Hieroglyph in White

This is what Egyptians looked like three thousand years ago:

Gove Goes Forth

Michael Gove in the Daily Mail: “The First World War may have been a uniquely horrific war, but it was also plainly a just war.”

Michael Gove’s qualifications for being Secretary of State for Education consists of a 2:1 degree in English at Oxford, and once winning Top Club.

Michael Gove does not care for shows like Blackadder Goes Forth, which he feels depict World War One – or as it was called then “the Great War”, as “a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite”, whereas, Gove thinks, WWI was really about British opposition to:

“The ruthless social Darwinism of the German elites, the pitiless approach they took to occupation, their aggressively expansionist war aims and their scorn for the international order all made resistance more than justified.

“And the war was also seen by participants as a noble cause. Historians have skilfully demonstrated how those who fought were not dupes but conscious believers in king and country, committed to defending the western liberal order.”

Good Fortune

John Fortune died on 31st December. I probably first saw him as Major Saunders in Yes Minister in 1982: he and his partner John Bird doing their unscripted – but terribly well-researched – double-talk were always the best part of Bremmer, Bird, and Fortune.

Rory Bremmer said:

John Fortune “had the most beautiful brain of any man I’ve ever known”.