Just finished SIX MINUTES IN MAY: How Churchill Unexpectedly Became Prime Minister' by Nicholas Shakespeare. Splendid prequel to John Lukacs' SIX DAYS IN LONDON, MAY 1940'. Civilized politics at its most ruthless.
My Dad was 24 on the 7 May, 1940. And we think we live in grim times.
Tuesday, 21 August 2018
Friday, 17 August 2018
THE MORNING PAPER
They who have
known what the daily supply, the daily toil, the daily difficulty, the hourly
danger, and the incessant tumult of a morning paper is, can alone know that
chaos of the brain in which a man lives who has all this to undergo. Terror
walks before him— fatigue bears him down—libels encompass him, and distraction
attacks him on every side. He must be a literary man, and a commercial man; he
must be a political man, and a theatrical man; and must run through all the
changes from a pantomime to a prime minister. What every man is pursuing, he
must be engaged in; and from the very nature and "front of his offence," he
must be acquainted with all the wants, the weaknesses, and wickedness, from one
end of London to the other.
from 'Sporting Anecdotes' by Pierce Egan, 1807
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