I was reading a coffee-table book about Delhi - the imperial city created by Lutyens. From where we are now it seems incredible that then - still within living memory - the British could believe that they could hold India, one of the oldest and greatest civilizations in the word, as a colony and mark that belief with the creation of a capital of the scale and grandeur of Delhi.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we know, of course, that barely ten years later it was all over. But the mindset then was obviously one of hundreds of years. What an extraordinary arrogance that was and, though I hesitate long before making the comparison, it reminded me more than anything of Speer's plans for an imperial Berlin suitable for a thousand year Reich.
Both lasted about the same time.
19:22
07:16
Tom Stoppard
I saw Tom Stoppard at the Chalke Valley History Festival. He is, and has been for many years, my hero. He spoke about the role of truth in a...
06:28
German hegemony - an illusion
Germany is touted as the bright spot in a collapsing continent. It is more of a problem than a solution as Ambrose Evans-Prichard argues bel...
18:08
Unintended Consequences
It is now five years into the financial crisis. In those words there is a something of an oxymoron – as a crisis shouldn’t last that long. B...
16:58
Ruins
If an errant Hercules had a contretemps with Salisbury Catheral and partially destroyed it, would we leave it as a ruin? If the next Duke ...
19:22
Is Hell hot - or cold?
"Dr Robert Schambaugh, of the University of Oklahoma School of Chemical Engineering, was known for setting questions such as, “why do a...
13:07
Bond bubble
With bond yields and interest rates at an all time low, investors are chasing yield where they can find it. Panama has recently sold $750m o...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)