I hope what I’m about to say will not make me sound like a luvvie – that untranslatable British term for an artist, especially an actor, who is embarrassingly effusive or affected – but finishing the Powell book leaves a great dark void in the mind.
Present and imperfect of the verb “to be”, enclitic words, and contrary to fact conditions.
Last week I sought to enlarge on an insight of Anthony Powell’s, arguing that individual liberty is something of a hermetic communion like serious literature.
We are tentatively planning a small group trip to Greece of about 10 days for November 2025. The rough plan is to arrive and spend perhaps three nights in Athens and see the usual sights, then a bus will take us to Nauplion/Nafplio on the East coast of the Peloponnesus and from there visit Mycenae and Epidauros, and perhaps Tiryns and/or Nemea
Few people have better understood the history and troublesome trajectory of the West and are more genuinely relevant to our life today. Perhaps younger readers might appreciate a little background since this great seer’s career has lapsed from public attention.
The theme of my articles here is peace. Because the alternative is nuclear war. It’s the main reason I loathed Biden, and whoever really was running his regime.
My father used to tell me how, when he was a boy in the 1930’s, he came upon a cobbler plying his craft in Moscow. The man was an Azeri, quietly industrious like many of his race and, just as important, perennially sober.
In any decent society, patterns of deference are the foundation of the social order: the young defer to the old, females defer to males, parents defer to children. Any senior member who allows his juniors or inferiors to treat him with contempt or indifference is undermining the order and potentially rearing a sociopath who will prey upon his fellows.
