In the period 1305-36, when the city [Bordeaux] was prosperous under English occupation, it is estimated that wine exports from Gascony to England and Flanders reached 750,000 hectolitres a year. This represents the greatest volume of any single product traded internationally in western Europe during the medieval period.
B. Cunliffe, Facing the Ocean (2001), 51
Wednesday 3 June 2015
Tuesday 2 June 2015
Hernando Cortez cannot be true
I wrote my Mexico book out of incredulity. Hernando Cortez cannot be true. There cannot have been a human being so brave, charismatic, obstinate and apparently indestructible. How could anyone be so greedy, fanatical, and unimaginative as to lead a few hundred men into an alien continent of whose topography he was ignorant, swarming with a race devoted to the slaughter and sacrifice of strangers, in order to take prisoner their their leader in his own capital city? And succeed. And then, when the tables are turned and he is driven out, set to and build thirteen vessels of war and carry them back one hundred and forty miles across mountains because the only way you can tackle a city sited in the middle of a lake is with superior shipping.And succeed again. Is a man who is impelled to do such things a hero or a maniac?
P.Lively, Moon tiger (1987)
Monday 1 June 2015
War has been much misrepresented, believe me. It's had a disgracefully good press.
'Are we going to win the war?' asks Claudia.
'Yes. I assume so. Not because of the lord's intervention or because justice will prevail but because in the last resort we have greater resources. Wars have little to do with justice.Or valour or sacrifice or the other things traditionally associated with them. That's one thing I hadn't quite realised. War has been much misrepresented, believe me. It's had a disgracefully good press. I hope you and your friends are doing something to put that right.'
P. Lively, Moon Tiger (1987), 102-3
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