Offering a slew of tax cuts to gain hardline Tory support, Truss has seemed desperate to inspire a campaign bid that takes and takes but gives back nothing. Like many of her fellow candidates, Truss is seeking to peel back much of the environmental legislation put in place by the government she has been so intimately a part of, but even a reversal of the ban on fracking is unlikely to plug any of the financial holes in her sinking policy strategy. Promising to axe the hike in corporation tax and reverse the National Insurance rise, while increasing defence spending to 3 per cent is a fantastical string of promises that seek to attract right wing Tories, without offering any constructive thought to the onslaught of problems faced by the nation.

The Foreign Secretary’s approach is a symptom of the Conservative party’s porcupine instinct, pulling back at a time where it should be driving forwards. Leading and not retreating is paramount for a party whose populist leader made such historic gains in 2019. In a histrionic attempt to add gravitas to her campaign, Truss has turned to Margaret Thatcher’s dusty playbook. 

There is always a candidate during a Conservative leadership campaign who either tries to invoke or emulate Thatcher. Most will dedicate a passage in a speech or an answer in a debate to praising her premiership and lionising her character. Indeed, her legacy remains a major pull factor in the party’s membership drives and advertising. Parts of the Tory membership have become a Thatcherite fanclub. However, the quasi-religious eulogising of Thatcher’s tenure at the top of British politics and the shoddy tribute acts that leadership candidates unfurl before bemused TV audiences has never been so risible and cringe-worthy as Liz Truss’s peculiar performance on Sunday night’s ITV debate.

With a permanently raised arm, Truss awkwardly laid unnecessary emphasis on her Mark II Thatcherite policies by abrasively articulating each answer and too energetically engaging her opponents. It looked contrived.

Boris Johnson’s admiration and occasional imitations of Winston Churchill are fanboy slips, like Jim Hacker’s in Yes Minister, at worst. But he has benefited on the campaign trail and against political adversaries from possessing an individuated personality.

Whether you loathe him or like him, he has managed to get ahead in public life because people believe (or believed) he is genuine. And he could only have done that if voters saw him as somebody significant in himself, not simply as a deafening echo of former greatness. He certainly does owe aspects of his character to Churchill. We invariably pick up quirks and ticks from people we admire. But most of us are a vast sum of parts, a unique concoction of disparate traits. Liz Truss has exhumed a tried and tested persona, doing her best to resemble the Iron Lady of the 1980s sartorially as well as rhetorically.

The Foreign Secretary has been doing a Maggie impersonation for some time. As Foreign Secretary, we have seen her mimic Thatcher’s combative style of diplomacy, hoping, as it did with Maggie, that the British public would be impressed by her ardent defence of their interests.

It doesn’t work. She projects too little authority, inspires minimal confidence and flounders too often. Liz Truss is a woman of wax rather than a lady of iron and the party’s membership would be wise to recognise it. 

Associated with several senior practitioners of espionage and accused of heresy and indecency by zealous detractors, Marlowe played the role of the inspired wayward youth perfectly. His death has been the cause of much debate. He was stabbed to death after a day’s drinking at an inn in Deptford on the banks of the Thames in 1593. He was twenty-nine years old.

Some historians believe he was assassinated by rival spies on the orders of Sir Francis Walsingham and that his violent demise confirms the claim that he was immersed in the murky world of 16th-century counter-intelligence and courtly intrigue.

This week’s poem is an extract from Marlowe’s celebrated play, Tamburlaine the Great. In the passage below, the eponymous hero expresses his understanding of human nature and our inherent impulse to explore the extent of our rational abilities. The poet describes the unconscious aim of our “aspiring minds” as a “sweet fruition” of our “earthly crowns”.

Today the trick of composing compact and substantial verse while advancing a compelling story may appear out-of-date and potentially artificial. Still, over four centuries after its completion, the execution of Marlowe’s verse dramas remain a technical feat unequalled by all, except perhaps by Shakespeare himself.

From Tamburlaine the Great, Part One by Christopher Marlowe (1587)

Nature, that framed us of four elements
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world
And measure every wandering planet’s course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Will us to wear ourselves and never rest,
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown

Kyiv is no stranger to onslaughts and invasions. It has been on the frontline of numerous conflicts that have wreaked havoc across nations in that contentious region. However, few assaults on Ukraine’s beleaguered capital have warranted the nocturnal ringing of the colossal bells of St Michael’s Cathedral.

The ringing of the bells occurred once in the 13th century and once again in our century.

In 1240, the Mongol Horde continued its bloody progress westward, toppling and subjugating various hetmans and princes in Russia and the Baltics. Kyiv was the most prosperous stronghold of Christian power in the vicinity and a great prize in the apathetic eyes of the Mongol Khanate.

The famously brutal Mongol general, Subtuai, was charged with capturing or destroying Kyiv by his Khan. His army came into view of the holy city in early November in 1240 and began to build catapults out of an adjacent forest to conduct a siege.

When the priests of St Michael’s saw the bright torches of the Mongol’s amassing forces they rang every bell in the belfry of the cathedral, producing the loudest peal that had ever been heard by the people of Kyiv.

The efficient viciousness of the Mongol troops eventually overwhelmed the isolated defenders, and of the 50,000 population of Kyiv, only 2,000 survived to relay what they had witnessed.

The church was ransacked and left in ruins by the invaders, but over the following decades, the sacred sanctuary was lovingly restored by the denizens of Kyiv.

At witching hour on 11th December 2013, almost 800 years after the Mongol siege, an enormous number of riot police began to engage barricades democratic protesters had erected that afternoon in central Kyiv.

At 1 am, a 24-year-old graduate student from the Orthodox Theology Academy, called Ivan Sydor, was woken up by incessant calls and texts to his mobile phone. His number was on the cathedral website, and Kyivans were calling to ask him to sound the alarm.

Not only were people ringing him from within the city, Ukrainians abroad in the US, UK and Poland also attempted to rouse him as they watched the fight for their country unfold live on tv.

The young seminary received 70 calls in a single hour, unanimously insisting that he produce a sound that had not been heard since the Mongols converged on the Lyadski Gates.

Ivan climbed the steps to the belltower and single-handedly rang each bell until his fellow seminaries joined him. By this time, his hands were red from tugging the strings attached to the bells, and his feet were swollen from furiously pressing down on the modulating pedals.

As the bells of St Michael’s started to chime, the sleeping people of the city were alerted to the predicament of their fellow citizens. Thousands rushed to the struggle against the riot police while St Michael’s bells rang on until 5 that morning.

Housman brought his authoritative academic knowledge of poetic structures and styles to bear on his own compositions. His best-loved work, the cycle of poems, A Shropshire Lad, was an enormous success when it was published in 1896. Through its simple vocabulary and eloquent sentimentality, Housman displayed his love of English rural life and described the existential predicaments a bucolic existence evinces.

This week’s selection, On the idle hill of summer, is an extract from that cycle. Due to its unintended relevance to the arrival of war in Europe in 1914, it was chosen as the title for the first episode of the BBC’s celebrated 1964 The Great War documentary series. 

Considering the lamentable events that are taking place in Ukraine, Housman’s lyric below about the coming of a conflict has a tragic germaneness.

A Shropshire Lad 35: On the Idle Hill of Summer (1896)

On the idle hill of summer,
      Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
      Drumming like a noise in dreams.

Far and near and low and louder
      On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
      Soldiers marching, all to die.

East and west on fields forgotten
      Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
      None that go return again.

Far the calling bugles hollo,
      High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
      Woman bore me, I will rise.

Enjoyed this week’s poem by A.E. Housman? Find more poems of the week here.

The traditional soldierly urge for chivalry vanished under the rolling thunder of relentless shelling and in a haze of lethal gas. But high above the incredible carnage of trench warfare, young men climbed the skies, wielding the latest weapons to be added to the warring nations’ already considerable arsenals.

Despite operating in the most modern theatre of that egregious conflict, the combatants who drove those soaring vehicles observed an outdated code of conduct, a code more akin to medieval knights than tin-hatted Tommys.

The first recorded plane v plane fight in a time of war was during the Mexican Revolution in 1913. The Minister for War, General Manuel Mondragón, created the Army’s Auxiliary Aerial Militia Squadron (Escuadrilla Aérea de la Milicia Auxiliar del Ejército) to bomb targeted locations in Mexico City.

The revolutionaries soon employed a similar tactic and commissioned their own planes for reconnaissance and sabotage. On the afternoon of 30th November 1913, two American soldiers of fortune fighting for different sides encountered each other in the state of Sonora.

According to one of the pilots, they fired pistols at each other but purposefully missed, before disengaging. Once in range, they realised that they knew and liked one another and were naturally reluctant to attack.

The dramatic unfolding of the First World War instigated the high-pace evolution of military aviation. At first, planes were solely deployed on reconnaissance missions, but the general staff on either side quickly learned that pilots could exact enormous damage on vulnerable positions behind enemy lines.

Their initial photographic excursions turned into bombing raids, and when fliers began brandishing pistols and started taking pot-shots at each other, their engineers awkwardly hoisted machine guns aloft those rickety crafts. This amendment marked the dawn of dogfighting and turned the atmosphere of aerial warfare into a duellist’s paradise.

It became common for fliers to count the number of crafts they had downed. Though this is obviously a natural means of measuring their professional competency and gauging the strength and effectiveness of their enemy, the habit developed into a matter of pride. The idea of the flying ace was formed in the imaginations of the soldiers on the ground and the people back home, all of whom wanted heroes to toast in the midst of that mind-bogglingly calamitous war.

The promotion and branding of these dashing daredevils improved morale and inspired resilience. The most famous of these wartime celebrities is Manfred Von Richtofen, known today as the Red Baron. Von Richtofen epitomised the attitude of the World War One ace. Aloof, honourable, quiet and courageous, the acutely urbane young man nursed a death wish, believing it his destiny to fall in battle.

After issuing orders, he declared to a squadron under his command “Gentlemen we are sportsmen, not butchers.” He was referring to the code of conduct that was widely, though unofficially, acknowledged by fighters on both sides of the war.

In those days, the main aim of pilots was not to kill their airmen adversaries. It was to destroy the planes they flew. Having endured and pioneered the horrors of this new kind of war, perhaps the uniqueness of the experience produced a kind of kinship among foes.

When the Red Baron was downed at the regrettably young age of twenty-five, after having decommissioned approximately eighty planes, members of the Royal Flying Corps commented that they would have much preferred to have caught him alive, so that they might have had a chance to speak to their valorous opponent.

When Von Richtofen’s mentor, Oswald Boelcke, crashed and died in October, 1916, a wreath was airdropped at his funeral by the Royal Flying Corps that read: “To the memory of Captain Boelcke, our brave and chivalrous opponent.”

These numerous examples of these acts of empathy among enemy fighters reveal a strange respect, one you might encounter between athletes at a tournament. To many, they were the envy of the world – celebrated heroes who did not have to undergo the filthy torment of fighting on the ground.

But the regularity of their casualties and the feeling of their own inevitable annihilation (this was long before the introduction of parachutes for pilots) made their sphere of battle inimitably gruelling. Some of the most effective fliers of the first world war truly harboured classical notions of honour and saw their confrontations as elevated jousts or exalted contests.

Yeats in his poem “A Irishman Airman Foresees His Death” beautifully explains the mentality of that generation, with their Icarian aspirations and sporting ethics: “Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,/Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,/A lonely impulse of delight/Drove to this tumult in the clouds.”

This week’s selection is entitled A Requiem for Soldiers Lost in Ocean Transport and was likely composed in the early 1860s. It contrasts the plenteous prospects of life with the insensate stillness of death and speaks to how while alive, we can always expect a brighter time ahead. Only those who are dead are denied the promise of improvement.

A Requiem for Soldiers lost in Ocean Transports by Herman Melville

When, after storms that woodlands rue,

To valleys comes atoning dawn,

The robins blithe their orchard-sports renew;

And meadow-larks, no more withdrawn,

Caroling fly in the languid blue;

The while, from many a hid recess,

Alert to partake the blessedness,

The pouring mites their airy dance pursue.

So, after ocean’s ghastly gales,

When laughing light of hoyden morning breaks,

Every finny hider wakes —

From vaults profound swims up with glittering scales;

Through the delightsome sea he sails,

With shoals of shining tiny things

Frolic on every wave that flings

Against the prow its showery spray;

All creatures joying in the morn,

Save them forever from joyance torn,

Whose bark was lost where now the dolphins play;

Save them that by the fabled shore,

Down the pale stream are washed away,

Far to the reef of bones are borne;

And never revisits them the light,

Nor sight of long-sought land and pilot more;

Nor heed they now the lone bird’s flight

Round the lone spar where mid-sea surges pour.

Enjoyed this week’s poem by Herman Melville? Find more poems of the week here.

A melodic sound started to rise up the staircase, filling the empty rooms with one of the tenderest songs ever written. At first, we might assume the woman believed she was dreaming. Her dazed mind could have ascribed the wondrous music to an idyllic imagining.

Gradually, she grasped that the noise was not dreamt. She leapt from her bed, threw the tall double-doors to her room open and leaning over the opulent bannisters, looked down onto the incredible spectacle.

It was a birthday present unlike any she had previously received, and her eager applause pleased the infatuated composer greatly. The woman was called Mathilde Wesendonck, and the music she was hearing had been inspired by a poem she had furtively shown the man conducting the ensemble.

In 1849, a young Richard Wagner dissented and joined the May Uprising in Dresden. It was the last dramatic episode in a revolutionary saga that had started over a year before. Revolts and demonstrations had erupted across Europe, consuming governments and toppling heads of state.

Reprisals for abetting this political upheaval were harsh, and to avoid imprisonment, the composer was forced to flee local authorities. Accompanied by his devoted wife, Minna, Wagner travelled to Zurich seeking sanctuary. He found work conducting in local concert halls and was soon introduced to other republican-minded intellectuals and artists.

While staying at the Hotel Baur au Lac, the Wagners encountered a similarly inclined married couple. The meeting was to change the history of music, as well as all of their lives, dramatically. Otto was a rich silk merchant who spent much of his time overseeing his investments in America. He was already a zealous fan of Wagner’s early operas and was keen to patronise the drifting genius. Mathilde was an enchanting beauty and aspiring poet who took a particular shine to the intensely passionate composer.

The wealthy Wesendoncks were staying at the Zurich hotel while their new villa was being built. The idea dawned on Otto to commission the construction of a comfortable cottage on the villa’s grounds to house the itinerant artist and his wife.

The Wagners accepted Otto’s generous offer and promptly moved in. Otto’s interests across the Atlantic meant he was often away for months at a time, leaving his lonely wife to brood romantically in the company of the spirited revolutionary.

Their initial dynamic of patroness and composer ostensibly evolved into an intense romance, a romance tempered by a mutual love of the arts and a sincere appreciation for nature. Besotted by Mathilde’s evident charm and elegant demeanour, Wagner sought to celebrate his exalted feelings for his new friend’s wife.

Hitherto he had suffered a protracted bout of artistic inactivity but inspired by his enchanting hostess, Wagner recommenced the laborious chore of completing his incomparably ambitious Ring Cycle. If this was the sole effect Mathilde had on Wagner, it would be enough to owe her thanks, but her energising influence on him did not end there.

Though no proof of a sexual liaison between the two has ever been established, we know that the beguiled Mathilde began to share her poetic efforts with Wagner. It gave Wagner the idea of interpolating her poetry into music.

In all, he translated five of her verses into lieder. The song she heard from her bed on that misty hibernal morning, was entitled “Träume” (dreams)” and was based on one of those poems.

Wagner thought of the song as a study towards a monumental new work that would express his innermost turmoil and joy. Struck by an assortment of ineffable feelings for Mathilde, he paused his work on the Ring and began the task of writing Tristan Und Isolde, perhaps the most seminal work of any medium that century.

In the following months, Minna’s suspicions of Wagner’s growing affection for Mathilde were confirmed when she accidentally intercepted a letter from her husband to his muse.

She immediately ended their twenty-two marriage, leaving the increasingly popular Wagner to pursue other romantic interests. Mathilde certainly left a uniquely deep impression on him and inspired some of his most beloved works, but they were never to realise the promise of their fondness for one another. He instead married the former wife of the conductor, Hans Von Bulow, Cosima, with whom he had two children.

As with Mathilde, Wagner premiered another piece by sneaking an ensemble into a house and waking his paramour on her birthday with the sweet sound of the music she inspired. The seductive ploy must have worked so well the first time that he felt his second wife deserved similar treatment.

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand famously said that; “Providence gave man the gift of speech so that he may conceal his thoughts”. It could also be said that fate gave humanity the power of poetry so that we may reveal our highest feelings and deepest fancies.

Go, Valentine by Robert Southey

Go, Valentine, and tell that lovely maid
Whom fancy still will portray to my sight,
How here I linger in this sullen shade, 
This dreary gloom of dull monastic night; 
Say, that every joy of life remote
At evening’s closing hour I quit the
throng,
Listening in solitude the ring-dome’s note,
Who pours like me her solitary song; 
Say, that of her absence calls the
sorrowing sigh; 
Say, that of all her charms I love to speak,
In fancy feel the magic of her eye, 
In fancy view the smile illume her cheek, 
Court the lone hour when silence stills the grove, 
And heave the sigh of memory and of love.

The Love Song of Har Dyal by Rudyard Kipling 

Alone upon the housetops to the North
I turn and watch the lightnings in the sky–
The glamour of thy footsteps in the North.
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die.

Below my feet the still bazar is laid–
Far, far below the weary camels lie–
The camels and the captives of thy raid.
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

My father’s wife is old and harsh with years,
And drudge of all my father’s house am I–
My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears.
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

Episode of Hands by Hart Crane 

The unexpected interest made him flush.
Suddenly he seemed to forget the pain,
—Consented,—and held out
one finger from the others.

The gash was bleeding, and a shaft of sun
That glittered in and out among the wheels,
Fell lightly, warmly, down into the wound.

And as the fingers of the factory owner’s son,
That knew a grip for books and tennis
As well as one for iron and leather,—
As his taut, spare fingers wound the gauze
Around the thick bed of the wound,
His own hands seemed to him
Like wings of butterflies
Flickering in sunlight over summer fields.

The knots and notches,—many in the wide
Deep hand that lay in his,—seemed beautiful.
They were like the marks of wild ponies’ play,—
Bunches of new green breaking a hard turf.

And factory sounds and factory thoughts
Were banished from him by that larger, quieter
handThat lay in his with the sun upon it.
And as the bandage knot was tightened
The two men smiled into each other’s eyes.

Enjoyed this week’s romantic poetry selection? Find more poems of the week here.

As Heym glided across the river, his friend suddenly fell through an acre of thin ice, and the panic-stricken poet leapt to his rescue. The accident was to prove fatal for both of them. 

A nearby farmer watched the scene unfold and reached the riverbank in time to see Heym plunge in after his friend. This abrupt and tragic end to a brief but bountiful career deprived the expressionist movement of one of its most promising voices.

This week’s poem is entitled Umbra Vitae and is one of Georg Heym’s most popular pieces. It articulates a disquieting sense of impending doom and is actuated by a chilling pitch of angst and foreboding. Despite the darkness of the subject, the vivid and inventive imagery and phrases make it a thoroughly exhilarating read.

Umbra Vitae by Georg Heym (1912)

The people on the streets draw up and stare,

While overhead huge portents cross the sky;

Round fanglike towers threating comets flare,

Death-bearing, fiery-snouted where they fly.

On every roof astrologers abound,

Enormous tubes thrust heavenward; there are

Magicians springing up from underground,

Aslant in darkness, conjuring to a star.

Through night great hordes of suicides are hurled,

Men seeking on their way the selves they’ve lost;

Crook-backed they haunt all corners of the world,

And with their arms for brooms they sweep the dust.

They are as dust, keep but a little while;

And as they move their hair drops out. They run,

To hasten their slow dying. Then they fall,

And in the open fields lie prone,

But twitch a little still. Beasts of the field

Stand blindly round them, prod with horns

Their sprawling bodies till at last they yield,

Lie buried by the sagebrush, by the thorns.

But all the seas are stopped. Among the waves

The ships hang rotting, scattered, beyond hope.

No current through the water moves,

And all the courts of heaven are locked up.

Trees do not change, the seasons do not change.

Enclosed in dead finality each stands,

And over broken roads lets frigid range

Its palmless thousand-fingered hands.

The dying man sits up as if to stand,

Just one more word a moment since he cries,

All at once he’s gone. Can life so end?

And crushed to fragments are his glassy eyes.

The secret shadows thicken, darkness breaks;

Behind the speechless doors dreams watch and creep.

Burdened by light of dawn the man that wakes

Must rub from grayish eyelids leaden sleep.

Translated by Christopher Middleto

Both bodies had sustained gruesome gunshot wounds, and wild rumours of murder, political plots and a possible suicide pact quickly spread. The truth of the mysterious event remains contested, and to this day, the Austrian government is reluctant to release official papers about the tragedy.

Some historians argue that had the prince lived, many subsequent disasters could have been averted, and the course of European history might have turned towards a radically different direction.

Rudolf was the only son and heir to Emperor Franz Josef and his famously beautiful Empress, Elisabeth. The stern and courteous Franz Josef had reigned since 1848 and inevitably harboured high expectations for his successor.

Despite Rudolf inheriting his mother’s frail constitution, Franz Josef deemed it necessary to impose a gruelling routine on his son and heir. To keep the child alert at all times, Crown Prince Rudolf was often woken up in the middle of the night by random gunshots being fired by his chaperones and was regularly instructed to run barefoot through the snow to increase his physical tolerance. Though cruel, in the Emperor’s mind these measures were merely to ensure that Rudolf would be able to endure the rigours of sovereignty.

This tough-love approach fractured their already complicated relationship, and Rudolf naturally sought to define himself in contrast to his overbearing father. He took an active interest in progressive politics and proposals for reform, paying particular attention to calls for independence from the Hungarian parliament.

His tumultuous family life was somewhat improved by an arranged marriage to a Belgian princess, a union that produced a daughter whom Rudolf loved dearly. However, the brooding prince’s circumstances were about to change for the worst.

Deprived of any real authority by his suspicious father, Rudolf filled his free time with hunting, drinking and womanising. From one of his many mistresses, he reportedly contracted syphilis and inadvertently infected his beloved wife, rendering her infertile.

Some Habsburg historians believed this bad luck tipped the macabre prince over the proverbial edge, and he started to consider suicide as an honourable exit from a life that offered him no prospect of fulfilment.

At around this time, he supposedly began a scandalous affair with the teenage beauty, Mary Vetsera. They made no effort to conceal their romance from court circles, and his father is said to have forbidden his son from continuing his relationship with the girl.

The prince and his young lover journeyed to the imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling on 28 January, where Crown Prince Rudolf planned to meet a hunting party comprised of his closest friends and cousins.

When his guests arrived on the morning of the 29th, they found Rudolf’s room locked and could not rouse their host for the festivities ahead. His increasingly nervous servants were ordered to knock down the door, and upon entering, the group found the two bodies slumped next to each other.

The authorities in Vienna were contacted and a clandestine inquiry was conducted to find out the truth and prevent an international scandal.

Initially, Rudolf’s parents were informed that Mary Vetsera had probably poisoned the prince before taking her own life. Still, as the investigations went on and two suicide notes were uncovered, it became obvious that Rudolf had intended his demise all along.

A well-known Viennese actress and long-term mistress of Rudolf’s, Mizzi Kaspar, admitted to the secret police that the prince had suggested a suicide pact to her some months before.

She was less impressionable than the naive Vetsera and flatly refused. I wonder if Mary would have gone through with Rudlof’s morbid plan had she known she was his second choice?

These egregious circumstances have been dramatised and romanticised on numerous occasions, with Omar Sherif playing the prince in a celebrated Hollywood film and the Royal Ballet company basing a gaudy ballet on the misfortunate, but the likely causes certainly seem more sinister than sentimental.

His position as heir to the Habsburg crown was assumed by his cousin, Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in 1914 sparked a chain of events that led to the Great War.

Due to Rudolf’s liberal tendencies, some scholars have speculated that, had he lived, he would have done everything in his power to defuse the tensions that sparked the First World War.

Intimately acquainted with the landscape of Clare’s native Northamptonshire, his poetry is primarily preoccupied by the oscillations and undulations of human emotions and the enshrinement of beauty in our perceptions of nature. Losing the love of his life after a thwarted courtship, he was forever haunted by tantalising reminiscences of that failed affair.

Marriage to a second love did little to prevent Clare’s gradual descent into a mysterious madness. Nature and literature appeared to nourish him as much as love and loneliness seemed to starve him. Enabled by an autodidact study of literature and an early exposure to nature, Clare’s lyrical skill and charm have been persistently praised by eminent poets since his death in an asylum in 1864.

Due to the vibrancy and sincerity of John Clare’s work as well as the insanity and intensity of his mind, he has been compared to the painter Vincent Van Gogh. He has also been critically hailed as the greatest working-class poet England has ever produced.

This week’s selection is “January”. It is the first poem of a cycle of twelve (a poem for each month of the year), entitled “The Shepherd’s Calendar”. Using Clare’s immense talent for storytelling and his gift for lyrical brevity, Clare tells the tale of this cold and caliginous week, paying equal attention to the strain as well as the exaltation of the time.

January from The Shepherd’s Calendar by John Clare 

Withering and keen the winter comes
While comfort flyes to close shut rooms
And sees the snow in feathers pass
Winnowing by the window glass
And unfelt tempests howl and beat
Above his head in corner seat
And musing oer the changing scene
Farmers behind the tavern screen
Sit-or wi elbow idly prest
On hob reclines the corners guest
Reading the news to mark again
The bankrupt lists or price of grain
Or old moores anual prophecys
That many a theme for talk supplys
Whose almanacks thumbd pages swarm
Wi frost and snow and many a storm
And wisdom gossipd from the stars
Of polities and bloody wars
He shakes his head and still proceeds
Neer doubting once of what he reads
All wonders are wi faith supplyd
Bible at once and weather guide
Puffing the while his red tipt pipe
Dreaming oer troubles nearly ripe
Yet not quite lost in profits way
He’ll turn to next years harvest day
And winters leisure to regale
Hopes better times and sips his ale
While labour still pursues his way
And braves the tempest as he may
The thresher first thro darkness deep
Awakes the mornings winter sleep
Scaring the owlet from her prey
Long before she dreams of day
That blinks above head on the snow
Watching the mice that squeaks below
And foddering boys sojourn again
By ryhme hung hedge and frozen plain
Shuffling thro the sinking snows
Blowing his fingers as he goes
To where the stock in bellowings hoarse
Call for their meals in dreary close
And print full many a hungry track
Round circling hedge that guards the stack
Wi higgling tug he cuts the hay
And bares the forkfull loads away
And morn and evening daily throws
The little heaps upon the snows
The shepherd too in great coat wrapt
And straw bands round his stockings lapt
Wi plodding dog that sheltering steals
To shun the wind behind his heels
Takes rough and smooth the winter weather
And paces thro the snow together
While in the fields the lonly plough
Enjoys its frozen sabbath now
And horses too pass time away
In leisures hungry holiday
Rubbing and lunging round the yard
Dreaming no doubt of summer sward
As near wi idle pace they draw
To brouze the upheapd cribs of straw
While whining hogs wi hungry roar
Crowd around the kitchen door
Or when their scanty meal is done
Creep in the straw the cold to shun
And old hens scratting all the day
Seeks curnels chance may throw away
Pausing to pick the seed and grain
Then dusting up the chaff again
While in the barn holes hid from view
The cats their patient watch pursue
For birds which want in flocks will draw
From woods and fields to pick the straw
The soodling boy that saunters round
The yard on homward dutys bound
Now fills the troughs for noisy hogs
Oft asking aid from barking dogs
That tuggles at each flopping ear
Of such as scramble on too near
Or circld round wi thirsty stock
That for his swinging labours flock
At clanking pump his station takes
Half hid in mist their breathing makes
Or at the pond before the door
Which every night leaves frozen oer
Wi heavy beetle1 splinters round
The glossy ice wi jarring sound
While huddling geese as half asleep
Doth round the imprisond water creep
Silent and sad to wait his aid
And soon as ere a hole is made
They din his ears wi pleasures cry
And hiss at all that ventures nigh
Splashing wi jealous joys & vain
Their fill ere it be froze again
And woodstack climbs at maids desire
Throwing down faggots for the fire
Where stealing time he often stands
To warm his half froze tingling hands
The schoolboy still in dithering joys
Pastime in leisure hours employs
And be the weather as it may
Is never at a loss for play
Rolling up giant heaps of snow
As noontide frets its little thaw
Making rude things of various names
Snow men or aught their fancy frames
Till numbd wi cold they quake away
And join at hotter sports to play
Kicking wi many a flying bound
The football oer the frozen ground
Or seeking bright glib ice to play
To sailing slide the hours away
As smooth and quick as shadows run
When clouds in autumn pass the sun
Some hurrying rambles eager take
To skait upon the meadow lake
Scaring the snipe from her retreat
From shelving banks unfrozen seat
Or running brook where icy spars
Which the pale sunlight specks wi stars
Shoots crizzling oer the restless tide
To many a likness petrified
Where fancy often stoops to pore
And turns again to wonder more
The more hen too wi fear opprest
Starts from her reedy shelterd nest
Bustling to get from foes away
And scarcly flies more fast then they
Skaiting along wi curving springs
Wi arms spread out like herons wings
They race away for pleasures sake
A hunters speed along the lake
And oft neath trees where ice is thin
Meet narrow scapes from breaking in
Again the robin waxes tame
And ventures pitys crumbs to claim
Picking the trifles off the snow
Which dames on purpose daily throw
And perching on the window sill
Where memory recolecting still
Knows the last winters broken pane
And there he hops and peeps again
The clouds of starnels dailey fly
Blackening thro the evening sky
To whittleseas1 reed wooded mere
And ozier holts by rivers near
And many a mingld swathy crowd
Rook crow and jackdaw noising loud
Fly too and fro to dreary fen
Dull winters weary flight agen
Flopping on heavy wings away
As soon as morning wakens grey
And when the sun sets round and red
Returns to naked woods to bed
Wood pigeons too in flocks appear
By hunger tamd from timid fear
They mid the sheep unstartld steal
And share wi them a scanty meal
Picking the green leaves want bestows
Of turnips sprouting thro the snows
The ickles from the cottage eaves
Which cold nights freakish labour leaves
Fret in the sun a partial thaw
Pattring on the pitted snow
But soon as ere hes out of sight
They eke afresh their tails at night
The sun soon creepeth out of sight
Behind the woods-and running night
Makes haste to shut the days dull eye
And grizzles oer the chilly sky
Dark deep and thick by day forsook
As cottage chimneys sooty nook
While maidens fresh as summer roses
Joining from the distant closes
Haste home wi yokes and swinging pail
And thresher too sets by his flail
And leaves the mice at peace agen
To fill their holes wi stolen grain
And owlets glad his toils are oer
Swoops by him as he shuts the door
The shepherd seeks his cottage warm
And tucks his hook beneath his arm
And weary in the cold to roam
Scenting the track that leadeth home
His dog wi swifter pace proceeds
And barks to urge his masters speed
Then turns and looks him in the face
And trotts before Wi mending pace
Till out of whistle from the swain
He sits him down and barks again
Anxious to greet the opend door
And meet the cottage fire once more
The robin that wi nimble eye
Glegs round a danger to espy
Now pops from out the opend door
From crumbs half left upon the floor
Nor wipes his bill on perching chair
Nor stays to clean a feather there
Scard at the cat that sliveth in
A chance from evenings glooms to win
To jump on chairs or tables nigh
Seeking what plunder may supply
The childerns litterd scraps to thieve
Or aught that negligence may leave
Creeping when huswives cease to watch
Or dairey doors are off the latch
On cheese or butter to regale
Or new milk reeking in .the pale
The hedger now in leathern coat
From woodland wilds and fields remote
After a journey far and slow
Knocks from his shoes the caking snow
And opes the welcome creaking door
Throwing his faggot on the floor
And at his listening wifes desire
To eke afresh the blazing fire
Wi sharp bill cuts the hazel bands
Then sets him down to warm his hands
And tell in labours happy way
His story of the passing day
While as the warm blaze cracks and gleams
The supper reeks in savoury steams
Or keetle simmers merrily
And tinkling cups are set for tea
Thus doth the winters dreary day
From morn to evening wear away.

It might sound strange at first, an Enlightenment-era, self-made, European emperor admiring the message and mentality of the Prophet Mohammed, but Bonaparte felt great reverence and respect for the world-building figurehead of the Islamic faith.

The Enlightenment challenged numerous social orthodoxies and undermined the legitimacy of various institutions. The tenets of social tolerance and diversity advocated by arch-enlightenment thinkers obliged policy-makers to oversee a period of integration, where adherents of opposing beliefs received equal political and legal rights and were perceived as morally comparable. 

The radical destruction of intellectual dogma opened the vast prospects of pragmatism up to a classically educated generation. Aspiring thinkers were encouraged to empathise with alternate views of the world and sought to benefit from unorthodox insights and attitudes. Therefore, there were no intellectual or spiritual obstacles to Napoleon’s natural affection for this particular doctrine.

In the annals of Islam, Bonaparte discovered a story of revolution, where a political and military commander unified the divided tribes of the Arabian peninsula and proliferated a global power that persisted for centuries. 

The Enlightenment also emphasised the influence of individual figures, like Julius Caesar and Ghengis Khan, over seminal events. In the minds of enlightenment philosophers and historians such as Rousseau and de Boulainvilliers, Mohammed belonged to a long succession of reforming conquerors, an illustrious genealogy of leaders which included Cyrus the Great and Alexander of Macedonia.

These ideals informed Napoleon’s outlook as a citizen and cultivated his conduct as a leader. An assiduous reader of Voltaire and Rousseau, Napoleon appreciated de Boulainvillier’s arguments in his groundbreaking defence of the Prophet, The Life of Mohammad. 

De Boulainvillier refuted accusations that Mohammed was aided by Christain advisors, was insincere and an imposter. Unlike Rousseau, who echoed De Boulainvillier’s assertions, Voltaire maintained his suspicions that Mohammed was a desert sorcerer with few redeeming qualities beyond his formidable political manoeuvres.

Despite his enormous esteem for Voltaire, Napoleon rejected his prejudices towards the Prophet, and, like De Boulainvillier and Rousseau, believed him to be a paragon of remedial authority. 

In May 1798, Napoleon led 55,000 men on a campaign in Egypt and Syria. It was an attempt to wrest control of the region from the British Empire. Preceding his arrival in Alexandria, Napoleon issued this fascinating proclamation:

“In the name of God the Beneficent, the Merciful. There is no other God than God, [and] He has neither son nor associate to His rule. On behalf of the French Republic founded on the basis of liberty and equality, the General Bonaparte, head of the French Army, proclaims to the people of Egypt that for too long the beys [i.e. Ottoman governors] who rule Egypt insult the French nation and heap abuse on its merchants; the hour of their chastisement has come. For too long, this rabble of slaves brought up in the Caucasus and in Georgia [i.e. the ruling-class Mamluks of Egypt] tyrannizes the finest region of the world; but God, Lord of the worlds, [the] All-Powerful, has proclaimed an end to their empire. Egyptians, some will say that I have come to destroy your religion. This is a lie, do not believe it! Tell them that I have come to restore your rights and to punish the usurpers; that I respect, more than do the Mamluks, God, His prophet Muhammad and the glorious Qur‘ān… Qādī, shaykh, shorbagi, tell the people that we are true Muslims. Are we not the one who has destroyed the Pope [during the Italian Campaign of 1796-97] who preached war against Muslims? Did we not destroy the Knights of Malta, because these fanatics believed that God wanted them to make war against the Muslims?” 

The proclamation is certainly more a practical step towards pacifying a foreign territory than a sincere confession of admiration for the religion. Still, the occurrences that followed its publication reveal the extent of Napoleon’s veneration for Islam. 

In the same year, a mob congregated at the Great Mosque in Cairo and instigated a revolt. Napoleon was careful not to punish the imams and sheikhs. The secular ringleaders were summarily executed, and the French general invited several diwans to offer their counsel for his governance. For these considerations and his consistent fairness, Napoleon became known locally as “Sheikh Kebir” or the Great Sultan. He was extremely flattered by the title and never forgot the honour that the people of Cairo afforded him.

In exile, the ex-emperor was able to ruminate over the highlights of his extraordinary life. Having studied the Koran and the story of Mohammed, he mentioned his admiration for Islam to his few companions in those final years. 

In his writings on St Helena he stated that had he been able, he would have made a pilgrimage to Mecca in order to kneel before the tomb of the Prophet. Like Caesar visiting the tomb of Alexander, Napoleon did pay his respects to Frederick the Great when he passed through Potsdam. 

It would have been a remarkable scene, a western head of state kneeling at the grave of Mohammed (if the strict keepers of the sacred site allowed). Such an aspiration discloses the degree of respect Napoleon had for Mohammed.

The Prophet’s political, spiritual and military legacy evidently informed Napoleon’s self-regard as an inspired world-builder and inculcated an affection for the faith of his eastern hero. It seems that Bonaparte was more intrigued by the individuality of Mohammed than the spiritual assertions of Islam, but throughout his extraordinary career, the emperor retained sincere and serious respect for the faith of the prophet. 

His lyrical talent exemplified the transition in English literature from the Neoclassical period to the Romantic era. After graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1743, he moved to London and began his literary career, where he befriended eminent figures like David Garrick and Dr Johnson. Despite his close association with the famous man-of-letters, Dr Johnson lambasted Collins’ poetry in his celebrated The Lives of the Poets, calling his work contrived and crudely executed. Nonetheless, a musical beauty is still discernible in odes like this week’s selection, Ode to Evening.

Ode to Evening by William Collins (1747)

If aught of oaten stop, or past’ral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs and dying gales,
O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,
O’erhang his wavy bed;
Now air is hushed, save where the weak-ey’d bat
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn
As oft he rises ‘midst the twilight path
Against the pilgrim, borne in heedless hum:
Now teach me, maid composed,
To breathe some softened strain,
Whose numbers stealing through thy dark’ning vale
May not unseemly with its stillness suit,
As musing slow, I hail
Thy genial loved return.
For when thy folding star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant Hours, and elves
Who slept in flowers the day,
And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge
And sheds the fresh’ning dew, and lovelier still,
The pensive pleasures sweet
Prepare thy shad’wy car.
Then lead, calm votress, where some sheety lake
Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallowed pile
Or upland fallows grey
Reflect its last cool gleam.
But when chill blust’ring winds, or driving rain,
Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut
That from the mountain’s side
Views wilds, and swelling floods,
And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires,
And hears their simple bell, and marks o’er all
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil.

While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont,
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve;
While Summer loves to sport
Beneath thy ling’ring light;
While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves;
Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air,
Affrights thy shrinking train
And rudely rends thy robes;
So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed,
Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lipp’d Health,
Thy gentlest influence own,
And hymn thy fav’rite name!

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Every historian would like to see a photograph of Jesus or hear a voice recording of Caesar. Unfortunately, the advent of recording technology came well after many of the most seminal people in history perished. 

The tail-end of the Napoleonic era appears to be the limit of photographic archiving (the brilliant portrait collection of Waterloo veterans, for example). However, one image in particular of a person who was intimate with famous characters like Marie Antoinette and Maximilien Robespierre does exist. It is the only known photograph of a major player in the French Revolution: It unveils a glimpse into a time that is mostly lost to our modern powers of documentation.

Joseph Souberbielle (1754-1846) was a French surgeon. He worked as a military as well as a private physician before the bloody saga of the French Revolution began in 1789. When the Bastille fell to the enraged people of Paris, the young doctor attended to the wounded rebels, making his political allegiance clear. In the spring of 1793, he was asked to treat the incarcerated former Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. While awaiting her trial, she languished away in the Concierge. The stress of her unique situation took a serious toll on her health, and Souberbielle was brought in to ensure she would be fit enough to stand trial.

The ruthless public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, selected Souberbielle to be a member of the jury for Antoinette’s unprecedented arraignment. 

By then, Souberbielle had joined the inner circles of the revolution’s leadership and had become a favoured friend of several members of the Committee for Public Safety (the de facto government of France). 

His closest chum in that exalted company was none other than Maximilien Robespierre. When Fouqier-Tinville asked Souberbielle to sit with the jury at his patient’s trial, the doctor refused, citing his personal contact with the accused as a reason for him not to take part. 

He was told that by not joining the jury he himself would be accused of sympathy for Antoinette and would likely face prosecution as well. Souberbielle reluctantly relented, joined the jury and like his fellows, found Antoinette guilty. 

Soon after, Souberbielle started treating the increasingly frail dictator of France, Robespierre. Robespierre reportedly suffered from terrible stomach ulcers, among other maladies, and his medical friend was asked to alleviate his pain. 

Historians haven’t been able to discover the exact treatments Souberbielle used. Still, they assume he put the figurehead of the revolution on a diet of fruit and encouraged long hot baths and regular bloodletting. His association with the controversial leader almost cost Souberbielle his life when reprisals for Robespierre’s violent regime culminated in a coup d’etat. He narrowly avoided execution and spent the rest of his long life living in obscurity.

The photograph we have of Joseph Souberbielle was apparently taken a year or so before his death aged 92. It is the only photograph of a prominent figure from the Revolution in existence. 

It is amazing to think that that face was familiar to Marie Antoinette and Robespierre; people who belonged to an epoch that only written accounts, illustrations and the imagination can now access. 

This was the final straw for his teachers as Bix’s indecorous behaviour had become a persistent issue. Beiderbecke was expelled for this final misdemeanour (a verdict that greatly pained his traditional and fustian family). Still, the young man’s extraordinary career as a jazz performer of genius was only just beginning. 

Beiderbecke was born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1903. Displaying an unusual proficiency for music in his infancy, Bix’s parents paid for regular private tutorials. Learning the rudiments of the piano at the age of five, the brilliant little Beiderbecke was able to casually outplay his tutors by the time he was eight. A local newspaper understandably hailed him as a Hoffman-like prodigy, but Bix didn’t pick the piano as his primary instrument. 

His father and mother sought to inculcate their German and Austrian musical heritages into their gifted son’s repertoire. However, Bix had different artistic aims from the ones his parents preferenced. When his older brother returned to Davenport at the end of First World War, he brought back a bundle of pieces of vinyl for his family. 

One record, in particular, transfixed the young Beiderbecke above all others. It was a recording of Tiger Rag by The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, an ensemble that stylistically anticipated the advent of the jazz age. 

After this experience, Bix borrowed a neighbour’s cornet and started teaching himself the tunes he heard The Original Dixieland Jazz Band play. He was soon as capable on the cornet as he was on the piano and began carrying his small brass instrument in a brown paper bag wherever he went. 

By all accounts, the white, middle-class child became possessed by the spirit of jazz and started seeking out the exquisite sound that stimulated him so intensely. He overcame any obstacle that prevented him from hearing this mesmerising music and said in a letter to his brother, “I’d go through hell just to hear a good band play”.

He reportedly snuck out to listen to a nearby jazz group in Chicago when he was caught on his return conspicuously clambering up the fire escape on that fateful night. 

Indeed, his overbearing father had shipped off the troublesome Bix to the illustrious school to occlude any further exposure to the music that had become increasingly commonplace in Davenport. 

After his expulsion and despite his parents’ disapproval, Bix began his musical career in earnest. The work of emerging Jazz performers like Louis Armstrong established jazz as a soloist’s genre, and Bix’s self-taught technique and characteristic improvisations thrilled young audiences and impressed acclaimed players. 

Louis Armstrong himself said “Ain’t none of them play like him yet” after jamming with the bourgeoisie cornetist during an early morning session behind closed doors. 

Due to segregation, Bix was unable to play with black musicians in public, a fact of the time that arguably stunted his musical development. Black jazz players were undoubtedly the most skilled and creative in the early twenties, but Bix’s axiomatic genius proved that jazz was not solely an African-American art. 

He showed his contemporaries that it could be embraced and expressed by anyone. Galvanising other aspiring white jazz musicians to push the limits of their newfound style, figures like Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw set out to emulate Bix’s inventive and unique input to pieces that became national hits. 

He recorded celebrated tracks such as Riverboat Shuffle, and Copenhagen with The Wolverines in 1924 and in 1927 joined Paul Whiteman’s famous orchestra.

Whiteman’s orchestra was one of the most popular acts on the road in America at the time, and Bix’s inimitable swing attracted attention nationwide. Unfortunately, ailed by his dangerous dependence on alcohol, his natural gifts started to wane more and more. 

Years after Bix’s premature death from alcohol abuse, one cornetist, working off old score sheets from the Whiteman orchestra, discovered a note from one member of the band to another. It read: “wake up Bix!” The master cornetist must have nodded off mid-performance. 

Bix died alone in New York at the lamentable age of twenty-eight, having worked with and inspired revered composers and musicians like Hoagy Carmichael and Frankie Trumbauer.

Luckily, his brief but brilliant career overlapped with the dawn and development of recording technology, so we have numerous examples to prove the glowing testimonies from people who heard him play in person. 

Though the primitive pressings of those old pieces of vinyl are extremely scratchy and grainy compared to today’s pristine productions, Bix’s remarkable artistry and compelling aptitude still shines through.

A Confuscian scholar and imperial administrator, like all young men employed by the emperor, Li Bai was often obliged to leave home for protracted periods. Themes like homesickness and nostalgia invariably pervade classical Chinese poems, partially because the need for imperial employment compelled many aspiring poets to leave home for months on end.

As a result of the wide acclaim he received in his own lifetime, around a thousand poems of Li Bai’s have survived (or are at least attributed to him). This week’s poem is entitled “Quiet Night Thought”.

It is concerned with the aforementioned theme of a person pining for home and romantically opens with the resplendence of a bright moon.

Lunar cycles play an important part in the Chinese calendar, and Chinese New Year is marked on the second new moon after the Winter Solstice – the likely setting for this week’s selection given the mention of frost and the emphasis put upon the moon’s exquisite radiance.

The translation below is a Qing-era version of this verse and is traditionally taught to school children early in China and Taiwan. We hope you enjoy this week’s choice as much as we did.

Quiet Night Thought by Li Bai

Before my bed there’s a pool of light
I wonder if it’s frost on the ground
Looking up, I find the moon bright
Then bowing my head, I think of home.

According to contemporary chroniclers, he composed many of his poems in a state of spiritual ecstasy and invariably impressed those he encountered with his zeal and individuality. In one apocryphal tale, he was suddenly overcome by divine inspiration in the middle of a market and began to dance.

His fellow shoppers recognised the religious reason behind his strange behaviour and started to join in. Soon the whole bazaar was joyously swirling and jigging. It apparently caused a famous commotion and resulted in large groups of eager emulators collapsing on the ground. He is buried in Cairo and is today revered as a saint.

This week’s selection is entitled “With My Beloved.” In it, Umar excitedly describes his adoration for his heavenly creator. Though overtly religious, the eloquent emphasis on the idea of divine beauty in this verse (a common theme in Islamic poetry), should enable secular readers who have experienced the exaltations of romantic love to appreciate the sentiments Umar expresses.

We hope you enjoy this week’s poem as much as we did.

With My Beloved by Umar Ibn-Al-Farid (translated by R.A. Nicholson).

With my Beloved I alone have been,
When secrets tenderer than evening airs
Passed, and the Vision blest
Was granted to my prayers,
That crowned me, else obscure, with endless fame,
The while amazed between
His Beauty and His Majesty
I stood in silent ecstasy,
Revealing that which o’er my spirit went and came.
Lo, in His face commingled
Is every charm and grace;
The whole of Beauty singled
Into a perfect face
Beholding Him would cry,
‘There is no God but He, and He is the most High.’

This confluence of two extraordinarily different characters might sound surprising at first, but the aforementioned missive is not the only connection these two political icons shared. Out of several mutual contacts, German-speaking socialist, Charles A Dana, was their closest acquaintance in common. Dana edited the New York-based, Republican paper, Tribune, and after meeting Marx in the 1850s, he hired him to contribute to the publication as its correspondent in London. Lincoln, like most Republicans, was an avid reader of Tribune and relied on its support during his first election. 

Given how often Marx wrote for the paper (from 1852-1861) and how regularly Lincoln read it, we can safely assume that Lincoln glanced over at least a few articles by the firebrand critic. When Lincoln achieved office, Marx’s editor, Dana, was asked to serve the administration in the War Department. 

Throughout the Civil War, he frequently offered Lincoln military personnel advice, lambasting the reputations of certain generals and endorsing others. It was via this direct influence over Lincoln’s patronage that Dana was able to advance the career of famed commander, Ulysses S Grant, whose drinking habits had started to worry the War Department. 

As well as sharing several friends, they also shared several interests. Marx was fascinated by America and paid particular attention to the subjugation of the black slaves. Alongside the liberation of the Russian serfs, he ranked the emancipation of African-Americans as essential events that would ensure the advent of an international revolution.

Lincoln was no socialist, but the political ideals he defended and fought for at times echoed the sentiments (and terms) Marx endorsed and deployed in his famous works. In 1861, the Republican President gave his now celebrated annual address.

The speech closes with a ruminative passage on the relationship between capital and labor: “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” He of course goes on to qualify the statement and enormously diverge from the vision of Marx, but the overlap is worth noting. Perhaps after reading the paper, to which Marx contributed for nine years, some of his thoughts seeped through to Lincoln?

Other than Marx’s acerbic take on slavery and routinely impressive eloqeunce, the letter Lincoln was handed in 1865 is not a particularly important document. You can read it here.

It was promptly answered by ambassador Charles Adams, who wrote:

Sir,

I am directed to inform you that the address of the Central Council of your Association, which was duly transmitted through this Legation to the President of the United [States], has been received by him.

So far as the sentiments expressed by it are personal, they are accepted by him with a sincere and anxious desire that he may be able to prove himself not unworthy of the confidence which has been recently extended to him by his fellow citizens and by so many of the friends of humanity and progress throughout the world.

The Government of the United States has a clear consciousness that its policy neither is nor could be reactionary, but at the same time it adheres to the course which it adopted at the beginning, of abstaining everywhere from propagandism and unlawful intervention. It strives to do equal and exact justice to all states and to all men and it relies upon the beneficial results of that effort for support at home and for respect and good will throughout the world.

Nations do not exist for themselves alone, but to promote the welfare and happiness of mankind by benevolent intercourse and example. It is in this relation that the United States regard their cause in the present conflict with slavery, maintaining insurgence as the cause of human nature, and they derive new encouragements to persevere from the testimony of the workingmen of Europe that the national attitude is favored with their enlightened approval and earnest sympathies.

I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,

Charles Francis Adams

Lincoln’s “sincere and anxious desire” to “prove himself not unworthy of the confidence” Marx and his following placed in him, reveals a forgotten respect that the President harboured for the controversial theorist. 

His original use of folksong structures and rustic settings certainly set him apart from similarly inclined poets. Nonetheless, his efforts did not receive the critical recognition they were due until some decades after his death. Often mystical and always witty, Hardy mastered tricky lyrical forms as well as Rudyard Kipling and divulged spiritual truths as compellingly as Gerard Manley Hopkins. 

Assured by his prodigious technical prowess, Hardy found it easier than most to write on a wide variety of subjects in an extensive assortment of styles. From God and war to love and nature, Hardy expressed his private feelings with peculiar perspicuity via an unorthodox vocabulary. 

This week’s poem entitled “Birds at Winter Nightfall” is a triolet published in 1928. Triolets are poems of eight lines, traditionally of eight syllables each, rhyming abaaabab. As snow falls upon a garden scene, Hardy sings of the hibernal habits of west country birds. 

The repetition of the words “faster”, “flakes” and “fly” preceding and following the phrase “around the house” is intended to create a sense of exhilaration. 

We hope you enjoy this week’s poem as much as we did and that you all have a very merry Christmas.

Birds at Winter Nightfall (triolet) by Thomas Hardy (1928)

Around the house the flakes fly faster,
And all the berries now are gone
From holly and cotoneaster
Around the house.
The flakes fly!–faster
Shutting indoors that crumb-outcaster
We used to see upon the lawn
Around the house. The flakes fly faster,
And all the berries now are gone!

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A formidable orator, whose speeches have been described as “great storms of improvisational genius”, Fox aligned himself with liberal movements and progressive causes, radical factions that were often at odds with the elite to which he belonged. Far from being a habitual contrarian, Fox’s curious proclivities for fundamental reform precipitate the values of the modern world and undoubtedly helped ensure its realisation.

The son of Pitt the Elder’s ignominious nemesis, Henry Fox, Charles spent the span of his political career rhetorically duelling his rival, Pitt the Younger. Indeed, this inherited feud seriously affected his life.

Pitt’s prodigious ascent to the premiership and occupation of that office for nineteen years undoubtedly thwarted Fox’s supposedly inevitable prospects of supreme executive power, but it also has eclipsed his exceptional legacy.

A staunch opponent of George III, whom he deemed an “aspiring tyrant,” Fox promoted parliamentary sovereignty and helped steady the unsettled synthesis of legislative and monarchical power, subtly yet significantly contributing to the functioning constitutional equilibrium that Britain enjoys today.

Lauded by his successors and celebrated over the centuries that followed his death, his reputation has declined in recent decades. But given our current fixation on the course and outcomes of British history, the telling of Fox’s extraordinary story divulges the diversity of ideas that constituted high imperial politics and reveals the astonishing foresight and dedication possessed by 18th-century reformers.

In his day, Fox was one of the most famous names in the world. Entering parliament at the spritely age of 19, his orations galvanised a generation and inspired a long and illustrious list of future ministers and Prime Ministers.

Despite his notoriously louche and hedonistic social life, his impressive presence in the House of Commons terrified his opponents and motivated his comrades, endearing his demeanour to the electorate and gaining his reputation international recognition.

It is said that even Catherine the Great while delighting in her status as an “enlightened monarch” had a marble bust of Fox installed in her private study. Although he commenced his career espousing comparably conservative principles, the advent of the American Revolution activated his radical tendencies, alienating him from his close friend, mentor and colleague, Edmund Burke.

While besting contenders in the debating chamber and impressing an extinct calibre of orator (a generation that included the likes of Sheridan, Burke and Pitt), Fox became the self-styled champion of progressive causes, taking every practical opportunity to support egalitarian reform. Instrumental throughout every major Commons debate on the abolition of slavery, the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the sovereignty of parliament and negotiations with Revolutionary France.

A comment from his adversary, George III, arguably sums up Fox’s inability to achieve the premiership: “the excitement of politics enthralled him, but not the routine work of administration.”

However, noted biographer, RJ Mitchell believed that every time Fox received a ministerial appointment, he displayed all the diligence and sobriety that a government role necessitates, drinking less, ceasing his excessive gambling and rising earlier than his usual habits allowed.

His discernible flaws were always redeemed by his charm, conviviality and wit, qualities that even thawed the icy contempt of those who politically despised him. Edward Gibbon once remarked, “Let him do what he wills. I must love the dog.”

So why is he so forgotten today? Why can so few professional politicians describe his significance or explain his extraordinary exploits? His failure to become Prime Minister, his custom of aiding doomed causes, his awkward effusiveness towards Napoleonic France and his casual political conduct all contributed.

But now that themes like slavery and imperialism pervade contemporary discourse, Fox’s involvement in those issues should certainly be better reported and more widely discussed.