Capel Lofft
@CapelLofft
✝️ Political and ecclesiastical history, Anglicanism, literature. Author of 'The Rage of Party: How Whig versus Tory Made Modern Britain'.
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I enormously enjoyed reviewing a brilliant new biography of bucaneering naval hero and romantic icon Thomas Cochrane for @thetimes by @petermoore. It really is superb:
A hero who stood against all the forces of fanatical iconoclastic philistinism despite it costing him his life. Puts to shame many in the contemporary west who wouldn't make any sacrifice to defend historical truth and heritage, no matter how insignificant
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Reading a Georgette Heyer novel and I come across the phrase 'that's all my eye and Betty Martin', meaning 'a load of old nonsense'. Apparently it was naval slang with roughly this origin:
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Events of recent months - and indeed the general intellectual atmosphere of much of the West, with its commitment to modish bullshit, reality-denying ideological extremism and dishonesty - continually bring to mind Kipling's verses in 'The Gods of the Copybook Headings':
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It was right for the Guardian to publish its investigation, and it is wrong that the journalists who did their job responsibly are now being subjected to an onslaught of abuse.
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In a July 1940 statement, 'Ireland's Call', the IRA leadership declared that Nazi forces would be welcomed in Ireland as "friends and liberators of the Irish people". It described the Nazi regime as an "energising force" in Europe.
The French Resistance had a different view.
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I knew that both a turnip and horns were Jacobite anti-Hanoverian symbols (George I was allegedly a mere 'turnip farmer'; and was allegedly a cuckold) but I read that sometimes they were combined in one image. If anyone knows of any such depictions do share
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Cambridge colleges should stop doing this. The 'Progress Pride' flag is politically contentious and makes colleges look like activist outposts more than broad communities of scholars of differing views seeking the truth. Stop it.
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