The Past – I acknowledge that I live in it, as
do maybe most soon-to-be 78-year-olds. It stimulates me with memories of
long-gone parents, their expressions, their advice and their particular ways
still giving me grateful delight. My two fine brothers are happily going strong
- what profound memories they generate too - and my old friends continue to
amuse, surprise, support and charm me. Above all, my lovely wife and three
great sons have been the foundation of my happiness on life’s rocky road. Yes,
the Past is often a good place to be. Kind Nature ensures that my memories are
almost all of the most agreeable kind!
I had the good fortune to have a privileged
education and my passion was the study of history. Yet I am dismayed, when I
waste my time watching daytime TV quiz shows, that while most contestants’ have
an encyclopedic knowledge of pop groups or soap stars, their knowledge of
history is precisely nil. They are ignorant of famous dates like the war years
– 1914-18 and 1939-45 – and Churchill’s name elicits an embarrassed shuffling
and vacant looks. They cannot even name the King before our illustrious present
Queen. Then I remembered that until decimalisation in 1971, we carried our
history about in our trouser pockets. Every old penny from Victoria, through
Edward VII, George V, George VI to Elizabeth II, with a head image and a minting
date also helpfully provided. So, we oldies had, I suppose, an unfair advantage.
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| George V |
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| Edward VII |
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| George VI |
More seriously, an appreciation of history
gives us so much more insight into who we are, where we are and what we are seeing
with our own eyes. I have had enormous pleasure visiting and revisiting the 40
or so City of London churches (St Mary Woolnoth my favourite) and
driving around the country to see many of England’s incomparable parish
Churches (Burford my ideal) or relishing the stunning sight of England’s
ancient cathedrals (especially majestically Romanesque Durham). If you
are clutching an informative guide-book, so much the better.
It is not just our historical eyes that lift
us, it is also our tongues. What a wonderful language we have, developing from
the golden age of Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer (1552) to The
Authorised Version of the Bible (1611) to the release of Shakespeare to the
world in the First Folio (1623)! The English and American language in inspiring
poetry, in sonorous history and in muscular, imaginative prose, just gives and
gives over the centuries.
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| Lovely St John the Baptist, Burford, Oxfordshire |
Majestic
Durham Cathedral
These buildings and this literature are our
birthright and reinforce our sense of identity. Moving on to the Present, we
face many challenges. Plague and pestilence have unexpectedly beset us and we
are emerging very gingerly from Lockdown after a heavy global death-toll. Our
world still tears itself apart, with brutal civil war in Syria, and China’s
appalling persecution of her Uighur minority. The purges and Gulag in Russia, Germany’s
infamous Final Solution, the genocide of Tutsi by Hutu in Rwanda are remoter
memories, but never to be forgotten.
How can we navigate through this maelstrom of
horror? The Ancient world tried to help with its Greek axiom carved over the
entrance to the sanctuary at oracular Delphi: Gnothi Seauton (Know
Thyself) – use your talents and understand your feelings. Shakespeare gives us
another angle, from Polonius’ advice to Laertes in Hamlet:
This above all: to thine own self be true
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
All this may seem a bit literary and highfalutin
so on a more relaxed level let me suggest that the calmest way to face the
Present world is the simple philosophy of Frank Sinatra in the song That’s
Life:
SMD
6.07.2020
Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2020
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