a way of providing comfort, peace, and rejuvenation.

Lowestoft is a town that is rich in natural beauty and history, and it’s amazing to see it getting the recognition it deserves. The Guardian's article highlights how amazing our town centre and beaches are, but it’s important to remember that there's more to this place than just that. It provides a brief respite from the hustle and bustle of life, giving us a place to relax and unwind in nature's beauty. It's a wonderful reminder that we live in a stunning location, with amazing natural surroundings that add to the overall richness and diversity of our environment.

Finally, Lowestoft is famous for being the most easterly town and the first place to see the sunrise in the UK. We also had the world-famous graffiti artist Banksy visit a couple of years ago and leave some murals. 1 was damaged, 2 were removed and sold, but we have one original Banksy mural left.

[the-paintrist]

Thomas Ellerby - Portrait of John Wilson Carmichael - 1839

oil on panel, height: 25.7 cm (10.1 in); width: 20.2 cm (7.9 in)

South Shields Museum & Art Gallery, UK

Thomas Ellerby (10 January 1797 - 4 April 1861) was an English portrait artist whose work included 72 paintings chosen for hanging at The Royal Academy of Arts exhibitions from 1821 until 1857. He remained active as a painter until the end of his life.

James John Wilson Carmichael (9 June 1800 – 1868), also known as John Carmichael was a British marine painter.

Carmichael was born at the Ouseburn, in Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, on 9 June 1800, the son of William Carmichael, a ship's carpenter. He went to sea at an early age, and spent three years on board a vessel sailing between ports in Spain and Portugal. On his return, he was apprenticed to a shipbuilding firm.  After completing his apprenticeship, he devoted all his spare time to art, and eventually gave up the carpentry business, setting himself up as a drawing-master and miniature painter. His first historical painting to attract public notice was the Fight Between the Shannon and Chesapeake, which sold for 13 guineas (£13.65). He then painted The Bombardment of Algiers for Trinity House, Newcastle, for which he received 40 guineas; it is still at Trinity House, along with The Heroic Exploits of Admiral Lord Collingwood in HMS "Excellent" at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, painted in collaboration with George Balmer. Another important early commission was for a View of Newcastle for which the city corporation paid him 100 guineas. During the redevelopment of the centre of Newcastle, Carmichael worked with the architect John Dobson to produce some joint works, including paintings with designs for the Central Station and the Grainger Market.[4] He also collaborated with John Blackmore to produce an illustrated book: Views on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway in 1836.

His name first appears as an exhibitor in 1838, when he contributed an oil painting, Shipping in the Bay of Naples, to the Society of British Artists. He showed both oil paintings and watercolours at the Royal Academy, his contributions including The Conqueror towing the Africa off the Shoals of Trafalgar (1841) and The Arrival of the Royal Squadron (1843).

He lived in Newcastle until about 1845, when he moved to London, where he was already known as a skilful marine painter. In 1855, during the Crimean War he was sent to the Baltic to make drawings for The Illustrated London News. His painting of the bombardment of Sveaborg, which he witnessed during this assignment, was exhibited at the Royal Academy and is now in the collection of the National Maritime Museum.

He later moved to Scarborough, where he died in 1868.

He published The Art of Marine Painting in Water-Colours in 1859, and The Art of Marine Painting in Oil-Colours in 1864.

His daughter Annie married William Luson Thomas son of a shipbroker and a successful artist who, exasperated by the treatment of artists by the Illustrated London News, founded in 1869 The Graphic newspaper which had immense influence within the art world.