One more post about British TV as I continue to reprise some posts from recent months during this mini-hiatus coinciding with Bethel’s Spring Break: my defense of Downton Abbey against withering criticism from one of Britain’s most popular historians. Downton has been back on my mind of late, after my wife and I watched its antecedent, the … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Downton Crabby
It’s Spring Break here at Bethel University, so I’m going to take a break from blogging the rest of the week in order to focus on some other projects. In the meantime, I’ll reprise some posts I especially enjoyed writing: one each from December 2011, January 2012, and February 2012. First up, my enthusiastic response … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Sherlock!
One week ago today Charles Dickens turned 200. For some, it was the most important thing to happen in England in 2012, a year in which London will host the Summer Olympics for the first time in over 60 years. I’m almost positive it was the most important thing to happen in the English town … More Dickens World
The last surviving veteran of the First World War died last Saturday, just shy of her 111th birthday. Her name was Florence Green. She joined the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) as a mess steward in September 1918, nine months after she turned 17 and two months before the end of the war. Mrs. Green’s … More The Last Veteran of WWI
Earlier this month the popular British historian Simon Schama took to the pages of Newsweek to write a withering attack on the British TV series Downton Abbey — and even more, on Americans’ obsession with it — as its second series began to air on PBS. SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN’T BEEN WATCHING I … More Downton Crabby
The day after we got back from Thanksgiving travels my wife and kids went to bed early, so I seized the chance to watch something I’d had on our queue for a long time: the first episode of the BBC’s Sherlock, an updating of the Sherlock Holmes character to the 21st century that features the … More Sherlock!
November 30, 1936 – Crystal Palace burns down “This is the end of an age,” remarked Winston Churchill as he joined tens of thousands of other Londoners to watch the blaze. Though it had long since fallen into disrepair, the Crystal Palace was the crowning achievement of the British Industrial Revolution, built out of cast … More This Day in History: “The End of an Age”
Last Friday I posted a Wilfred Owen poem, Owen being the greatest poet of World War I and November 11 being the day (a week after Owen’s death) that the fighting on the Western Front ended — and the day that people around the world still commemorate as Remembrance Day (or, in this country, Veterans’ … More Chamberlain and Churchill: Empathy, Judgment, and Hindsight Bias
I’ve already posted something for November 11 as Remembrance/Veterans Day, but given that it’s also one of the twelve days each century when the numbers of the month, day, and year (in mm/dd/yy format, or dd/mm/yy for our European readers) are identical, I thought I’d list the most important events in history for each such … More 11/11/11
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the year 1918, the guns of the Western Front finally fell silent. And Susan Owen of the English town of Shrewsbury received a telegram informing her that her son Wilfred had died one week before, while leading his men in battle in … More Remembrance Day
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