A few weeks ago, I went down a rabbit hole of researching my local duke and his family. And I started noticing a pattern. they would regularly have to inherit in ways other than father to son. Today, I will be cataloguing the story.....of the Duchy of Northumberland.
They wore this wool at Lodi, at Milan, at Mantua, and at Arcole. It would have been difficult to persuade these soldiers to go into battle without uniforms, and as such it is perfectly reasonable to make the claim that without British wool, France would never have won the War of the First Coalition.
6 min read
22/04/2023
This may seem an odd question with the gift of hindsight. When the French Revolution exploded into an international crisis, no country fought harder to suppress France than Great Britain (United Kingdom from 1801). Britain would not only act as financiers against the French Revolution, funding the multiple coalition wars, but the British Empire would also play an important military role both on land and at sea. It may come across as odd, perhaps, to ask why Britain would be opposed to the French Revolution.
9 min read
15/04/2023
“I have written this as part of a reflection of my own experience in life and in history; in part I wrote this piece as an Ode to our long suffering ancestors from time immemorial. They perhaps suffered so we may not have to, yet like Cassandra their spirits are doomed to watch as their warnings go unheeded, as their own kin repeat the same errors and mistakes as their forebears and their long passed lives did. I write this not fully knowing the complete experience of these forebears other than limited quips and excerpts from their lives, and to that only but few in number, but as my Thirty-Six Generations past Great Grandfather Alfred the Great once said: “I embrace the purpose of God and the doom assigned. It becomes no man to nurse despair, but, in the teeth of clenched antagonisms, to follow up the worthiest until he die.” I hope you enjoy the article.”
21 min read
21/01/2022
A Few years ago, students and professors at the University of Plymouth published an article titled Are New Year’s resolutions a waste of time? They found that only 9% of those who made resolutions in 2017 felt that they had kept those resolutions, with a third having felt they had failed by mid-January with many people indicating that they felt they had set themselves an unachievable task.
8 min read
31/12/2021
Over the past few years I have asked for books at Christmas to add to my growing collection of books I intend to one day read. They tend to be non-fiction and cover subjects I found to have gaps in after my education, for example philosophy, economics and history. Expanding my knowledge on my own terms has been the best decision I have made for broadening not only my understanding of the world but also has helped my vocabulary and knowledge for those pub quizzes we have all been going back to after lockdown!
8 min read
22/12/2021
To anyone who follows me on twitter, this article will come as no shock. One of the topics that I often discuss there is the need to continue the exploration and colonisation efforts of the last 400 years, but instead of looking to the horizon, we should look upwards. We have lost this spirit as the corners of the terrestrial map have been filled in and efforts to explore, or perhaps even settle, worlds other than our own are often dismissed in favour of the concerns of politicians and bureaucrats. Our priorities now differ from those of our ancestors, we now seem to believe pouring resources down the drain of the welfare state is more important than expanding our horizons as a species.
21 min read
08/12/2021
It has come to my attention that people on internet communities tend to be full of people desperate for communities that are a bit more local. This is perfectly natural as humans are social creatures needing constant communication and physical contact. However, what a local community looks and acts like is all so romanticised it is hard for someone who has been active in his local community to take seriously. So luckily I am here to tell you of my experience getting involved in my local community and the town’s history.
7 min read
08/10/2021
In the 21st century United Kingdom, we are used to the government running things. It’s simple: we pay our taxes and keep our heads down and they do what is best for us. Naturally, as a result, we trust them completely with our personal protection and the protection of our property.
14 min read
08/10/2021
Enoch Powell is, to many, a divisive character. For good or for ill, his name has become synonymous with a single speech - The Birmingham Speech - which was delivered on 20 April 1968 to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre in Birmingham, United Kingdom. What is less known about Powell by modern audiences is that he was a prolific speaker and is regarded as one of the best British orators of the 20th century. His deliberative and emotive style was famously employed, on a number of occasions, in the Commons itself over his long tenure as MP for Wolverhampton and later South Down. Speeches on the Hola camp brutality and his proposal of a law prohibiting research on embryos are fine exemplars of his broad and extensive catalogue, oft forgotten in favour of the infamous 'Rivers of Blood'.
24 min read
02/10/2021
Delapré Abbey is an English neo-classical mansion in Northamptonshire which incorporates the remains of a former monastery, the Abbey of St Mary de la Pré. It was founded as a nunnery at some time around the year 1145 and was devoted to the congregation of the major Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy, France.
7 min read
20/09/2021