Who says history is boring? in blackpropaganda
- June 17, 2015, 10:30 a.m.
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- Public
This is a busy week for commemorations.
As every child knew in my day (less so now I feel) Magna Carta was sealed in 1215 - and the Battle of Waterloo was in 1815. Both In June - and both celebrated this week - with appropriate ceremonial - if you feel like that.
Magna Carta has all this myth about the cradle of democracy about it - I was never much taken with a treaty between the king and the barons over the question of power which had nothing to do with democracy and all to do with money.
Waterloo marked the end of Napoleon - but to be honest he was a busted flush anyway and could never get back to where he had been.
Still, it is good the the UK (really England) to keep celebrating ‘times past’ and trying to make them relevant to the society we now live in - not easy.
Anyway, I’ve been doing a bit of history trying to look up my family’s past using the library here where you can get free use of Ancestry, the firm and website which has control of census returns - I’m buggered if I am paying £120 a year to try to sort out some branches of my family. All that stuff they so on tev about Who Do You Think You Are is done by researchers - and you spend a lot of time farting about when you are not sure about dates. I am trying to find out if a branch of my family came from Germany in the 1840s with Prince Albert (in the army). It is shrouded in mystery, but there are issues of a name change - illegitimacy - and dodgy dealing. That’s what history should be about!
Meanwhile I have been topped and tailed - my feet done yesterday, so I am walking on air, and a haircut today. The car is being checked over for the MOT - and there have been glimpses of sun.
And here’s some things from the past which may appeal!
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