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‘Crystal Shallows’, 9 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas.

In 1522, the explorer Ferdinand Magellan added another tally-mark to Portugal’s maritime score-card when he became the first person ever recorded to circumnavigate the globe, an achievement which would not be repeated again until Sir Francis Drake completed his own epic journey in 1580.

The broader renaissance period was notable for the way poets and playwrights, scholars and scientists looked back to the ancient world for inspiration. The legendary mythical and historical exploits of ancient days provided case studies that were at the same time both exemplary but also impossibly glorious in a way which could not truly be repeated. Thinking about this now, with the distance provided by time, while this was in some ways admirable, it was also incomplete. In truth, the very times they were living in provided successes of such magnitude that one did not have to look back hundreds or thousands of years for genuine inspiration. It was all around them, the present imitating the past and yet also arguably surpassing it.

Interestingly, this point was not missed by the more perspicacious literary figures of the age. Luis Vaz de Camoens, the author of The Lusiads, the epic poem celebrating da Gama’s success, pointedly addressed this very question in the opening canto. The Lusiads remains one of the greatest items in the neoclassical renaissance repertoire through its blending of historical and ancient mythological imagery, but the central point of the achievement of the moderns is duly noted. Camoens grandly remarks:

“Let us hear no more then of Ulysses and Aeneas and their long journeyings, no more of Alexander and Trajan and their famous victories. My theme is the daring and renown of the Portuguese, to whom Neptune and Mars alike give homage. The heroes and poets of old have had their day; another and loftier conception of valour has arisen.”1

As already implied, other nations were quick to learn from the successes of the Portuguese and embark on a similar maritime-centric strategy. England’s long ascendancy to the pinnacle of power it would enjoy in the nineteenth century began at sea in the sixteenth century. During that time, the abiding strategic aim of the country had been the protection of its sovereignty, which since the earliest Tudors had been increasingly encroached upon by Habsburg expansion.

In addition to this geopolitical theme there was of course a crucial religious dimension. The Reformation, which began in Germany in 1517, quickly spread outwards in all directions. Merchants were quick to latch onto this and the ‘new learning’ very soon found its way to London and Cambridge where Protestant ideas found ready ears and willing hearts. The process of the Reformation took many decades and it was only with the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) that the nation could be said to have officially become Protestant, although this was a complicated picture. With the theological shift came the readily apparent threat of royal assassination and invasion. In truth, Spain, whose King Philip II was the most powerful sovereign in Europe and also the widower of Elizabeth’s half-sister Mary Tudor, had no other strategic option available to them to bring England to heel other than full-blown invasion, which it famously attempted in November 1588 with the failed Spanish Armada.

The events of the Armada are so famous as to not need repeating here, but it is important to remember that this brought to a head a maritime struggle which had been going on in unofficial ways for quite some time. The reason was that since the 1550s, England had recognised the oceans of the world as a playing field on which the ascendant nation could realistically challenge Spanish superiority without directly confronting them in a land-based war. It helped that there were a couple of generations of incredibly talented, charismatic sea captains, many of whom—like Hawkins, Drake, Grenville and Raleigh—hailed from the relatively small geographic confines of the southwestern county of Devon. I do not think such phenomena can be properly explained naturally and materialistically, but for some reason, in some places at certain times, things just seem to come together in exactly the right ways and a crop of people emerge who stand head and shoulders above the crowd and leave an indelible mark on their times and beyond. These adventurers were one such golden generation.

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Collectively known as Elizabeth’s ‘sea dogs’, they possessed immense levels of ability and leadership skills in abundance. They had a thirst for knowledge, adventure and riches. They were also passionate Protestants who itched at the prospect at pressing home national advantage on the seas. As privateers, they raided the Spanish shipping which transported vast quantities of gold from the mines of the New World back to Spain. They made contact with native peoples in the Americas hoping to win them over from the Spanish and they attempted to plant colonies of their own, such as the ill-fated Roanoke Expedition (1585-90) and the subsequent colony of Virginia, named after the Queen herself.

The main thrust of these maritime quests was geostrategic. It was with the intent of strengthening England’s national security and sovereignty that such adventurers were able to attract the necessary investment to fund them, something which typically came through joint stock companies. But there were also other impulses, not least among them scientific. Sometimes this was ostensibly one of the mission objectives, as was the case with Sir Walter Raleigh’s famed and failed expedition to Guyana to try and locate the famed lost city of gold, El Dorado. It also occurred somewhat by accident, as when Yorkshireman Sir Martin Frobisher attempted to find the Northwest Passage in 1577. The expedition failed on this front but they did make at least one enduring contribution to science by discovering the body of a dead narwhal. Astounded by their discovery, Frobisher wrote in his diary that the creature “may truly be thought to be the sea-unicorn” and took the two-yard-long horn back to Queen Elizabeth as a present, who was reportedly very impressed and kept the trophy along with the Crown Jewels.2

As it happened, England and Spain went on to conclude a peace treaty in 1604 after James I and VI’s accession to the throne. The golden age of privateering had come to a close and those who remained either sought more peaceful enterprises or entered the service of foreign lords—such as the Deys of Algiers, Tangier and Tunis—in a desperate attempt to keep the flame of adventure and the promise of treasure alive.

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The fact that the ocean plays upon so many different thoughts and fears and emotions in the human mind is no doubt the source of the many and conflicting symbols and images it conjures. The attraction of the world beneath the waves is offset by the very real, visceral fear of the depths which human beings naturally feel.

Several years ago I was flying from Tokyo to Sydney. On flights I like to pay attention to the map on the screens which shows where the plane currently is. On this flight I noticed we were flying directly over the Mariana Trench. Gazing out of the small portal window into the black of night, dark thoughts began to creep in. The Mariana Trench is the deepest oceanic trench on Earth, its furthest recess reaching down over a mile, further below the ocean’s surface than Mount Everest stands above it. The Trench was first sounded by the Challenger Expedition back in 1875, using weighted ropes. In January 1960, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh became the first voyagers to ever venture into its depths in the bathyscaphe Trieste as part of the United States Navy’s Project Nekton. The descent took 4 hours 47 minutes, the immense pressure of the great deep cracking the outer plexiglass windows as the vessel reached 30,000 feet below the surface. Piccard and Walsh spent around twenty minutes on the ocean floor as the temperature inside the cabin plummeted to 7 degrees celsius. Since then, a further 21 crewed expeditions have ventured down into the abysmal depths of the trench.

The Bathyscaphe Trieste, seen here in the late 1950s not long before its historical journey into the depths of the Mariana Trench. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The sea remains a crucial component of grand strategy, just as much as it was when the great naval officer and theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote what was perhaps the most important work of nineteenth-century American military strategy, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. Military matters aside, it is noteworthy that so little of the ocean has in reality been explored. With a renewed appetite for space exploration with the development of SpaceX as well as debates over the ‘militarisation’ of space, we could ask the question: will the coming decades witness the development of a conscious deep-maritime strategy? If nothing else than for the purposes of exploration and greater knowledge of the mysteries of the deep. On the other hand, perhaps there are some things that are best left as they are.

Closer to the surface lie more readily-accessible opportunities. For the holiday-maker, for example, diving tours in many parts of the the world offer an opportunity to explore the beauties of sea life. In addition to being a place of exploration and discovery, the sea is a source of leisure and entertainment. Coral reefs hold an extraordinarily captivating power over the adventurous. In some instances, unintentionally manmade reefs mark both the union and the clash of man and nature. Schools of enchantingly-coloured fish dart around shipwrecks with impressive synchronicity. Entranced by the brilliance of such sights we are apt to forget that we are gazing upon a beautiful but watery tomb. It is a cemetery, not just of people and their possessions but of dead ambitions, duties and dreams. As Shakespeare had Ariel put it in The Tempest:

“Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Ding-dong.

Hark! Now I hear them,—ding-dong the bell”.3

Truly, the sea can be a fickle mistress. A change in weather renders the most placid, serene scene a site of stormy terror. With a pleasant breeze and the midsummer sun it is easy to forget the frightful squalls of winter. And yet the human encounter with the sea cannot be restricted purely to days of sunshine and gentle winds. Modern civilisation, perhaps we could say all civilisation, demands that a chosen few continue to ply their necessary trades throughout the year in all conditions and on all seas. It is with good reason that the Anglican 1662 Book of Common Prayer contains a number of special ‘forms of prayer to be used at sea’, with respect to both battles and storms. There are both prayers for protection and thanksgiving for deliverance.

The Finnish icebreaker Sampo, built in 1960, cuts through the icy murk of a wintry sea. Photo by Markku Soini, via Pexels.

And it is not just vessels of assorted types that can find themselves amid the raging waves of wild, angry seas. Oil rigs can of course be notorious sites of terrifyingly large waves—the North Sea rigs, for example, many of which are actually floating rigs, frequently witness such conditions. There are hosts of videos of such storms available on YouTube allowing viewers the ability to see the sorts of things which were once confined to sailor’s tales. We can see rigs a hundred feet above the water soaked with spray from huge breakers and vast cargo ships jutting through mountainous waves, far from any safe haven.

But these are journeys which must be taken. Since time immemorial the sea has served as a highway for traffic and commerce of all kinds. I recall that when I was in the first year of upper school, at one point in the year in our English lessons we were expected to learn the poem Cargoes by John Masefield. It is not a long poem but it is beautiful both in terms of its descriptive power and its overall structure, recollecting different forms of shipping which, through time, served to transport people and goods across the globe. It has stuck in my mind ever since:

“Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,

Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,

With a cargo of ivory,

And apes and peacocks,

Sandalwood, cedar wood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus

Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,

With a cargo of diamonds,

Emeralds, amethysts,

Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,

Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,

With a cargo of Tyne coal,

Road-rails, pig-lead,

Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.”

The vivid imagery of Cargoes has remained with me all this time. The clash between the beautiful vessels of yore and their luxurious cargo and the ugly but practical realities of modern commercial shipping is particularly poignant. Beyond this, however, we are confronted with the simple fact that trans-oceanic commerce is often the very lifeblood of empires and civilisations. It has both enabled great triumphs and permitted terrible crimes. Today, there are websites and apps which enable us to track commercial shipping all over the world. It is the same pattern of life as that of antiquity, yet expanded and updated, covering every corner of the Earth and digitised for the special scrutiny of multitudes of analysts all over.

Modern international shipping, so central to the economic life of the world and the expectations of producers and consumers alike, is a complex system. It is also a remarkably fragile system. The combination of great complexity with great fragility is a feature of many aspects of the modern world. Time and time again in recent years we have been reminded of this. Very real threats can emerge at any time, which because of the sheer interconnectedness of a highly globalised world, have serious ramifications far beyond the initial point of conflict. The ongoing Red Sea crisis, for example, has illustrated the serious impact that a relatively small group can have both on much larger, more advanced powers as well as the wider world in general. Houthi rebels, operating out of Yemen, have plagued the passage of cargo shipping though the Red Sea, an obviously important sea-route that connects the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean. Around thirty per cent of the world’s shipping passes this way but the vastly increased risk of loss prompted many to re-reroute around the Cape of Good Hope at the southernmost tip of Africa. This is a 4000 mile detour and typically adds about ten to twelve days to journey times, and is estimated to cost about a million dollars more.

The scourge of piracy has, throughout history, presented a serious threat to those whose livelihoods have depended upon the sea. Once upon a time, as remarked upon by Thucydides, piracy was actually considered a noble pursuit. Imperial dominance of one kind or another, whether the Pax Romana of two thousand years ago or the Pax Britannica of the nineteenth century, served as an effective check on the prevalence of piracy. But now, with the Pax Americana of the postwar period obviously breaking down, a new world is emerging. It has features strongly reminiscent of a very old world. Will piracy return as a major global phenomenon? If so, perhaps we might also see the return of state-sponsored privateers to deal with this emergent threat, armed with updated versions of the old letters of marque and reprisal.

The land is where home and hearth lies. The sea, however, becomes a stage on which many of the interconnecting scenes of human life play out. There are myriad passageways leading to who knows where. Life, like the vast oceans of the world, is ripe with potential and presents great possibilities, but these are all often entangled with formidable risks. We can agree with Teucer, who in Horace’s Odes is recorded as encouraging his companions with the words: “Do not despair! Tomorrow we set out upon the vast ocean.”

Sunlit Surf, 8 x 10 inches, acrylic on canvas panel.

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‘Kommos Beach, Crete, 2019’, 10 x 8 inches, acrylic on canvas panel.

At the end of 2020 I took up painting once more. Aside from the odd piece here or there, this was the first consistent effort at this since I was around thirteen or so. In part it had been enabled by the repeated Covid lockdowns which took away all those day-to-day pursuits which had been a regular part of life for so long. Faced with so much newly-found free time I once again picked up my brushes. I had increasingly felt that it is important to try and be as well-rounded as possible across different areas of life and that it is good to be engaged in some sort of creative endeavour. At the time I was working in academia, an environment in which it is all too easy to become totally absorbed in the ‘life of the mind’ and forget that life is, and indeed must be, physical and practical.

My first foray back into painting was a small, careful imitation of an illustration of two knights in combat, from a book on Medieval warfare. Other than a watercolour and gouache portrayal of a World War Two Spitfire flying through a storm cloud, a gift for my grandfather’s 97^th birthday, I tended to focus on wildlife painting. Over time this evolved into painting landscapes, particularly those I had recorded in my own photos from travels around the world.

Sometimes I go for weeks or even months without painting. But the urge will always return. When summer comes around I find myself drawn back. I feel my artistic impulses being pulled to the ocean. Like skies, water offers myriad opportunities for painterly expression. Just as no two skies are alike, so no two waves are identical. The sea has a life unto itself with its own peculiar patterns of movement, its ebbs and flows, tides and waves, each uniquely shaped by the wider environment and topography of a particular locale. Just how a wave crashes on the shore is determined by multiple factors, including the weather, the lie of the land, the arrangement of rocks, shale and sand as well as the wider currents which mould all marine life.

Capturing this effectively in a painting is a challenge. How do you properly convey the fluidity of that which is constantly changing in something finite, a sudden snapshot? One of the things which is particularly appealing about painting the sea is the possibility for exploration in colour. We say the sea is blue but it is really many shades of blue and more. On a sunny day, shades of teal and viridian melt seamlessly into the darker hues of deeper water. On the shoreline, creamy wavelets slosh around the shallows like the foam on the top of a cold beer on a hot day. The light glistens and gleams and twinkles across the surface. There are tricks of the light that play tricks on the mind.

Like many people, I have always found waves particularly entrancing. You can stare at them for a long time just as you can stare at flames in a fire for a long time. Watching the tide drawing in, inch by inch, it is easy to lose yourself in thought. When you really become engaged with an artistic subject you become drawn into thinking about it much more deeply. The immediate problems of composition and process concerned the aesthetic aspects of the subject, but I soon found myself thinking more widely about the sea and its relationship with mankind. It is small wonder that the sea has been a source of varied and often contradictory images and symbols in the mind of man throughout history. It is both a place of opportunity and a source of deadly fear.

More than seventy per cent of the world’s surface is water, yet it is said that we understand less about the oceans than we do about the solar system. Deep in the collective memory of mankind there are watery echoes of an ancient cataclysm. Across the world, cultures far removed from each other all have stories of a Great Flood in which all mankind, except a few souls, were destroyed. The common practice of early mapmakers to inscribe ‘here be dragons’ over large stretches of ocean were not idle and fanciful fears of superstitious minds. They were reckoning with the great unknowns of the world and the mysteries of the deep, mysteries on which modern science may have cast a small spotlight, but which has by no means served to explain or demystify.

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A photo I took in 2017 of the view from Cape Sounion across the Aegean Sea, where Theseus’ ship sailed home after his successful quest to slay the Minotaur. The Aegean takes its name from Theseus’ father Aegeus, who leapt to his death from the cliffs after mistakenly believing his son to be dead.

Many of the most enduring tales of mankind from deep in Antiquity have concerned voyages across the sea. The Greeks recounted the legendary first King of Athens, Theseus, and his quest to the island of Crete to slay the minotaur and free the Athenians from tributary servitude to King Minos. Jason set sail from Thessaly in the Argo with a crew composed of the finest athletes of all Greece, including Heracles, in search of the Golden Fleece in the far-off land of Colchis. And, as the name of this publication recalls, Odysseus’ journey home from the Trojan War was an adventure at sea, prolonged by the anger of the sea-god Poseidon. Following shipwreck Odysseus was washed up on the beach at Phaeacia, after which he recalled to the enthralled listeners at the court of King Alcinous the trials he had endured—the pleasant imprisonment on the island of the nymph Calypso, the encounter with the Cyclops, the island of the beautiful sorceress Circe, the sea-monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. For him, the sea was a two-fold symbol, of separation from his throne in Ithaca and from his faithful wife Penelope and son Telemachus, as well as of his means to return to that which he loved so dearly.

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The reason the sea was so embedded within the Greek mind was the simple fact that it was part of the very essence of their life. Greece’s terrain being what it is, in addition to the geographical fact that there are thousands of islands dotted around the Ionian, Aegean and Mediterranean seas, meant that mastery of the ocean was a necessity for life itself. In classical times, Athens achieved strategic and political supremacy through the use of an effective navy. Goods could be transported far and wide providing the trade which serves as a lifeblood for such empires. So too could soldiers.

When we think of the Greco-Persian wars, conflicts which defined the course of history far beyond their own time and place, we often think of the heroic stand and immediate defeat of the 300 Spartans and their allies at Thermopylae in 480 BC. This action served to buy time for the Greeks more widely. However, it was actually the naval Battle of Salamis in the same year, fought in the narrow straits between the Attic mainland and the island of Salamis in the Saronic Gulf, where the tide of victory was turned. Modern estimates put the number of Persian ships at up to 800,  greatly outnumbering the Greek force, which the ancient historian Herodotus numbered at 378 ships. While the Persian crews were said to be more professional, the ships were larger but slower and less manoeuvrable than the Greek triremes. The Persians opted to block the straits. The Greeks responded by charging the much larger enemy fleet, ramming their hulls and sinking large numbers of ships. By the end of the engagement the Greeks had lost 40 ships, the Persians 300. The defeat came at great cost to the Persian Empire, not just in lost men and material but in prestige. And as the great strategic philosopher Stefan Possony said, prestige is ‘the credit rating of nations.’1

The strategic weight of the war had shifted. In due course, following the battles of Plataea and Mycale, the threat of conquest of the Greek mainland evaporated and a new window of opportunity for revolt opened to those states who had been subject. First Macedon and then Thrace, the Aegean Islands and Ionia were extracted from the dominance of Persia.

When considering the meaning of the sea to the Greeks as a people, one later historical incident would do well to suffice. The Anabasis, or the ‘Persian Expedition’ as it is also known, by Xenophon, recalls a very different geopolitical scenario from that of the age of the Greco-Persian Wars and Xerxes. The events described took place some eighty-odd years later. Then, Cyrus the Younger hired an army of Greek mercenaries, the ‘Ten Thousand’, to help him wrest the Persian throne from his brother Artaxerxes II. In short, Cyrus was killed and his hired force found themselves deep in hostile territory with no clear option for retreat. A number of the leaders they had elected for themselves were killed and Xenophon was one of just three who remained. Their task was the same as that of multitudes of men lost, throughout time. They were looking for a way home.

It was an arduous adventure, passing through the stifling heat of barren desert and the treacherous cold of snowy mountain passes. At long last, those who remained found their way to Trabzon where, gazing out from the inclines of Mount Theches, they caught sight of something which warmed their hearts beyond measure. Their excited exclamation rings down across the ages to us today: “Thalassa! Thalassa!” (“The sea! The sea!”). They were not yet home nor out of danger. But the sight of the sea meant they were closer to home, closer to safety. They were closer to the familiar. Their passage back to the Greek mainland was within sight. Their longing for home, nostos, the same deep, bittersweet and painful desire that Odysseus had felt gazing out across the waves from Calypso’s idyllic island, had carried them thus far. Like Odysseus, the sea also meant relief and escape.

‘Thalassa’, 20 x 30 inches, acrylic on canvas. This was another Cretan seascape.

The Greek experience provides a portal into the greater collective relationship between mankind and the sea. History itself has both unfolded against the backdrop of the maritime, as well as at crucial times pivoting upon it. As with the Greeks, the Phoenicians planted colonies across the Mediterranean, the most famous of which was Carthage. The titanic struggle between Carthage and the nascent Roman Republic, the Punic Wars of 264-146 BC, would come to define both the Ancient World and the course of history across the world ever since. And it was at sea, when their navy learned how to defeat their seemingly superior adversaries that the Romans would gain the upper hand. How different the world would look if Carthage had maintained their maritime supremacy. Having eliminated her preeminent rival, Rome was able to cast her eyes further afield and extend her power far beyond her original domains. The sea became a field of opportunity.

The sea has often served as a field of opportunity for smaller powers, enabling them to achieve wealth, prosperity and prestige. It is a recurring historical motif. During Europe’s Middle Ages, Italian city-states like Genoa and to a greater extent, Venice, harnessed the power of the sea to build extensive commercial empires which brought fabulous wealth and luxury. These sea-borne republics were the latest in a long line of successive powers to leave their mark on the Mediterranean, so much so that the history of islands from Sicily to Crete, Malta to Cyprus appears like a palimpsest.

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That the modern era emerged concurrently with the Age of Exploration was no accident. Smaller states learned quickly of the advantages that could be obtained through naval means, both civil and military, advantages that made up for handicaps in other domains which tended to favour large land powers. A number of national careers were born in the brine, so to speak. Of these, three particular examples stand out: Portugal, England and the Netherlands.

Portugal’s case in some ways helps mark the line of difference between the Medieval and the Modern. In as little as 125 years or so, the Portuguese spread over the entire globe, from Brazil to Africa, to India and Japan. As Antonio Vieria noted in the seventeenth century, “God gave the Portuguese a small country as a cradle but all the world as their grave.”2 It was an achievement that can be attributed directly to a conscious effort to study the sea and to put strategic dreams into action.

Curiously, as William Atkinson noted in his translation of the Portuguese national epic, Camoens’ The Lusiads, this peculiar historical turn came as a result of Portugal’s entwinement with another nation that would take to the sea with great success, England. As Atkinson writes, in 1385, 500 English archers in the pay of John of Gaunt did military service at Aljubarrota, effectively protecting Portugal from Spanish expansionist designs for the next two centuries. The following year, the Treaty of Windsor joined the two nations in friendship in what has become the longest-standing treaty alliance still in effect. In 1387, John of Gaunt’s daughter Philippa of Lancaster married João I, from which union stemmed the most famous Portuguese royal family. It was this family which committed Portugal to a maritime policy. It is said that their third son Henrique (Henry the Navigator) established at Lagos in the south-west a sort of academy for maritime research with a view to exploration. While modern academic scholarship has thrown cold water on the idea that there was a particular institutional establishment designated for this purpose, it is traditionally stated that Henrique successfully attracted all sorts of disparate specialists to Lagos to this end, including cartographers and scientists, captains and pilots.

Whatever the truth may be about any such oceanographic establishment in the fifteenth century, that Portugal had a number of important strategic objectives that could be fulfilled by mastering the sea is undeniable. The Mediterranean was a crowded sea, but it was merely a lake compared to those vast stretches of ocean which remained uncharted and unknown, to Europeans at least. In the fifteenth century, Europeans were aware of the vast beyond even if details remained rather sketchy. There had been a proliferating spice trade for some time and ever since the Crusades many and various luxury products had made their way westwards from the Near East and even further afield. The Venetian explorer Marco Polo’s epic land journey of the thirteenth century brought tales of wonder to eager listeners in Europe, with recollections of vast and ancient civilisations of remarkable advancement, like China, or Cathay as it was then known. In addition to the commercial prospect, there was also the perennial question of military advantage and national security. The Portuguese wished to extend the Latin Christian faith and weaken the power of Islam. They had heard of distant Christian communities, such as in Ethiopia and India, with whom they sought to establish contact. With these aims in mind, the Portuguese spread out far and wide over the course of the century.

Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama. This portrait was painted over three centuries later in 1838 by António Manuel da Fonseca. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

One of the most famous voyages of this time, or in fact of all time, came at the end of the century under the captaincy of Vasco da Gama. He sailed around the African coast before landing at Calicut in India on 20^th May 1498. In some ways, in popular memory this journey appears somewhat overshadowed by Columbus’ near-contemporary journey west which opened up the Americas. But, as Atkinson memorably remarks, the Portuguese achievement cannot be overstated:

“At the turn of the fifteenth century da Gama’s discovery was held much the greater, and with reason. For the spices and precious stones he brought back from India symbolized not merely the ruin of Venice, the turning of the Mediterranean into a backwater, and the emergence of Portugal, a country insignificant in size and population, as the richest nation in Europe. They held in kernel too the opening up of two unknown continents, Africa and Asia, and the discovery of a third, Australia. They heralded, finally, the revolutionizing of men’s ideas of empire, the old basis of territorial conquest suffering eclipse with the development of trade and sea-power. On these were to soar to pinnacles of greatness till then undreamt-of first Portugal, then Holland, and lastly, England, nations all three that otherwise might have left but little mark on history.”3

East and West had met, modernity was born and the world would never be the same again.

‘Breakers’, 9 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas.

Note: A version of this essay was originally published in 2024. Part 2 will be posted next week.

To see more of my art visit my free Substack apaynter.substack.com or follow on Instagram.

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Famously, there are of course few things that British people enjoy talking about more than the weather and heatwaves have always sold newspapers and generated clicks. Some people act as though there weren’t any hot summers prior to the last ten years and all hot weather is irrefutable proof that the climate is warming fast. Others look back, as we all often do, with rose-tinted glasses and ‘remember’ all their childhood summers as cloudless and warm. Salad days indeed. It is interesting to delve into the archives and see just what past summers were actually like.

Lulworth Cove, Dorset. Photo by Nik via Unsplash.

Growing up I remember disappointingly cool and cloudy summer spells that dragged and seemed interminable. But I also recall impossibly long warm childhood summer days, shimmering concrete, insects flying into windscreens and the smell of freshly tarmacked roads. When I was a little older I recall 2003 being a particularly good, long summer. Going back well before my time you often hear about the hot summer of 1976. Less talked about today is the golden summer of 1959, which while perhaps not as hot in absolute terms as 1976, was basically warm and fine from spring until October. At the end of February it hit 25 degrees Celsius. A few years earlier, 1955 was apparently a very hot summer and while typically rainless for many, it does hold the record for the greatest amount of rainfall to fall in one day—eleven inches in fifteen hours in Martinstown, Dorset. There are amusing newsreels of heatwaves in the post-war period, such as this, a time when it was apparently safe enough to spend the night sleeping in Hyde Park.

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Much further back still, 1911 was a notoriously hot summer when it reached over 37 degrees. The physical toll was noticeable and The Times ran a column specifically devoted to ‘death by heat’ statistics. In August of that year, thousands of dockworkers at the Victoria and Albert Docks in London went on strike. Southern England had levels of sunshine on par with Las Vegas, Nevada. Needless to say there was also a drought. The summer continued into the middle of October. Heatwaves must have felt so much more unbearable in those days, long before any semblance of air conditioning and when fashion conventions necessitated much greater coverage than in more modern times. The early nineteenth-century Australian statesman and explorer William Wentworth considered Sydney’s climate generally very favourable due to the beautiful sea breezes but did remark that the summer heat could at times be too oppressive for Northern Europeans. Still, those same Northern Europeans managed to spread out and inhabit up as far as the swelteringly tropical regions of Northern Australia. ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen’ and all that.

We should not underestimate the effect that air conditioning had upon the world. Singapore’s greatest and most influential leader, Lee Kuan Yew, considered it one of the most important inventions of all time for the extent to which it made development truly possible in the tropics. Working hours were no longer confined to the early morning or dusk. And so the languidness which so often had afflicted the world’s tropical regions was negated. It is worth pointing out though that there may well be some unfortunate by-products of the advancement of civilisational comfort. I cannot remember who it was but somebody once commented that the Founders of the United States were wise to select the city of Washington for the capital because summers were so uncomfortable it made a year-long presence of politicians impossible and thus reduced the general mischief they caused. Unfortunately the arrival of air conditioning ended this happy arrangement and consequently lawmakers found themselves with much more time to work, which they used to look for new and improved ways to make a nuisance of themselves and interfere in the lives of ordinary people.

The mid-nineteenth century marked the end of the Little Ice Age in Europe, and temperatures began to steadily climb. Before the Little Ice Age, which began in the fourteenth century or so, Europe enjoyed the so-called Medieval Warm Period, in which harvests were generally reliable and plenteous and the climate was salubrious enough to allow the cultivation of quality grapes in England. Centuries earlier, the Romans used to cultivate vineyards across what is now England, although they had to temper the taste with a touch of honey. Nowadays, wine connoisseurs consider some southern English white wines to be decent enough but red wines have some way to go.

As you might expect there was a flurry of articles in the media this week about how such hot summers are ‘the new normal’, a repetition of that worn-out phrase from the Covid era. It may be that they become more frequent but once again, it is the longer arc of history which will provide the best context. Britain’s soon-to-be outgoing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer did this week offer an obligatory comment about climate change and Britain’s continued commitment to fighting it, but public statements like this seem a little tired and lacklustre nowadays. Certainly there is much less impetus to engage in climate politics now at the highest levels of government and policy, not least because the rest of the strategic landscape has changed so much in the last several years. It is perhaps most likely that the period 2015-2022 or so may come to be considered the high water mark for climate politics. Electorally, Germany’s Green Party decreased its share of the vote at the last federal elections and while Britain’s Green Party has enjoyed an upsurge in its popularity, this is rather more to do with its campaigning on other specific left-wing causes rather than anything climate-related. As with so many other things we will have to wait and see before giving a proper judgement.

This may take a while. But it will almost certainly happen sooner than Britain is again able to produce any wines that would have been fit for Roman tastes.

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Well, now it has gone entirely online and is consequently available to a wider audience still. They are also in the process of digitising the archive which will be a real treasure trove of strategic insight.

Defense & Foreign Affairs has had a very interesting history over the five-and-a-half decades of its existence which you can read about here. For the strategically-minded or even those just interested in getting a deeper understanding of the most pressing geopolitical issues of our time, Strategic Policy is of immense value.

https://www.strategic-policy.com

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Most of my work will be exclusively available on Artfinder, so if you are interested in realistic landscapes and seascapes, this is the place to go. There is also a separate Substack newsletter for those who wish to receive updates on my latest paintings. You can also follow my art on Instagram and Facebook.

Alastair Paynter Art

Landscape paintings

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On the way I passed what is regarded as the oldest planted tree in England. A sweet chestnut, nobody truly knows how long it has been there. Even the oldest surviving plaque noting its antiquity, dating from 1800, records that it had been there for six hundred years. Somebody in 1662 referred to it as “venerable” and it seems likely that it began life way back in the days of King John, who is best remembered today as the ‘bad king’ brother of Richard the Lionheart who had been forced by his nobles to sign Magna Carta in 1215.

The famous and ancient Tortworth Chestnut.

In a country such as England it is easy to take such living history for granted. In fact, all of us wherever we may live probably pass such sites by on a daily basis without ever taking notice. Gently undulating mounds covered with grass and wildflowers were once Anglo-Saxon burial grounds or Roman hill forts. Around us are the constant echoes of ‘thick time’. The landscape becomes a palimpsest, each succeeding generation inscribing its own texts over that which came before.

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Lewis pictured in 1957.

His membership of the Inklings at Oxford University, where he was a don alongside his close friend J.R.R. Tolkien, is well known. An atheist in his youth, he would later become a prominent Christian public intellectual, even delivering a series of talks on BBC radio during the Second World War. His dismantling of positivism and scientism and his defence of objective truth and natural law is well worth reading, particularly his 1943 classic The Abolition of Man. One famous quote stands out:

“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

The Abolition of Man, as well as Lewis’ space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength), illustrate the evils of bureaucracy and the worship of the state. It is quite clear that Lewis did not think very much of politics or politicians and steered clear of any perceived partisanship. In fact he politely declined Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s invitation of a knighthood in 1951 on the grounds that he did not want to strengthen the arguments of leftists who accused his religious works of being anti-leftist propaganda. His poem ‘Lines During a General Election’ dryly remarked, “Their threats are terrible enough, but we could bear/ All that; it is their promises that bring despair.”

In 1940 he wrote to his brother Warren: “How I loathe great issues! ‘Dynamic’ I think is one of the words invented by this age which sums up what it likes and I abominate. Could one start a Stagnation Party—which at General Elections would boast that during its term of office no event of the least importance had taken place.”

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But to return to Narnia, The Chronicles of Narnia are not merely children’s books. Indeed, those who dismiss them as mere fairy tales are wrong. In fact that is all the more reason to read them. Fairy tales reveal important eternal truths which is why they have proved so enduring across time and many different cultures. There is very much a sense in which myths can be true. That is why Lewis himself remarked, “When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

The Narnia books are not only exceptionally well-told ‘portal fantasy’ tales. In addition to the well-known Christian symbolism, they are replete with excellent characterisation and provide keen insights into human nature and behaviour, at both an individual and social level. Something which stands out is the illustration of what constitutes good and bad social order, both of which are present both explicitly and implicitly. The worldview of Narnia is intrinsically monarchical, along Western Christian lines, the social order is traditional and organic.

More specifically, there are small but insightful remarks as to what constitutes good rule. Towards the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when the four Pevensie children are reigning over Narnia as adults, their rule is summarised as follows:

“And they made good laws and kept the peace and saved good trees from being unnecessarily cut down, and liberated young dwarfs and young satyrs from being sent to school, and generally stopped busybodies and interferers and encouraged ordinary people who wanted to live and let live.”

One of the standout lessons on the role of the king can be gleaned from towards the end of The Horse and His Boy when King Lune of Archenland addresses his newly-found son Cor. After Cor’s twin brother Corin celebrates the fact that being the younger twin by twenty minutes rules him out of having to rule (since princes are the ones who have all the fun), the father tells the older twin about the burden of his coming obligations.

“For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there’s hunger in the land (as must be every now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.”

Of course, this maxim can be applied beyond discussion of monarchy to all contexts of leadership. It provides a refreshing antidote to the pernicious and opaque culture of managerialism which has increasingly afflicted the world over the last several decades. Perhaps we may soon rediscover more actual leaders in our midst, those who are first to advance and last to retreat.

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Images via Wikimedia Commons.

‘That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.’—William Shakespeare, Richard II Act II, Scene I

‘An Englishman’s mind works best when it is almost too late.’—Lord D’Abernon

Last week I was travelling through Gloucestershire into Oxfordshire. The journey went through the picturesque village of Bibury, once named by William Morris as the most beautiful village in England. Today it continues to serve as a magnet for tourists, many drawn by the iconic stone cottages. Passing through at around ten on a murky grey morning, there were more Chinese faces than local ones, as visitors tried to arrive early enough to secure a coveted parking spot on ‘The Street’, adjacent to the trout-laden river that runs through the village.

Villages like Bibury were once beating hearts within thriving rural communities, settlements which grew organically over the centuries and are as much part of the very substance of a nation’s history as moss over stone. True enough the beauty remains but the energy has changed. Too often they have become open air museums. Tourists from far and wide tramp up and down the narrow streets in much the same way that rich tourists in Ancient Rome used to tour Greek and Egyptian sites, marvelling at the beautiful ruins of faded civilisations.

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“Being now at home again, and alone the only person in the house awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not care to resist, to my own childhood. I begin to consider, what do we all remember best upon the branches of our own young Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life…

…And I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday, the longer, the better, from the great boarding-school, where we are for ever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest. As to going a visiting, where can we not go, if we will; where have we not been, when we would; starting our fancy from our Christmas Tree!”

—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Tree

The year is almost at an end. We have passed the winter solstice and the days will slowly begin to get longer and lighter. It is the season of Christmas, when we approach that strangely satisfying period between Christmas Day and New Year when normal time seems pleasantly suspended and normal things are put on hold. At this time it is fitting to indulge in a little seasonal nostalgia and entertain the ghosts of Christmas past. Doing so, I am often drawn to a host of recurring mental images of the approach to Christmas when growing up: the long, steady crescendo of anticipation that began at the start of December, the regular calendrical markers of a long school-term winding down, the haunting beauty of advent collects in the Book of Common Prayer, the Christmas tree and the ritual decoration of home and school.

It is difficult to capture such memories adequately in words. It is a kaleidoscopic dream tableau of a thousand and one sights, sounds and smells. Such mental dreamscapes lend themselves to story-telling, however loose the connecting threads can seem at first. This theme was memorably explored by Charles Dickens in his less well-known other Christmas story, A Christmas Tree.

Martin Luther’s Christmas tree, Germany, 16th century

For some reason, one of the most enduring personal memories of Christmas is the annual school carol service, which usually occupied half the afternoon of one of the last few days of term and, as has been typical for many English public schools for generations, was held in the local parish church right outside the school gates.1 It is probably not entirely a true memory but looking back it always seemed to fall on one of those golden cold, clear days that December frequently produces. By the time the service began, as the afternoon wore on, the weak sun had either melted into a thousand shades of crimson on the horizon or slipped behind a dank cloak of a fog that would in the course of the following night drape everything in the icy glamour of the hoar frost. Such cold days would always seem to dangle the exciting prospect of a white Christmas, although more likely than not such hopes would not come to fruition. Nevertheless, it was the promise, the hopeful expectation, that mattered. The service took place under a stone canopy of Victorian Gothic-revival arches, warmed by the soft, waxy glow of candlelight. If I recall correctly, it would follow the typical ‘nine carols, nine readings’ pattern that is common in Anglican churches during the approach to Christmas. Although these were usually the most familiar sung carols I remember one year being very pleased to sing one of my favourites from a very young age, ‘Good King Wenceslas’.

I think one of the reasons why this carol appealed to my childhood self was the semi-fantastic imagery it conjured of kings, adventure, winter journeys through mountains and dark forests covered in deep snow. It sparked my historical imagination, the fires of which were furtively stoked during childhood by both history and fiction. I always associated the Christmas period with story-telling (which is an important part of what historians do, so it is quite possible that the foundations to later life were being laid during this time). And there was quite the panoply of stories. Some of these were explicitly linked to Christmas itself and the central theme of the Incarnation. Others had looser, more folkloric connections and had undoubtedly made their way into the season via Yule as well as myriad other threads which are all but impossible to trace. Nestled in my imagination was a range of literature—Hans-Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia (both the books and the charming 1980s BBC adaptation), Charles Dickens, snapshots of the Arabian Nights and Russian fairy tales. This was highly eclectic source material.

Russian decorative plate depicting the Firebird

As for Good King Wenceslas, beyond the narrative of John Mason Neale’s lyrics—which tells of the eponymous Bohemian king venturing out with his servant on St Stephen’s Day (December 26th) where they encounter a poor peasant gathering firewood and give alms to him—little thought was ever given to the story behind the carol. Now considered the patron saint of the Czech people, Wenceslas I (911-c.935) was a prince of Bohemia and despite the words of the carol, was not actually a king as such, although he was posthumously awarded the title by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I ‘the Great’. His father died when he was around thirteen and his grandmother Ludmila became regent, also exerting much influence upon the young Wenceslas.

Wenceslas’ mother Drahomira, though baptised at her marriage, remained pagan and was hostile to the Christian faith. Opposing Ludmila’s influence, Drahomira conspired to have her assassinated before becoming regent herself, whereupon she began to take repressive measures against Christians. When Wenceslas was eighteen she was eventually deposed and forced into exile by Christian nobles and Wenceslas himself took power. He ruled well until he himself was infamously murdered by a group of noblemen allied with his younger brother Boleslaus ‘the cruel’. Considered a martyr after his death his name grew to be venerated throughout the Middle Ages as a perfect exemplar of the rex justus or noble king.

According to popular folk legend, Wenceslas and his knights sleep under Mt Blańik and will awaken to deliver the Czech people during the hour of their greatest need. This is, of course, another iteration of the famous ‘king asleep in the mountain’ motif, which occupies a prestigious position in many folk mythologies. Other versions feature Holger for the Danes, Frederick Barbarossa for the Germans, Fionn mac Cumhaill for the Irish, King St Stephen for the Hungarians and William Tell for the Swiss (among many, many others). For the British, it is King Arthur and the knights of Camelot. More specifically, for the English there is another twist on the legend involving the Elizabethan privateer Sir Francis Drake. It is said that if Drake’s Drum is beaten during England’s direst moment then Drake will sail from across the sea to rescue his land from destruction.

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The association of kingly events with Christmas time in wider folklore and historical memory is probably not difficult to explain. During the Middle Ages, Christmas became an auspicious time for grand occasions such as coronations since it emphasised Christ’s supreme kingship to which all earthly lords were subservient. There are a number of examples. Charlemagne was crowned the first Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800 and summarily styled both ‘the new David’ and ‘the new Constantine’ ruling over an ascendant imperium Christianum. The Anglo-Saxon King Edmund the Martyr, of East Anglia, was said (by the Annals of St Neots) to have been crowned on Christmas Day 855. Little is known of Edmund as all contemporary records seem to have been destroyed by the Viking invaders after they assaulted the east coast in 865. The Great Heathen Army took East Anglia in 869 and it is said that after Edmund refused to renounce Christianity, he was shot through with arrows and beheaded at a place called Haegelisdun. Anglo-Saxon missionaries continued to visit the Scandinavian homelands. A century later, Denmark had been Christianised.

One of the most notable Christmas coronations took place in England in 1066 after the Norman King William had conquered the country and brought an end to the Anglo-Saxon age. But this too was a story bathed in blood and tears. Whilst William was being crowned in Westminster Abbey, so a contemporary account states, the English crowd outside followed their custom of shouting their oaths of allegiance to the new king. The Normans, misunderstanding this tumult and fearing rebellion, retaliated with fire and sword.

During the 1650s, England’s monarchy was, for the first and only time in its history, overthrown and an alternative form of government, the Commonwealth, established in its place. Popular memory recalls this as the time when Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell abolished Christmas and made it a crime to celebrate the feast day. But this isn’t actually quite true. In reality it was the Long Parliament, not Cromwell, which made the law. In those days, as it had been for centuries, Christmas was an extended period of joyous feasting and celebration. In earlier times, lords provided feasts for their peasants and the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’, from Christmas Day until Epiphany on January 6th, provided a welcome respite from a year of toil. Then, as now, celebration could spiral into riotous excess and there was always the somewhat Saturnalian undertone of the inversion of usual customs and social norms. The Puritan government of England during the Interregnum years of the 1650s were inclined against Christmas for a number of reasons, not least their emphasis on the ‘regulative principle of worship’—the doctrine that only those practices and celebrations explicitly commanded in Scripture were acceptable for Christian life—as well as the argument that Christmas (literally coming from the term ‘Christ’s mass’) was an illegitimate holdover from the Roman Catholic church and thus represented ‘popery’.

This went much further than most Protestant attitudes. Christmas was a prescribed feast and celebration in both the mainline Anglican Church as well as for the Lutherans in continental Europe. The Puritans also seem to have gone much further than their Reformed counterparts in Europe, for whom Christmas was regarded as a proper day to receive Holy Communion (thus drawing attention to the connection between Christmas and Easter). It seems that many people elected to carry on celebrating regardless, even if much of this was fairly clandestine. Of course, at the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the Cavalier Parliament swept aside the entire raft of legislation from the interregnum as null and void and the Christmas-less days of the Long Parliament became an historical anomaly.

As an historian one of the most fascinating aspects of looking at the past is its paradoxical nature—it is both dead and living. We can never go back to a time that once was, and all times are by their nature changing times. However, there is a mysterious way in which the phantoms of the past do live on past their age and inhabit our own. The historian and Liberal politician E.A. Freeman (1823-92) believed that the ripples of history moved back and forward continually, onto and over each other. In a certain manner of speaking there is truth in this. We can enter a space worn by time and the elements and almost hear the whispers of many different times of history (or ‘layers’ to mix metaphors), echoing and overlapping with each other. All these layers contribute to our sense of memory, be it personal, family, community, national or cultural.

When, as schoolchildren, we gathered in church for carols there was always the abiding sense that in this seasonal fixture, as with the many other corporate rituals of public school life, we were part of a grander narrative told across time. Many generations had gathered before us doing exactly the same thing, and there would be others after. As Edmund Burke wrote in the eighteenth century, society is a compact between the dead, the living and those yet unborn. Visual daily reminders of the peculiarly English passages of ‘thick time’, as beautifully described here, were all about us throughout school. Each lunchtime as we dined, we, the present, were watched over by memorial plaques high up on the walls around us, archiving past head pupils and high achievers stretching back over the decades and centuries. While the echoes of the past reverberated around us softly, these memorials gently etched into our subconscious minds a sense of place and purpose. We cannot and should not try to live in the past. Yet it will always continue to haunt us in one way or another.

Hans Gude, ‘Vinterettermiddag’ (1847)

The original version of this was published in December 2021.

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This ties in to a more specialist report I have just released for businesses and investors on the strategic outlook for Europe from 2026 onwards. Events are moving very quickly and there are many signs that the next year could be highly transformative. More on that in due course!

Copyright © Alastair Paynter 2025

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One particular quote of Mr Drew’s which has always stuck in my mind was a reaction to the compulsory modernist bias of much of the school curriculum. He used to quip, ‘Anything after 1600 is current affairs!’ I may not have fully understood this at the time but I appreciate it much more now. There are a number of truths hidden within the statement. For one, we can’t always tell what the effects of this or that event event are unless enough time has elapsed since it took place. Moreover, historical events cast long shadows. It is only by taking the long historical view that you can actually get proper context for the events of the present. This truth becomes readily apparent the more you look at the historical processes which govern how and why societies rise and fall.

The processes of great transformation are fascinating. One of the great hallmarks of major transformational periods of history is the process of cratometamorphosis. The transformation of states themselves occurs through processes of serious internal restructuring. Sometimes new states are born, sometimes states die. Sometimes they simply go through a period of renewal or rebirth. Last month I wrote about the re-emergence of Norway as an entirely sovereign state, something which occurred in 1905/6 as the personal union with the Swedish crown was dissolved and a distinctively Norwegian monarchy was instituted for the first time since the fourteenth century.

The early twentieth century was a great period of cratometamorphosis across the world, particularly as strong modernising currents fed into the larger seas of long-established historical identities. The subject of monarchy in the twentieth century is a complex one. A lot of countries became republics during the twentieth century, most often as a result of war or revolution. Sometimes monarchies were dissolved on the back of plebiscites. However, in some instances things went in the other direction. One particularly interesting example comes from Bhutan. Over the last century and a quarter Bhutan has shown itself to be one of the most successful monarchies in the world. This is all the more interesting when we consider that it only became a monarchy during the twentieth century and for the three centuries that preceded it had become an increasingly divided and war-torn theocratic republic.

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The Triumph of Achilles by Franz von Matsch (1892)

Last week I reposted part 1 of an essay on William Gladsone’s studies of the political lessons that can be learnt from Homer. Today I will repost part 2. This grew out of an academic project I did back in 2018-19 on the subject. My original research appeared in the journal History and can be viewed here.

How does a successful society begin to fragment? How can the ordered become disordered? What forces drive change? These are questions that ought to be of as great interest to the political philosopher, policy-maker and strategist as to the historian. History is a useful schoolmaster for the present and there are object lessons on social decline and decay from the earliest times. One of the earliest examples of social transformation in the Western canon is presented by Homer and is visible across the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the first part we considered the political and constitutional lessons that could be learned from Homer, as explained by William Gladstone during his extensive studies during the Victorian era. In this part we will consider the broader political and social changes recorded by Homer, which while not a central plot feature of the two texts, do provide an important backdrop.

All cultures have life cycles which appear to follow a similar pattern regardless of geography or period. Ancient Greece was no exception. And the patterns that were visible in Ancient Greece also appeared to provide a curious parallel to many of the changes happening in Britain during the nineteenth century. This was one of the reasons why so many Victorians were fascinated by Greece. The Victorian era itself was one of major political and social transformation. When Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 it was only five years after the Great Reform Act had drastically redrawn the political landscape, sweeping away much of the vestiges of the ancien régime parliament, such as ‘pocket’ and ‘rotten’ boroughs.1 The middle classes gained a wider entrance into politics, although the upper echelons of power were almost exclusively an aristocratic domain. Meanwhile, local politics was still very much in the hands of the gentry and the Church of England. Britain was in a state of flux and its aristocratic political culture was slowly giving way to a rising bourgeoisie, although the full effects of this were not to be seen for some time. Successive reform acts, in 1867 and 1884 further democratised the constitution. Britain was moving from an aristocracy to a mass democracy. These changes were largely wrought in the context of the Industrial Revolution and its effects and the shift in economic power that accompanied it.

Although far removed in time, a long view of Ancient Greek history also showed a monarchical order giving way to aristocracy and then oligarchy. Democracy reared its head for a brief moment during the classical age before itself being swept away in tyranny. After slow dissolution and decay, Greece grew weak and fragmented before finally being conquered by the Roman Republic in 146 BC. Of course, these processes took place over many centuries. But the metapolitical lessons appeared foreboding to nineteenth and early twentieth century liberal and conservative men of letters, many of whom would grow increasingly concerned about the direction in which modern society was heading.

Homer lies in the distant past of Greek history. Whether he was recording a society that had already passed (often dated to around 1200 BC) or was describing conditions in his own time (circa 12^th to 8^th century BC)  is not clear. Neither is the exact date of his existence. Already in the nineteenth century, German scholarly revisionism was doubting whether a singular poet called Homer existed (my personal opinion is that he did).2  Either way, the society described in the Iliad and the Odyssey occurred many centuries before the classical Greek era. But it was a society in a state of flux, changing from one thing into another.

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What happened to the heroes of the Trojan War?

The war between Achaea and Troy lasted ten years. This obviously wrought great destruction on Troy itself but also served as a major force of disruption and dislocation on the victorious Achaeans.  Their most famous hero, Achilles, was killed. Given that each of the Achaean heroes listed by Homer was a prince or noble, it is clear what a cataclysmic effect the war had on the political orders that existed in Greece at that time. Very few of them returned home. Among their stories:

Agamemnon returned to Mycenae with the Trojan princess Cassandra in his possession, but according to the most famous story, was eventually murdered by his wife Clytemnestra.

Menelaus returned to Sparta with his wife Helen, the two apparently having a harmonious life thereafter.

Diomedes had a fitful journey home, surviving a storm and avoiding an early death at the hands of King Lycus as well as  mistaken attack by Athenians. When he finally arrived home in Argos he found his wife living adulterously. Disgusted, he left and according to later Roman accounts, founded a colony in Italy.

Odysseus’ story is famously recorded in the Odyssey. After ten years of trials and sojourns on Calypso’s island as well as Phaeacia he finally made it home to reclaim his kingship and exact terrible vengeance on the arrogant suitors living in his palace who were vying for his wife Penelope.

At the end of the Iliad, after the death of Achilles, both Ajax the Greater and Odysseus claimed the armour of Achilles. When the council awarded it to Odysseus, Ajax, overcome by grief, killed himself.

Teucer was refused to return home to Salamis by his father for not revenging the death of his half-brother Ajax. He went and founded the city-state of Salamis on Cyprus.

Nestor, whose conduct during the war had been the most morally upright of all, had the swiftest, easiest journey home. After his return he lived out the rest of his days in peace and tranquility.

Idomeneus reached his home in Crete safely.

Philoctetes, whose injury to the foot had stalled the Achaeans in their progress ultimately became instrumental in victory killing many notable Trojans. After the war he returned home to Meliboea, but, according to the geographer and historian Strabo was forced to leave after a serious political quarrel and ended up wandering to Italy where he founded a number of cities.

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The end of the order

The absences of such a great number of rulers for at least ten years proved very damaging to political and social order throughout Greece. As Gladstone explained, from the Iliad we get a view of a tripartite constitution consisting of king, noble council and popular assembly. However, the way these elements fit and relate together has clearly shifted by the time of the Odyssey, a fact picked up by various commentators. J.P. Mahaffy wrote that the tone of the poems showed ‘not a nascent, but a decaying order of things; subordinate chiefs rebelling against their sovereigns; nobles violating the rights of their absent chiefs.’ The order of government had changed. The ten year absence of the chiefs during the Trojan War (which in the case of Ithaca in the Odyssey extended to twenty years because of Odysseus’ wanderings) proved to be greatly destabilising. Another notable classical scholar, Richard Jebb, noted that this changing order was visible in two ways. Firstly, while the hereditary principle of monarchy was still acknowledged, the lack of proper reverence given by the aristocratic suitors to Penelope’s son Telemachus, showed it was ‘less absolute and inviolable’ than it had been. Secondly, the popular assembly was much more assertive than it had been, a shift in the balance away from monarchy. Further interesting comments on this were made by the historian and journalist Goldwin Smith, whose reading of Homer was coloured by his own experience of the changes in Britain over the course of his lifetime. He rightly saw Homer as a court poet relating the heroic acts of an aristocracy to an aristocracy. However, the Iliad showed the first signs of ‘the era of democracy lifting its head against nobility and hereditary rule’. The popular assembly itself was a sign of a transition from monarchy and aristocracy to democracy.

It should be noted that just because the relative balance between monarchy, aristocracy and democracy can and does shift, that does not necessarily entail a loss of reverence for older institutions. As Gladstone consistently held, the reverence of the English for their monarchy had lasted despite the formal changes in the political role of the monarch. Old institutions can still have a powerful hold upon the affections. In many ways that has remained true of the British monarchy. However, this requires navigating profound changes in a skilful way.

Lessons for today

‘It is irrelevant how many centuries separate us from a bygone age. What matters is the importance of the past to our intellectual and spiritual existence.’

Ernst Curtius (1814-1896)

It is possible to simply read the Homeric texts for enjoyment and in recognition of its important place in the Western canon and world literature. However, from the point of view of applying its lessons to understanding history and politics more generally there are a number of lessons which can be learned, which are summarised here:

. No political or social order is permanent. Things are always changing even if we do not necessarily notice it at the time. The same patterns of change seem to occur in all societies regardless of geographical location or time period.

. War is the great disruptor. In fact there are few things which can permanently change a society as much as war, especially one that is drawn out and bloody. Wars sap resources, physical and mental, and this obviously takes a large toll on societies. They also dislocate traditional social and political structures which have been forced to adapt to conditions necessary to conduct the war. There are of course plenty of modern examples of this, perhaps the greatest being the First and Second World Wars.

. Polities go through life cycles. This has been discussed in great detail by political philosophers throughout time, such as Aristotle in Politics. Monarchies of the past often (though not exclusively) relied on the support of a hereditary nobility. The idea of reciprocal rights and duties is common across most cultures from medieval Europe to feudal Japan. When this relationship breaks down, conflict ensues.

. The pursuit of power remains a constant temptation. This can manifest in various ways. Those at the apex of a system can, when they feel they are threatened, attempt to solidify their position by crushing potential threats. This also damages all the intermediary institutions in society which keep everything running smoothly like a well-oiled machine. On the other hand, lesser nobles can seek to elevate their own position at the expense of those above. The risk of this increases when those above are perceived to be weak or too accommodating. This has been a feature in many political revolutions which can often carried out by an ascendant and relatively powerful, but not supreme, ‘class’ seeking to topple the ruling class and assume control. Examples include the English Civil War, the American Revolution and the French Revolution, among others.

. A restoration of order does not imply things go back to the way they were before the disruption. There is no complete restoration of the status quo ante. At the end of the Odyssey, Odysseus won back his kingdom and his wife and destroyed the suitors. But he, Penelope and the kingdom of Ithaca had all been irrevocably changed by the twenty years’ absence. We can never turn back the clock. After all, time and tide wait for no man.

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Louis Édouard Fournier, La Colère d’Achille (1881)

I am currently working on an essay on the transformation of Bhutan over the last century and a quarter which I hope to publish on here next week. In the meantime I will revisit an older subject I covered a couple of years ago on here, which itself grew out of a research project I did in 2018-19. While the subject matter is very ancient, it should have great relevance for us today especially as we think about collapsing orders and historical transformation. I will re-publish the second part of this in a few days.

William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) was one of the titans of the Victorian age. Other than his rival Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), there was perhaps no other figure of greater and lasting significance in politics. And with good reason. He was prime minister four times and his own political journey was long and varied. He began as a High Church Tory before in turn becoming a Peelite, Liberal and then Radical. He had great physical and intellectual energy and in addition to his lengthy career in practical politics he made serious contributions to the study of intellectual history and theology. According to him, the foundations of the Western political tradition lay in Homer. This was one of the reasons he spent so much time and energy on Ancient Greece’s oldest poet and over the course of several decades produced a number of books, articles and pamphlets on the Homeric world and the two poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey.1 For those interested in timeless ideas of great importance, on such things as monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, political debate as well as ideas of progress and degeneration, there is a lot of value in Gladstone’s ‘Homerology’.

Gladstone studied Homer for a number of reasons, primarily theological and political.2 I want to focus on the second of these. He considered the foundations of the Western political tradition to lie in Homer. The politics of Homer represented a state of vitality and energy not seen since in the Ancient World and were ‘the seed-plot of what is best and soundest in the Greek politics of the historic period.’ These studies did not exist in a vacuum and were in part a response to the work of the historian George Grote (1794-1871), the businessman, scholar and Radical MP who had written a large multi-volume history of Ancient Greece which had sold very well. In many ways, Grote was the diametric opposite of Gladstone. Philosophically, he was a utilitarian and rationalist and despised Homeric Greece as barbaric and backwards, heaping his praise instead on the Athenian democracy of the fifth century BC. Historical scholarship during this period was as much about arguing the politics of the present as it was uncovering the past. Gladstone was very much in favour of preserving Britain’s mixed constitution and defended it against radicals like Grote, something which was reflected in his own Homeric scholarship.

‘The gods descending to battle’, illustration after Flaxman in Rev. Alfred Church’s The Story of the Iliad (1895)

A mixed constitution

So what were the ideas in Homer that Gladstone considered to be so sound? Before answering that question it is necessary to briefly sketch an overview of the two Homeric texts, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad concerns the ten year war between the Achaeans (Greeks) and Troy, waged after the Trojan prince Paris stole the beautiful Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta. Much of it focusses on the acts of the Achaean heroes, figures such as Achilles, Diomedes, Ajax and Odysseus. The Odyssey, by turn, concentrates on Odysseus’ ten years’ wanderings following the end of the war as he tries to make his way home to Ithaca and his faithful wife Penelope, who has patiently endured the long wait and the amorous advances of a band of unruly aristocratic suitors vying for her hand in marriage and thus the kingship of Ithaca. Homer depicts two kinds of societies: Achaean and non-Achaean. Each of the Achaean princes ruled a separate polity but were bound to each other by blood, language and culture. The Trojans were broadly Grecian too, worshipping the same gods, but their society and politics differed in a number of ways. During his wanderings, Odysseus encountered a variety of societies from the barbaric primitivism of the island of the Cyclops to the idyllic Phaeacia.

Achaean society consisted of three political parts: the monarch or chief (basileus), the council (boule) and the assembly (agora). Gladstone attributed a four-fold role to the kings. He was priest, judge, general and proprietor. Kingship was no longer truly patriarchal but did still contain vestiges of an earlier patriarchal model, something Gladstone likened to the traces of patriarchal forms still present in the English constitution. This wasn’t the only similarity. The very three-fold structure also bore a striking resemblance to the classic mixed British constitution of monarch, lords and commons. The ranks of the Achaean army also appeared to Gladstone as distant mirror of the different ranks of the British peerage.

In Homer, power worked in conjunction with reason and flowed directly to the sovereign from Zeus himself. Far from being primitive tyrants, Homeric kings were portrayed as (and expected to be) well-rounded, as close to a Christian gentleman as the pagan world could produce. They were kings and warriors but they still participated in the ordinary labours of life, as evident in Odysseus’ craftsmanship and ship-building. The Homeric model of the great man was very much in tune with the idea of the ‘true mean’ or ‘spirit of moderation’ discussed by Aristotle in his Nicomacheaen Ethics. Gladstone was greatly influenced by Aristotle and his reading of the philosopher underlined his firm belief that social order was a natural phenomenon and that social obligations were non-voluntary. Seeing Homeric kingship as restrained provided a neat parallel to Gladstone’s understanding of modern British constitutional monarchy which, as he wrote elsewhere, had traded power for influence and was ‘the one unchanging component of national political life’. In his view, influence entailed authority, something which enabled the constitution to be a sort of medium through which moral force could operate.

The second element of the Homeric constitution, the council, was aristocratic. As in Gladstone’s Britain, these were the men who by ‘superior wealth, energy and influence’ led the rest of the population. There was some debate among scholars about the relative importance of the council in relation to the king, but in Gladstone’s view it was a truly independent body where free debate flourished. Debate was also the hallmark of the third (democratic) element of the constitution, the assembly. Free debate was the hallmark of a free people and for Gladstone, the importance of oratory in Homeric society represented an aspect of antiquity that provided a good model for modern readers. For Gladstone, restrictions on speech were the hallmark of absolutist tyrannies:

No government which sort its power in force, as opposed to reason, has at any time used this deception. The world has seen absolutism deck itself with the titles and mere forms of freedom, or seek shelter under its naked abstractions: but from the exercise of free speech as an instrument of state, it has always shrunk with instinctive horror.

The Homeric world was in Gladstone’s view a world of ordered liberty, governed by the voice and the sword. The power of its constitution lay in the harmony between its three elements, where the popular will was expressed by the king in accordance with the aristocracy. The fact that commoners were not recorded taking part in the debates was not an issue for Gladstone any more than working men not participating in county meetings of the nineteenth century indicated that modern assemblies were merely tools used by the ruling classes. In his view, they were represented.

We are of course speaking a lot here of constitutions. It has to be stressed, however, that constitutions of the ancient world do not exactly equate to constitutions of the modern world. In Homer, the polity is governed by custom, not pieces of paper and lawyers. In fact, the Greek word for law (nomos) doesn’t appear at all but the word themis, meaning ‘public right’ or what has been laid down, does. There were no written agreements or contracts, but rather ‘the truth of spoken evidence’ and principles of natural equity.

What there was, however, was a thriving public life. Women were much more visible than in later classical Greece. Society was governed by an intense sense of reverence—for parents, kings, the old, beauty, the opinions of fellow men, the dead, the weak and the poor. Persuasion was valued over mere force. There was a hatred for unlimited, unaccountable power and public action was valued over secret action. The spirit of freedom was balanced with the spirit of order. Duty was reciprocal. In fact, Gladstone considered there to be five strands of a ‘well-knit rope’ holding Homeric society together. These were:

1. Theos—the worship of deity.

2. Themis—the principle of social right and duty between neighbours and fellow-citizens.

3. Korkos—the ultimate sanction of good faith.

4. Xenos—the basis of friendly relations beyond the limits of class and polity.

5. Gamos—marriage.

‘The embassy to Achilles’ in Church, The Story of the Iliad.

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The role of public opinion

One of the most intriguing aspects of Gladstone’s analysis was that of the role of public opinion in Homeric society. We tend to think of the concept of public opinion as a modern construct, something which could only exist in the context of a mass print and information culture. To an extent this is true. And of course there are limitations to the concept itself. Is there such a thing as a discernible public opinion? Or is it the product of various organs of our mass information culture (i.e. the media and the government) which feed ideas to the public and then filter them back to themselves as evidence of widespread sentiment?

To Gladstone, public opinion in Homer (or ‘publicity’ as he referred to it in his earlier Homeric works) existed in the form of the tis (literally, the ‘who’), a poetic device used by Homer to indicate the ‘common soul’. If speech was a power to be exercised over numbers, then the tis was a way for the numbers to speak with a collective voice. It was present in the council and assembly but also on other occasions, such as in Book III of the Iliad when the Achaeans and Trojans briefly form a pact, the common voice among the suitors in the Odyssey, or the common sentiment among the gods on Olympus. However, there is no specific tis in the Trojan camp, where assent was ‘rattled or clattered’. In short, the spontaneity and uniformity of the tis suggested a higher form of civilisation. The idea of a common mind had much to say to Gladstone’s own time (and ours too). In Homer, public opinion was something created by public affairs or the conduct of the chiefs. It was the duty of the leader to lead public opinion not follow it. Gladstone himself was an interesting case in point. He had always been an ardent supporter of aristocratic politics and would remain so his entire life. At the same time he believed it necessary to incorporate the working classes into the constitution. One contemporary commentator, L.A. Tollemache, likened him to the classical Greek statesman Pericles whose Athens was a democracy in name but in reality was ‘the supremacy of the first citizen.’ Incorporating ordinary people into the political structure was seen as a civilising force on them, imparting a wider sense of patriotism and responsibility whilst also serving to preserve and moralise the aristocracy that ruled society. In essence, he envisaged a kind of aristocratic democracy.

The value of studying historical politics

The idea of a major politician conducting a serious political study of ancient texts seems so alien to us today that it might be tempting to view it as an eccentric hobby more than anything more substantial. Even in Gladstone’s day, much of his Homerology was considered eccentric. However, the bulk of his political study of Homer remains of great value. For one thing, it allows us to see the perennial nature of political questions and the bases of power and society. Truly, as it says in Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun. Forms of governance come and go. Societies change significantly. Scientific and engineering progress render things possible which for most of history could not even have been dreamed about. Yet human nature remains the same. And in order to understand our own world we have to try and understand how it got to be like this. Secondly, the specific forms of governance present back at the dawn of Western history—monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, oligarchy—are the same which appear in slightly different forms today. The ingredients available for the cake remain the same, even if they appear in differing quantities or somewhat adapted forms.

There is, however, a further reason why a political reading of Homer is important to us now. It enables us to comprehend something of the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of social evolution and the processes by which societies and the epochs to which they belong crumble or disintegrate allowing something else to take their place. While Gladstone extolled the apparent harmony of Homeric society, he also recognised it was not a static situation. In fact, the underlying context of both the Iliad and the Odyssey is that of societies convulsed by war and its effects. It was a changing order. Part Two will look at the ways society was changing and the applications of this today.

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One such lesson came to me recently when considering my own training regime. For natural trainees in the gym the only way to really build more muscle is to get stronger. Now there are various methods of strength training, with assorted pros and cons. People have of course been doing this for thousands of years and despite the attempts of many modern ‘influencers’ trying to carve out their own special, marketable niche there is simply no need to re-invent the wheel.

Even with all the proliferation of ‘exercise science’ and ‘science-based training’ the basic protocols of progressive overload, eating properly and resting properly have been known to mankind for millennia.

In the modern era, one highly effective method for improving strength was designed by the Canadian Doug Hepburn (1926-2000). Hepburn was a strongman and weightlifter and all-round legend in the physical culture world. He was one of the strongest men we have on record. He was the first man to bench-press 500 pounds back in the 1950s and won gold medals in weightlifting in the World Championships and British Empire games. To put a face to the name, here is a wonderful clip of Hepburn and his gym in Vancouver back in the early 1950s.

The Hepburn method of strength training is remarkable for how undramatic it is. It consists of performing eight sets of two repetitions for a movement, with a couple of minutes rest in between each. The next session the trainee adds just one repetition for just one of the sets. So you perform 3-2-2-2-2-2-2-2. The following session you add another rep to another set so you perform 3-3-2-2-2-2-2-2. You carry on adding one repetition each session until you reach eight sets of three. Then you add five to ten pounds of weight and start over again.

Many people in the gym are very impatient. They want results as soon as possible. For them the idea of adding just one repetition per session for a given exercise seems unthinkable since you would only be adding weight to the bar every nine sessions. At a normal frequency of two sessions per week you would only be adding weight every fifth week or so. For many that seems too slow. The problem with this way of thinking is that it ignores the wisdom behind the ‘slower’ protocol. One of the reasons for taking things at this pace is to allow the whole body to properly adapt to the increases in strength. This does not just mean the muscles—it means the nervous system, the ligaments and tendons and everything else. Trying to hurry nature along can result in burnout and injury, both of which will clearly make progress slower. In wanting more you can end up with less.

The genius behind the Hepburn method lies in the long-term view. If your focus is entirely on wanting to make sudden grand improvements then this approach might seem painfully slow. But this is a case of missing the wood for the trees. Taken over the course of the year it equates to adding 120 pounds of weight on the big, compounds lifts. That is a lot. Personally I have incorporated a version of this to improve my numbers on one of the more difficult basic calisthenics exercises, weighted wide-grip pull-ups.

When we try to get better at anything it is perfectly natural to want to see visible results in realtime. But while remarkable leaps in progress at anything can certainly occur, it is also true to say that in many instances, progress is the result of consistent small improvements taken over a long period of time. Many people get disheartened when they do not see results quickly. But lots of small steps add up over time and amount to considerable progress on the journey in question. There is much wisdom in adopting Hepburn’s approach to man things. This applies far beyond the gym.

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Photo by Aleksander Saks, via Unsplash.

Norway is a country to which I have felt a particular attachment for many years. Perhaps it is the old Norse blood running through my veins, via the Yorkshire and East Midlands parts of my ancestry, but there are few ‘foreign’ places in the world where I have felt more at home. As I discovered around ten years ago, to cruise out onto the Skagerrak in a speedboat while the waters glisten under the midsummer sun is to know contentment.

Norway is an interesting country for a multitude of reasons. Numbering fewer than six million people it has the habit of occasionally streaking across the pages of history in sparks of sheer brilliance whilst also for long stretches of time remaining quiet, almost dormant. I remember reading about this phenomenon once in an old mid-twentieth century book on Norwegian history, tucked away in a dustier less-frequented corner of the university library. If I recall correctly it is (or was?) referred to as Peer Gynt Syndrome. According to this book, Norwegian intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were very taken by a kind of ethnological analysis of their country which sought to explain the innate contradictions of Norwegian people.

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A minor nobleman of Prussian origins, Hammerstein-Equord was in charge of the composition of the manual on military unit command, the Truppenführung, in 1933. He gave an important and interesting insight into how officers should be classified according to their particular combination of personal characteristics and abilities, and consequently how best such types were to be used. This quote is sometimes misattributed to Rommel, although it is important to note that General Douglas A. MacArthur also commented to the same effect.

“I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.”

These lessons can obviously be applied more broadly than just the military context. The general staff, or equivalent in other organisations, exist to plan and organise and focus on the details. Clever and industrious people make very good general support staff since they are both capable enough to enforce the leader’s decisions while also intelligent and perceptive enough to recognise and anticipate necessary problems and corrections if things go awry. Being hard-working they are thus able to keep the machinery going and free up the leader to do what they need to be doing.

On the other hand, those who are hard-working but also stupid tend to cause lots of mischief. They do not know their own limitations. They interfere where they should leave alone. They are always dreaming up new ways to ‘help’ but only end up causing more problems. That which is simple ends up being over-complicated. Things which should be short take twice as long.

Perhaps the most interesting category belongs to those who are clever but lazy. Many might intuitively think that laziness might be a net negative. In certain capacities, however, it is a real strength. Someone who is capable but lazy is more likely to find the most efficient solution possible. While a consistent hard-worker is likely to tackle a problem head-on with great tenacity, this is not always the best course of action. If a solution is indeed possible, finding it this way may consume more valuable time and resources than is ultimately necessary, to the point that victory is pyrrhic rather than emphatic. On the other hand, a clever but lazy leader is likely to either find the quickest effective solution possible or retreat to fight another time on more favourable terms. This allows them to take stock of the wider situation without becoming unnecessarily bogged down in details and thus lends itself to more effective strategising.

Interestingly Hammerstein-Equord was well known for preferring leisurely pursuits such as hunting and fishing over tedious administrative work. With a distinctively aristocratic aloofness, his insights into the abilities of the clever but lazy are quite probably illustrative of his own self-awareness as much as his observations of others. On a biographical note, one of the things that is striking about him is how open he was about his dislike of Nazism and Hitler. In 1933 his attempts to warn President Hindenburg about Hitler and the NSDAP were fruitless. When he was dying in 1943 the Gestapo had his Berlin home under surveillance. Still, when he passed away Hitler still sent a wreath and offered a state funeral but his family declined since they did not want his coffin draped in the Swastika flag. Hammerstein-Equord was certainly an intriguing man.

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