Saturday, 18 July 2020

I wondered how I would have looked at this painting had I been Christian

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I wondered how I would have looked at this painting [Duccio's Madonna dei Frncesani]  had I been Christian. Perhaps I would have liked i...
Friday, 17 July 2020

Our measuring jugs are inadequate, too small and too vague.

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Our measuring jugs are inadequate, too small and too vague. A half pint seems useless to me, and measures marked on the outside, like the p...
Thursday, 16 July 2020

Unhurried canal transport certainly was. It was also cheap.

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Unhurried canal transport certainly was. It was also cheap. So for that matter was sea transport. In the 1920s, when the railways had large...
Wednesday, 15 July 2020

'Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread?' demands the Prophet Isaiah

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Writing about a subject so ancient and so universal as the baking of bread  it is hard for a modern author to find fresh words to express h...
Tuesday, 14 July 2020

Our history, right up to the present, is filled with mass murder, but whenever we speak of killing, it is with eyes lowered and tones of pious horror

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"Well, of course we are westerners," he says in another voice,sounding suddenly professional. "Westerners, or at least immigr...
Monday, 13 July 2020

Obedience had to be rooted in the heart: that was what really counted. People had to be certain that everything was in its place

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Fifty million people found their security in the feeling that their Emperor [Franz Josef] was in bed before midnight and up again before fiv...
Sunday, 12 July 2020

The London effect could be explained away when the diverse composition of pupils was taken into account

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But as with so many quests, the rush to find answers had lost sight of the real story. Economist Simon Burgess delivered a humbling message...