Hi Romy, I follow you as you write as I did for The Conservative Woman. I have always meant to ask because of your name if you are related to Dr C the professor at Oxford at ST Edmond Hall. Dr C tutored me through a long essay when I attended Plater College in 2000/2001. I of course found him to be a wonderful man and great Historian. It was a very special year for me. I took a break from work as I wanted to change my life. Looking back it seems a strange thing to have done.
Interested in your article. My daughter recently had a dna test. It revealed just a big puzzle.
Goodness, I've missed your writing. Didn't the Angles and Saxons come from what's now northern Germany? So not British either, lol! I think you'd have to go back to the Celts, Picts and other assorted indigenous tribes, Iceni etc to claim true British blood if we were using such a far fetched and severe metric....People are too obsessed with self and not considerate enough of others. Probably the root of most evils in the modern world and definitely the curse of the youth of today....hence the rise, rise, rise of identity politics, beliefs and ideologies associated therewith.
So sorry to hear about your Dad, I will of course keep praying for him.
I decided that conservatism was the best political faith to hold mainly because it tempered all the others. As such I am a patriot, I am British first before English for me it is a wide ranging identity but also particular to me shared and real not relative but with a variety of good forms.
Conservatism, as everything from the Enlightenment and before from Liberalism and Nationalism through Socialism, Communism, Fascism and all the derivatives of these to third way ideas etc seemed to be certain to fail and hurt people in their wake. Even now Rights based culture and Liberalism and Democracy as political weapons seem to be designed to cut opponents down and impose hegemony and political systems that bind the many to the purpose of the few, or indeed the few to the purpose of the many. To me conservatism is a great exercise in conciliation and overcoming all those who aim to control, as they always will. I firmly believe in it as a breaker of political crusades. I love those, Roger Scruton springs to mind, who have championed this gentle refusal to comply and who can articulate the wonder of loving normality and reality in the face of the imposed sophistication and obviousness of the entitled.
I love the things people love that do not make sense to the ideologies and will not be reformed. The things that survive the most brutal repression, like the Christian Church in the old Eastern Block and elsewhere, even here in Britain.
In this you are right that there is a tendency in me that, in objecting to the tac tics and aggression of the politically righteous, I can harbour or accept the unacceptable in some cases. It’s a kind of your enemy is my friend type thing.
As well as this I love to sit with my enemy and find a way to co exist, that involves acceptance at a level that I quite naively feel is always possible.
These days though life is so harsh and the fight is relentless as we both know from our shared platform on TCW
Hi Romy, I follow you as you write as I did for The Conservative Woman. I have always meant to ask because of your name if you are related to Dr C the professor at Oxford at ST Edmond Hall. Dr C tutored me through a long essay when I attended Plater College in 2000/2001. I of course found him to be a wonderful man and great Historian. It was a very special year for me. I took a break from work as I wanted to change my life. Looking back it seems a strange thing to have done.
Interested in your article. My daughter recently had a dna test. It revealed just a big puzzle.
Goodness, I've missed your writing. Didn't the Angles and Saxons come from what's now northern Germany? So not British either, lol! I think you'd have to go back to the Celts, Picts and other assorted indigenous tribes, Iceni etc to claim true British blood if we were using such a far fetched and severe metric....People are too obsessed with self and not considerate enough of others. Probably the root of most evils in the modern world and definitely the curse of the youth of today....hence the rise, rise, rise of identity politics, beliefs and ideologies associated therewith.
Good to have you back Romy x
So sorry to hear about your Dad, I will of course keep praying for him.
I decided that conservatism was the best political faith to hold mainly because it tempered all the others. As such I am a patriot, I am British first before English for me it is a wide ranging identity but also particular to me shared and real not relative but with a variety of good forms.
Conservatism, as everything from the Enlightenment and before from Liberalism and Nationalism through Socialism, Communism, Fascism and all the derivatives of these to third way ideas etc seemed to be certain to fail and hurt people in their wake. Even now Rights based culture and Liberalism and Democracy as political weapons seem to be designed to cut opponents down and impose hegemony and political systems that bind the many to the purpose of the few, or indeed the few to the purpose of the many. To me conservatism is a great exercise in conciliation and overcoming all those who aim to control, as they always will. I firmly believe in it as a breaker of political crusades. I love those, Roger Scruton springs to mind, who have championed this gentle refusal to comply and who can articulate the wonder of loving normality and reality in the face of the imposed sophistication and obviousness of the entitled.
I love the things people love that do not make sense to the ideologies and will not be reformed. The things that survive the most brutal repression, like the Christian Church in the old Eastern Block and elsewhere, even here in Britain.
In this you are right that there is a tendency in me that, in objecting to the tac tics and aggression of the politically righteous, I can harbour or accept the unacceptable in some cases. It’s a kind of your enemy is my friend type thing.
As well as this I love to sit with my enemy and find a way to co exist, that involves acceptance at a level that I quite naively feel is always possible.
These days though life is so harsh and the fight is relentless as we both know from our shared platform on TCW
Simon