a personal note really so please indulge such an odd pairing
BBC4 has shown two progs recently that have been personally stimulating and enlightening
The Soft Underbelly an excellent account of the war in the med and Egypt
and a rerun of the interview with Eric Hobsbawm by Michael Ignatieff
David Reynolds brought to the fore Churchill's determined and cunning persistence to preserve the Empire ... he failed but won the war with some help from the Russians and Americans, both of whom regarded the British Empire as a highly undesirable and toxic entity [which i think it was ] ...what struck me was Churchill's determination, based on what? ..a certain sentiment, nostalgia; loyalty to personal roots ... he was an Empire man
Ignatieff brought out EH's loyalty to the communist cause in an altogether excellent interview [something of a pity he went home and entered politics, Brit tv lost a most able voice] .. to my shame i had forgotten that i saw this programme when first transmitted, and more had simply not got the gist of Hobsbawm talking about his continuing attachment to the CPGB after Hungary in 1956 .... he talked movingly of coming to politics on Berlin in the early 30s, of losing his contemporaries and friends in the type of politics that went on at that time ...many were killed .... he could not betray their cause nor their memory ... he clearly regarded the USSR as an horrendous entity but in his scheme of things that did not matter ... it was a personal roots thing for him ... i vow not to criticise him for this again, he made perfect emotional sense to me ... he was a Party man
neither Empire nor Party mean any such thing to us post 45 babes eh ....
the rest of the Hobsbawm is an absolute must see, his prescience in 1994 about capitalism and barbarism is astonishing and severe in its rigour and conclusions ... and he warns of the extreme peril then facing us of adapting to that which we can and will only find intolerable upon reflection ... we will accept the devastation of unbridled capitalism as the frog boils ... pretty goof for 94
as for Churchill he saw the awful totalitarian terror that Hobsbawm for his own reasons was silent about ...
BBC4 has shown two progs recently that have been personally stimulating and enlightening
The Soft Underbelly an excellent account of the war in the med and Egypt
and a rerun of the interview with Eric Hobsbawm by Michael Ignatieff
David Reynolds brought to the fore Churchill's determined and cunning persistence to preserve the Empire ... he failed but won the war with some help from the Russians and Americans, both of whom regarded the British Empire as a highly undesirable and toxic entity [which i think it was ] ...what struck me was Churchill's determination, based on what? ..a certain sentiment, nostalgia; loyalty to personal roots ... he was an Empire man
Ignatieff brought out EH's loyalty to the communist cause in an altogether excellent interview [something of a pity he went home and entered politics, Brit tv lost a most able voice] .. to my shame i had forgotten that i saw this programme when first transmitted, and more had simply not got the gist of Hobsbawm talking about his continuing attachment to the CPGB after Hungary in 1956 .... he talked movingly of coming to politics on Berlin in the early 30s, of losing his contemporaries and friends in the type of politics that went on at that time ...many were killed .... he could not betray their cause nor their memory ... he clearly regarded the USSR as an horrendous entity but in his scheme of things that did not matter ... it was a personal roots thing for him ... i vow not to criticise him for this again, he made perfect emotional sense to me ... he was a Party man
neither Empire nor Party mean any such thing to us post 45 babes eh ....
the rest of the Hobsbawm is an absolute must see, his prescience in 1994 about capitalism and barbarism is astonishing and severe in its rigour and conclusions ... and he warns of the extreme peril then facing us of adapting to that which we can and will only find intolerable upon reflection ... we will accept the devastation of unbridled capitalism as the frog boils ... pretty goof for 94
as for Churchill he saw the awful totalitarian terror that Hobsbawm for his own reasons was silent about ...
I can remember enjoying it: actually, I thought Magee's presentation was good and I don't recall noticing any smugness on his part. It must be quite devastating to realise one day in late middle age that you have dedicated most of your life to a cause that you no longer believe in. 
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