What are you watching tonight?
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Just watched a realy interesting documentary on BBC 2. Love these history programmes and this was about the Irish Celtic missionaries and their bringing of literacy and technology to Scotland and England via Christianity. Iona, Lindisfarne, Book of Kells were all included in an interesting summary of life in the dark ages. Good stuff.
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Probably taken from the book How the Irish saved civilization, which struck me as a little overstated though learning and manuscripts were certainly preserved. What new technologies did the program claim they brought to England during the Dark Ages, Tango?TANGODANCER wrote:Just watched a realy interesting documentary on BBC 2. Love these history programmes and this was about the Irish Celtic missionaries and their bringing of literacy and technology to Scotland and England via Christianity. Iona, Lindisfarne, Book of Kells were all included in an interesting summary of life in the dark ages. Good stuff.
"If you cannot answer a man's argument, all it not lost; you can still call him vile names. " Elbert Hubbard.
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Sounds like a visual version of the book you mentioned Monty. Part One of a two part series by Dan Snow. You can catch it here if you're interested:Montreal Wanderer wrote:Probably taken from the book How the Irish saved civilization, which struck me as a little overstated though learning and manuscripts were certainly preserved. What new technologies did the program claim they brought to England during the Dark Ages, Tango?TANGODANCER wrote:Just watched a realy interesting documentary on BBC 2. Love these history programmes and this was about the Irish Celtic missionaries and their bringing of literacy and technology to Scotland and England via Christianity. Iona, Lindisfarne, Book of Kells were all included in an interesting summary of life in the dark ages. Good stuff.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kt9v9
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Coincidental that WTW, I read somewhere not very long ago that "historians should uncover history, not judge it".William the White wrote:Watched 90 mins of BBC 2 on Robespierre - Demonstrated once more how useless a historian Simon Scharma is. One string to his bow, a set of liberal eternal verities with which to judge the 'failures' of history - try analysing history instead of sitting as a judge on it, FFS!
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Spot on, Tango - historians have to place historical analysis within the actual historical events of the period they investigate... there was very little attempt in this programme to place Robespierre and the Committe of Public Safety within the actual context of a revolution... You would think this would be ABC for a historian...
Scharma seems to think it adequate to shudder with horror. Yes the revolution did horrible things. Contextualise it, or you are no historian - you end up with a Bush view of this horrible place weith 'bad people' in charge. Infantile. Mantel was even worse in the programme, managing to reduce 'analysis' of the Terror to an accidental accumulation of warped personalities - in this she mirrored the thesis of the programme...
LK... Scharma is articulate, humane, persuasive...
Doesn't make him worth sh*t as a historian...
Though may well help wile away empty hours on a motorway...
Scharma seems to think it adequate to shudder with horror. Yes the revolution did horrible things. Contextualise it, or you are no historian - you end up with a Bush view of this horrible place weith 'bad people' in charge. Infantile. Mantel was even worse in the programme, managing to reduce 'analysis' of the Terror to an accidental accumulation of warped personalities - in this she mirrored the thesis of the programme...
LK... Scharma is articulate, humane, persuasive...
Doesn't make him worth sh*t as a historian...
Though may well help wile away empty hours on a motorway...
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A great deal of character assessment in history, in fact most of it, is based on nothing more than supposition. Today's historians are doing little more than take as gospel things written down by the same people doing it years ago. They can't really do much more than take probablity over possiblity that there is total truth in their investigations. Historical wars, much like today, are rarely really about heroes, more about power and greed. Usually, the army with the most money, men and the better weapons won: much like in today's football.
Where actual historical proof is concrned, buildings, artefacts, irrigation systems, hygene and things like the Book of Kells etc are beyond doubt as provable history. People, decidedly less sure. Nothing says they are definitely wrong, just that historians can't be inside the heads of people who died a long time ago.

Where actual historical proof is concrned, buildings, artefacts, irrigation systems, hygene and things like the Book of Kells etc are beyond doubt as provable history. People, decidedly less sure. Nothing says they are definitely wrong, just that historians can't be inside the heads of people who died a long time ago.
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