Tag Archive for: time

MONTHLY BLOG 172, CAN YOU NAME FIVE STRIKING POEMS ABOUT TIME??

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172.1 Time’s Wingèd Chariot
© Phrase-finder 2025

In contrast to the dearth of good jokes about Time, there are very many great poems on that theme.1 Here, however, I’ve chosen just five.

Firstly, Andrew Marvell’s appeal to ‘To His Coy Mistress’ (published posthumously in 1681)2 is a magnificent example of the human awareness of life in ever-fleeting Time. The poet is keenly impatient to get his lover into bed with him; but she does not share his haste. So he reproaches her, gently enough but pointedly:

‘Had we but world enough and Time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime ….’

He explains that ideally he would take much longer to woo her – and to dwell in turn on all the beauties of her body and her heart. Yet he is vividly aware of the passing of Time. Or as he puts it, magnificently:

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity. …’

Whether trying to win a race against the clock is the best appeal to get a coy lover into bed remains uncertain. The outcome, however, makes for a great poem, which has been multiply quoted and referenced. So Marvell did win a resonant through-Time fame, even though history does not record whether this poem actually melted the heart of his coy lover.

Another mighty poet of Time is William Shakespeare.3 His sonnets refer to temporality in tones ranging from acceptance to pulsating anger. In Sonnet 16, he urges the dedicatee to ‘Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time’. Elsewhere, too, he refers to the dark power of ‘Devouring Time’ (Sonnet 19) or the harsh blows inflicted by ‘Time’s injurious hand’ (Sonnet 63) or by Time’s ‘scythe and crooked knife’ (Sonnet 100). Yet at other moments, Shakespeare stresses instead the speedy passage of ‘swift-footed Time’ (also Sonnet 19) and the unpredictability of ‘Time’s fickle glass’ (Sonnet 126). All variants being undeniably evocative.

Yet my favourite is Sonnet 116. It’s rightly famous and much quoted, because it applauds the power of Love to outlast even mighty Time. It starts briskly: ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds/ Admit impediments’. And continues with a strong affirmation: ‘Love is not love/ Which alters when it Alteration finds’. No! Real human affection will triumph against all odds:

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come.

Love alters not within his brief hours and weeks

But bears it out, even to the edge of doom’.

And, musing on tensions between the swift passing of Time and the eternity of Time, here’s my third choice. It’s the Ode to a Nightingale (1819) by John Keats.4 The poet is sadly downcast by ‘the weariness, the fever and the fret’ of daily living. He sits outside on a dark summer night, thinking of death whilst listening to the song of the nightingale:

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Nonetheless, the poet’s thoughts turn also to the eternal powers of nature and of beauty. Some things can last through Time:

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

 In ancient days by emperor and clown …

Thinking seriously about Time can thus induce thoughts of death – and antidotes to death. The fourth work cited here is not a charming poem – and not intended as such. It’s entitled Howl (1956) and that’s what it does. Alan Ginsberg5 starts bleakly: ‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked/’ … and he continues in that vein as he recalls their collective lives in Time. The poem’s long, long sentences, set as blank verse, reek of self-loathing allied to despair about his entre peer group, known as the ‘Beat Generation’.

Only occasionally does a wry humour shine through. Consider Ginsberg’s verdict on his friends’ disdain for the passing of Time. They ‘threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade’.

But Ginsberg was sure that he and his peer group were seeking something greater than a chaotic lifestyle. Hence they ‘dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between two visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together …’. Ginsberg’s personal solution was to embrace Buddhism, though not all did so.

Time’s travails can obviously lead to multiple outcomes. But it’s impossible not to be involved with Time. My fifth and last choice – ‘quick now, here, now always!’ – is The Four Quartets (1943), an amalgamation of four poems by the twentieth-century’s great mystic poet of temporality, T.S. Eliot.6 His message is often enigmatic. He loves a paradox. So one opaque comment declares the outcome to be: ‘Never and always!’ (Verse 3 Little Giddings).

Above all, therefore, Time is not divided into separate segments, Eliot argues. The past and the present are not locked away in separate compartments. They live in humanity’s through-Time consciousness. Hence he muses that:

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Consciousness reaches beyond the immediate moment. Yet, simultaneously, consciousness only operates in the here-and-now. So here is another paradox: ‘Only through Time, Time is conquered’. And living within the inexorable power of Time is painful, not restful. After all, ‘… this thing is sure/ That Time is no healer’ ….

Eliot thus expresses a dogged acceptance of the painful limitations of human existence. It’s a tough message. But people must trudge onwards. Not everyone would put the stoic message in these terms. Yet there’s no doubt that Eliot’s philosophy makes for highly evocative poetry:

Time present and Time past

Are both perhaps present in Time future,

And Time future contained in Time past.

If all Time is eternally present All Time is unredeemable.

ENDNOTES:

1 See PJC BLOG/ 171 (March 2025) for the lack of great jokes about Time. And for wider context, see PJC, Time-Space: We Are All in It Together (London, 205).

2 Andrew Marvell (1621-78)’s most famous poem, which was published posthumously in 1681, may well have been written many years earlier. in the early 1650s: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_His_Coy_Mistress (viewed 17 March 2025).

3 For William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and temporality, see F. Turner, Shakespeare and the Nature of Time: Moral and Philosophical Themes in Some Plays and Poems (Oxford, 1971).

4 For John Keats (1795-1821), who did indeed die young, see variously R. Gittings, The Keats’ Inheritance (London, 1964);  S. Coote, John Keats: A Life (London, 1995); and J.E. Walsh, Darkling, I Listen: The Last Days and Death of John Keats (New York, 1999).

5 Alan Ginsberg (1926-97), Howl, written c. 1954-5 and first published in Howl and Other Poems (1956), after which the publisher was arrested and charged with obscenity. His subsequent acquittal greatly boosted sales: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howl_(poem) (viewed 18 March 2025). For context, see too B. Miles, Ginsberg: A Biography (New York & London, 1989).

6 For T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), see variously P. Ackroyd, T,S. Eliot: A Life (1984); L. Gordon, T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life (1998); and K.P. Kramer, Redeeming Time: T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets (Lanham, Md, 2007).

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MONTHLY BLOG 171, WHY ARE THERE NO GREAT JOKES ABOUT TIME??

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Well, why are there no great jokes about Time?1 There are quite a few jokes about clocks and watches. They are not particularly funny … but they are certainly worth a gentle smile … like the following:

What kind of bugs live in clocks? Answer: Ticks!

Or how about this one: What do you say when you wear your watch on an aeroplane? Answer: Time flies!

 Or how about this comedic question: What’s the problem with eating a clock? Response: Well, it’s very time-consuming!

All the same, those jokes are really about variants of time-keeping and time-measurement.2 They may produce a smile or groan, in mock tribute to a bad joke. None, however, are designed to make people laugh and simultaneously think about the nature of temporality itself.

Time is far too huge, abstract, all-powerful and unstoppable to be amenable to local and immediate joking.

It’s a bit like trying to laugh about God. (If depicted, both the ‘Holy Father’ and ‘Old Father Time’ are characteristically shown as venerable old men, with long white beards, who are far too august, wise, and all-powerful to be easily teased). Thus there are lots of jokes (some of them offensive) about rival religious groups and practices, as well as about various spiritual leaders. But there are not so many quips about divine power in the abstract. Still, here’s one mini-story which made me smile:

An atheist scientist confronted God, saying; ‘We have figured out how to make a man’. God replied: ‘Okay – let me see you do it’. The scientist bent down and scooped up some earth. ‘Oh no’, objected God: ‘You must first make your own dirt’. 

 Asking about jokes makes one think about the purpose of comedy and making other people laugh. It’s a very human form of interaction. That is, quite a number of other mammalian species make sounds that are indicative of mirth. They do that typically in play and (in some cases) when being tickled. Furthermore, there have also been cases of orangutans in zoos, who have laughed mightily at magic tricks, performed before them by humans. Highly encouraging to magicians!3

No other species, however, use language to communicate humour, in the way that humans do. True, our humour does not always succeed. There are cultural and other variants that affect the reception of jokes and other forms of comedy. Nonetheless, humans use humour to laugh at the unexpected, to highlight the incongruous, to satirise one another, and to generate bonding through shared laughter.4

So humans laugh together. But not much about Time, or – more accurately – not much about the Time-Space continuum which frames the cosmos. It thus frames all human life and all humour too. Yet it’s just too vast and universal to be locally funny. That said, here is a final sally to raise a smile: Why did the crocodile eat the clock? Answer: To kill Time! [And did it succeed? No chance!]

ENDNOTES:

1 Expanding further upon discussions in PJC, Time-Space: We Are All in It Together (London, 2025).

2 For further examples, see J. Nasser, It’s About Time: An (Almost) Complete List of Time Jokes (2013).

3 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter_in_animals (viewed 27 Feb. 2025)

4 See variously: J. Morreall (ed.), The Philosophy of Laughter and Humour (New York, 1986); T. Garfitt and others (eds), The Anatomy of Laughter (Abingdon, 2005); R.A. Martin, The Psychology of Humour: An Integrative Approach (Cambridge, Mass., 2006); and E. Weitz, The Cambridge Introduction to Comedy (Cambridge, 2009).

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MONTHLY BLOG 170, WHY THINK ABOUT TIME-SPACE, NOT SPACE-TIME??

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Fig.1 The stunning Century Clock (built 2000) in Tianjin, NW China,
showing the giant clock, with a standard clock face,
encircled by carved signs of the Zodiac,
plus below the working machinery, and, out-stretched,
two giant arms, one holding the Sun,
the other the Moon.

Why think about Time-Space, instead of Space-Time? This BLOG, the second in my 2025 Time series, presents my answer.1

The first significant point to note is that rethinking Space-Time as Time-Space does NOT entail refuting Einstein’s theory of relativity, formulated and elaborated in the years 1905-17.2 Einstein himself did not use the term ‘Space-Time’. But in September 1908 his close intellectual ally (and former tutor), the mathematician Hermann Minkowski, highlighted the implications in justly famous terms:3

Henceforth Space by itself, and Time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.

This striking declaration did not mean that there are no absolutes anywhere throughout the great cosmos. But the real absolute reality is nothing less than the integral union of Time and Space.

Following Minkowski, this reality then became known as the Space-Time continuum. And it is commonly abbreviated as Space-Time. Furthermore, given that Space is known to have three dimensions, it has encouraged the usage that specifies Time as ‘the fourth dimension’.4

Yet … a minority of philosophers, scientists, geographers and historians are unhappy with that version of the core terminology. They fully accept the union of Time and Space. But they consider that all-encompassing, uni-directional, and unfolding Time is a much mightier phenomenon than simply one dimension of Space, such as height, width or depth. Therefore they use the alternative formulation of ‘Time-Space’ as a more accurate rendering of the partnership.5

It gives priority to Time, which is the dynamic component within the continuum. And it leaves Space fully in the integral partnership – but not as the lead phenomenon. Instead, Space, with its three dimensions, is the splendid physical manifestation of Time.

Moreover, the mighty phenomenon of Time, which embraces the entire cosmos, has its own highly complex characteristics.6 It is not in any way simply a one-dimensional adjunct of Space.

In one way, Time-Space as a concept is hard to visualise. (In another way, it is not hard at all. Just look at the world around you: that’s Time-Space in integrated action).

However, illustrating the conceptual linkages is somewhat trickier. In that context, it’s good to look again at the stunning Century Clock (2000), located in the port city of Tianjin in NW China (see Fig.1, above). It was not built specifically to show the links between Time and Space. But, imaginatively, it does. The centrepiece is the gigantic clock, marking Time. Its mechanical works, including a large swinging pendulum, are visible below. And outstretched are two huge metalwork arms – one holding the Sun, the other the Moon. Thus Time appears as the dynamo, while its power in action holds together the unsleepingly ‘restless universe’.7

And, for those who like to think poetically, here are the evocative words of the seventeenth-century Welsh metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan:8

I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv’n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world
And all her train were hurl’d.

Beautiful! With more to follow in next month’s BLOG, on why all this matters …!

ENDNOTES:

1 For further discussion, see PJC, Time-Space: We Are All in It Together (published by Austin Macauley: London, forthcoming 21 Feb. 2025), pp. 98-102.

2 See A. Einstein (1879-1p55), Relativity: The Special and General Theory, transl. R.W. Lawson (New York, 2005). For context, see too R. Stannard, Relativity: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2008).

3 H. Minkowski (1864-1909), Address on ‘Space and Time’, given to 80th Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians (21Sept. 1908), cited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Minkowski (viewed 1 Feb. 2025)

4 There are numerous literary and cultural references to Time as the ‘fourth dimension’, such as N. Calder, Timescale: An Atlas of the Fourth Dimension (New York, 1983); R. Rucker, The Fourth Dimension: Towards a Geometry of Higher Reality (1st pub. 1984; republished with this title, Garden City, NY, 2014); and D. Roy, The Fourth Dimension: Enigma of Time (Irvine, Calif., 2021).

5 See e.g. N. Thrift and J. May (eds), Timespace: Geographies of Temporality (London 2001); T.R.. Schatzki, The Timespace of Human Activity: On Performance, Society and History as Indeterminate Teleology (Lanham, MD, 2010).

6 For more on this theme, see PJC, Time and the Shape of History (London, 2007); and summary in PJC, Time-Space, pp. 93-162.

7 M. Born, The Restless Universe (Glasgow & London, 1936); also N. Henbest and H. Couper, The Restless Universe (Frome & London, 1982).

8 H. Vaughan (1621-95), The World (1650), opening lines: in L.C. Martin (ed.), The Works of Henry Vaughan (Oxford, 1957)l and also available on-line: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45434/the-world (viewed 2 Feb. 2025).

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MONTHLY BLOG 169, GREAT CLOCKS OF THE WORLD

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Image of Water Clock from Classical Greece

Fig.1 Image of Water Clock from Classical Greece –
in which the passing of Time is measured by a regulated flow of water.

My theme for 2025 is Time – the universal subject.1 So to kick-start the year, here are seven great clocks of the world – my personal selection out of the myriad of possible candidates.2 These are all on public display (there are countless more in museums) – and drawn from all quarters of the globe.

The first is located in the Republic of Honduras, Central America. It adorns the Cathedral of Comayagua; it is also known as the Arab clock, since it was designed by Moorish clock-smiths in c.1100; and presented, later in the seventeenth century, by the King of Spain to the city of Comayagua in New Spain (present-day Honduras); and in 1711 relocated once more onto the newly completed-Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, where it remains. It is reportedly the world’s oldest continually functioning gear-clock. Its face [Fig.2] has a beautiful simplicity, whilst its gearing retains a wondrous complexity.

The Arab Clock (built c. 1100AD in Moorish Spain)

Fig.2 The Arab Clock (built c. 1100AD in Moorish Spain),
now adorning Comayagua Cathedral in Honduras – said to be the world’s oldest continually operating gear clock.

The second one comes from North America. It was designed by Thomas Jefferson and built in 1792 for his mansion on his plantation at Monticello, Virginia.3 Known as the Great Clock, it has two faces, the exterior one is visible to the wider world, while the elegant indoor face [see Fig.3] presides over the Great Hall. The clock is powered by the regular movement of two sets of cannonball weights, which descend below the clock into the cellar. These sinking weights drive the clock’s ticking – and the striking of a large time-keeping gong on the roof. Once a week, the weights have to be rewound with a special crank key, fitting into the winding mechanisms on the interior clock face: a task requiring a strong grip – and good balance to scale a special ladder.

The Elegant Interior Face of Thomas Jefferson’s Great Clock on his Virginia estate at Monticello

Fig.3 The Elegant Interior Face of Thomas Jefferson’s Great Clock on his Virginia estate at Monticello:
the central dial shows the hours and minutes, while the small whirling dial marks the passing seconds.
Also visible are the two slots for the weekly rewinding of the cannonball weights,
whose steady and slow descent regulates the clock’s time-keeping.

Circling around the world onto the massive Eurasian continent, the third great clock is to be found in Moscow. It’s a majestic beacon, devised to be seen from afar. Accordingly, the Kremlin Clock (also known as the Kremlin Chimes) is huge, its four faces displayed on the Spasskaya Tower within Moscow’s fortified Kremlin complex [see Fig.4]. Clocks were located there in the sixteenth century; and many updatings have followed. The current Kremlin Clock was designed in 1851; repaired in 1917-18, when a giant gold-plated lead pendulum was installed; restored again in 1932, when the Clock’s hands and numerals were gilded; and majorly restored again in 1974. Historically, the Clock was associated with regular chimes, though there have been periods when the bells were silent. Currently, the bells chime before the quarters and hours are struck – and play a tune, every three hours, on the hour. Compelling!

The majestic Kremlin Clock, also known as the Kremlin Chimes, adorns the imposingly decorated Spasskaya Tower

Fig.4 The majestic Kremlin Clock, also known as the Kremlin Chimes, adorns the imposingly decorated Spasskaya Tower (first built in 1491; restored 2015)on the east wall of the Kremlin complex, overlooking Red Square in central Moscow. Not only can the Clock be seen from afar but the 23 bells in the uppermost belfry serenade the city with specified tunes every three hours.

Swooping southwards and slightly westwards after that, the fourth great timepiece has its home in Cape Town. It’s also a beacon clock, located on the waterfront. The Clock Tower was built in 1882, and used initially as the Port Captain’s Office. The Victorian-Gothic edifice had a tidal gauge on the ground floor; and it also included a reading room, where ships’ captains could gather to catch up with the latest maritime news. The Clock itself was built in Edinburgh and installed high on the Waterfront Tower [see Fig.5], which had begun to lean ominously to one side – but has recently been righted. Scintillating!

Cape Town’s  Waterfront Clock Tower was constructed in 1882

Fig.5: Cape Town’s  Waterfront Clock Tower was constructed in 1882, when its clock, built in Edinburgh,
was first installed. The Victorian- Gothic edifice (adopted as a National Monument in 1978)
was treated to a thorough restoration in the 1990s, when the outer walls were repainted in the original bright red.

The next move, to find my fifth great clock, travels significantly north-eastwards, across the Indian Ocean, to Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, northern India. There stands the utterly imposing Husainabad Tower, which is India’s tallest clock tower [see Fig.6]. It was constructed in steel and stone in 1881, to a design by the visionary architect Richard Roskell Bayne 4 – his architectural style fusing both Victorian and Mughal features. The great Clock is regulated by a gigantic pendulum; it has a sweet chime; and its clock-face, with the usual numerals and hands pointing to the hours and minutes, also has a floral outer frame, which removes any severity from the timepiece. Enchanting!
The towering splendour of the Husainabad Clock Tower at Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

Fig.6 The towering splendour of the Husainabad Clock Tower
at Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India – the superb night-time illuminations
showcasing the Tower’s eclectic architectural styling and its floral-framed Clock.

Journeying ever eastwards (and slightly northwards), the search then brings us to the sixth great clock – this time in the Chinese city of Tianjin, on the coast south-east of Beijing. This is the Century Clock (built 2000). It is situated in the centre of a traffic roundabout near to the central station. This clock also represents fusion – between standard global Time – and traditional astronomical Time. Around the clock face, are the carved representations of twelve signs of the Zodiac. At the top is set Aries, as it brings good luck according to historic Chinese convention. The sculpture is visually stunning, with two massive metal-frame arms flung akimbo – one holding the Sun, the other the Moon – with the giant clock in the middle, and a huge swinging pendulum below [see Fig.7]. Its impact is equally stunning in daylight and when floodlit at night, Wham!

The stunning Century Clock (built 2000) in Tianjin, northwest China.

Fig.7 The stunning Century Clock (built 2000) in Tianjin, northwest China,
showing the giant clock, with a standard clock face, encircled by carved signs of the Zodiac,
plus below the working machinery, and, out-stretched, two giant arms,
one holding the Sun, the other the Moon.

And finally, returning westwards, across the extended continental landmass of Eurasia, the journey ends in Berlin, Germany. My final choice is my personal favourite. It is not strictly out-of-doors. But it is located in a public space – not in a museum. It’s the Clock of Flowing Time (1982),5 standing three floors high, within the open atrium at Berlin’s Europa Center [see Fig.8]. As its name implies, it is a water clock; and its mechanisms are regulated by the circulating flow of brightly-coloured water within its spheres and tubes. There is no standard clock-face. But onlookers can learn to gauge the time according to the number of spheres filled at any given moment. The whole system operates on a twelve-hour cycle, the spheres all emptying together at noon and midnight, before the sequence resumes once more. Non-Stop, Ever-Flowing Time! Poetic!

So many ways to tell the time.

So universal the quest … More next month!

The Clock of Flowing Time in Berlin’s Europa Center

Fig.8 The Clock of Flowing Time in Berlin’s Europa Center –
hard to explain, hard to photograph effectively
but intensely evocative of the non-stop flow of Time.

ENDNOTES:

1 P.J. Corfield, Time-Space: We Are All in It Together (forthcoming February 2025).

2 C. Jagger, The Great Clocks and Watches of the World (London, 1977; and later edns).

3 For Monticello, now a UNESCO-listed World Heritage site, see S.R. Stein, The World of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello (New York, 1993); and, for sober context, L. Stanton, ‘Those Who Labor for my Happiness’: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello (Charlottesville, VA., 2012).

4 R.R. Bayne (1836-1901), who was born in Warwickshire and died in British Columbia, had a prolific building career in India, designing not only workday railway stations but also numerous monumental buildings. A significant collection of his architectural designs and plans is held by the University of Victoria (B.C.) and this material may one day provide the basis for a good biography. See A Welch and others, ‘Building for the Raj: Richard Roskell Bayne’, RACAR, 34/2 (2009). pp. 74-86: https://www.racar-racar.com/uploads/5/7/7/4/57749791/_racar_34_2_06_welchseggerdecaro.pdf.

5 The clock was constructed to a design by the French physicist and artist, Bernard Gitton (b.1935), who has created numerous artistic and ingenious water-clocks. For context, see R. Lamb, ‘How Water-Powered Clocks Work’ (c.2009-10), in 2024 website: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/sustainable/water-powered-clock2.htm.

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MONTHLY BLOG 167, HICKORY DICKORY DOCK!

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Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock

Hickory Dickory Dock/
The Mouse Ran Up the Clock
@https://www.indiaparenting.com/hickory-dickory-dock.html (2024)

While last month’s Conference in Norwich was evoked by the genially-smiling ‘Man in the Moon’, this month another meeting in Antwerp set me chanting ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’. The words are absurdly simple. The mouse ran up the clock! The clock struck the hour! And then the mouse ran down again!

But this basic rhyme records the perennial human fascination with telling the Time; and it illustrates, specifically, how adults sought to familiarise young children with the steady rhythms of a ticking clock. (The earliest recorded version of this rhyme dates from 1744, in a great era of British clock-building).1

And amusingly, today’s globally popular social media platform for sharing short videos (invented in China in 2016) is named … Tik Tok.2

Getting to grips with Time is the underlying theme of the Antwerp Conference to which I will be contributing. Specifically, it focuses upon the history of forecasting the future. Here there is endless scope.3 Optimists see unfolding glories. Pessimists, by contrast, forecast the inevitability of total gloom and doom. (It’s not so exciting to prophesy simply ‘More of the same’).

However, while full details of the future remain unknown, the scope is constantly being restricted by serious scientific calculations. Thus the expected lifespan of our local Sun (the focal source of all life on Planet Earth) is now put at some 5 billion years. Then it will run out of hydrogen, and turn into a ‘red giant’, getting steadily larger and cooler.4

Alternatively, when will the Milky Way (in which our solar system is located) collide with the Andromeda Galaxy, within the regular processes of slow cosmic transformation? No need to wait so long for some highly spectacular local excitement. This predicted collision will occur in approximately 4.5 billion years from now. Stars will be thrown into new and unpredictable orbits.5 Any humans still around to experience this cosmic collision will have to hold onto every seat-belt in sight.

Of course, soothsayers and prophets are not required to accept these cool, scientific calculations, either in whole or in part. They are free to predict the end of the world anytime – sooner or later. They often build their cases upon their readings of scriptural texts.6 And Doomsday cults not infrequently spring up around those prophets who thunder out their apocalyptic warnings with emphatic relish.7

The terrain for future predictions is, however, getting crowded. Secular reports of scientific explorations of Near and Deep Space now jostle with more rapturous and/or more terrifying formulations. And, while many of these predictions are projected safely far into the future, some are more immediate. Scientists today, for example, calculate that the regularly orbiting Halley’s Comet will return into view from Planet Earth in late spring/early summer 2061.8 Let all those of us, who currently can, wait and (literally) see …

Plenty of big themes therefore to keep the Prophecies Conference busy in Antwerp in mid-November 2024. It’s not hard to predict a lively and intellectually stimulating event. And, since the due-date is sufficiently near, the participants will be able to confirm Yes/No by late November. The clock is ticking, though currently I see no mouse in attendance …

ENDNOTES:

1 I. and P. Opie (eds), The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes (1997 edn.), pp. 185-6. See also for context, J. McKenna, Watch, Clock and Dial-Makers of Birmingham, 1547-1900 (1988); and Anon., A Complete History of English Clock and Watch Makers (2011).

2 For a full and not uncritical account see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok (viewed 20 Oct. 2024).

3 For approaches to studying Time, see PJC, Time and the Shape of History (2007); and PJC, Time-Space: We Are All in It Together (forthcoming 2024/2025).

4 See P. McHurrin in https://askanearthspacescientist.asu.edu/top-question/sun-dying (viewed 20 Oct. 2024).

5 Consult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda%E2%80%93Milky_Way_collision (viewed 20 Oct. 2024).

6 See many examples in R. Abanes, End Time Visions (1998); and E. Weber, Apocalypses (1999).

7 R.L. Snow, Deadly Cults: The Crimes of True Believers (2003).

8 P. Lancaster-Brown, Halley and his Comet (1985); P. Moore and J. Mason, The Return of Halley’s Comet (1984); and, contextually, A.A. Siddiqi, Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration (2018).

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MONTHLY BLOG 153, ACKNOWLEDGING THE PASSING OF TIME

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Image 1:
Fall of Icarus (c.1588),
engraving by Hendrick Goltzius after Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem.
Source: Wikimedia Commons – De val van Icarus.jpg

This personal BLOG is very short but very determined. It expresses my commitment to expand my daily exercise routine. Currently, I walk at least a mile and swim for half an hour daily, pushing myself to exercise all limbs with all-out effort. It’s very enjoyable. On the way to the pool, I sometimes yawn and am often bleary-eyed. On the way back, however, I sing cheerfully, feeling at one with the world.

It’s certainly good to keep fit and well. But I now realise that more is required. As people get older, they need to keep supple and, above all, to strengthen their leg muscles.

Alas, one of the greatest age-related dangers is falling over; or, worst of all, falling down long flights of stairs. People break limbs. And falls often indicate a lack of whole-person mental as well as physical balance. They stem from confusion, which is then worsened as a result. Bad and sad news all round. Often such falls, especially when repeated at short intervals, are indications of the approaching end. Ultimately, gravity cannot be denied. It drags us all down.

The antidote is therefore not just to keep well but to keep supple and to strengthen legs. I have blogged before about how I don’t self-identify as an old person.1 Inside, I feel that I am 25 years old. Have done for years. Don’t intend to change. And I am highly delighted when I meet similar veterans who feel much younger than their nominal years.

Nonetheless, time passes; and the body conveys its own messages. I am actually now over 30 years old. So herewith my next good resolution: to become more supple; to exercise specifically all my leg muscles (calves, thighs, buttocks); and to do so daily. My wise partner, having kindly read the text to check for spelling errors and typos, notes that ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’. At which, I laugh. Let’s see ….

ENDNOTES:

1 PJC BLOG/121 (Jan. 2021) ‘Being Assessed as a Whole Person’. Also available on PJC website: https://www.penelopejcorfield.com/ Pdf/ 58.

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MONTHLY BLOG 113, LIGHT FROM THE LAMP OF EXPERIENCE

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Fig.1, A hand-held eighteenth-century lantern, its lighted candle providing an immediate pool of light.

‘The Lamp of Experience’ is a marvellous phrase. A lantern throws light. It does not insist dogmatically but instead conveys sufficient illumination for good judgment. ‘Experience’ is also a vital component of the phrase. It implies not just a list of facts from history but also the capacity to cogitate about past events and to learn from them. Moreover, experience can be gleaned not just from each individual’s personal life but from the collective experiences of humanity as a whole.

During the current pandemic, for example, people can learn instructive lessons from comparable past global disasters. Factual histories provide suggestive evidence of what was done, what was not done, and what could have been done better.1 And imaginative literature allows people to share the range of subjective emotions and reactions which may be triggered by great and unexpected disasters.2 It allows for a sort of mental rehearsal. Needless to say, imaginative fiction is not written primarily for utilitarian purposes. And far from all happenings that can be conjectured will actually transpire. (Time Travel provides a pertinent example). Nonetheless, imaginative literature, even when imagining things that are technically impossible, contributes to the stock of human creativity. And thoughts and dreams, as much as deeds and misdeeds, all form part of the human experience.

There is additionally a pleasant irony in on-line references to ‘the Lamp of Experience’. Various web-lists of famous quotations attribute the dictum to Edward Gibbon (1737-94), Britain’s nonpareil historian. The full statement runs as follows: ‘I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past’. But that formulation does not accord with Gibbon’s impersonally magisterial and often ironic style. The words are spikier, and more personalised.

In fact, their true author is also credited on the web; and maybe with time the accurate citations will crowd out the error. True, the general observation does not lose its force by being misattributed. Yet credit should go where credit was due. The reference was first made in a celebrated speech by a Virginian planter-turned-lawyer, named Patrick Henry (1736-99).3 He was an exact contemporary of Gibbon. But they differed in their politics. Henry was an American critic of British rule. In 1765, he used his knowledge of legal precedents to argue that the Westminster government’s attempt at imposing the unpopular Stamp Tax upon the American colonists was unconstitutional.4

Lawyers, like historians, were accustomed to weighing and pondering evidence before making judgments. In this case, Henry was using the ‘lamp’ of past experience for radical purposes. His arguments, while rejected by Britain, were popular in the American colonies; and in 1776 Henry became the first Governor of Virginia post-Independence. Manifestly, his appeal to experience had not produced universal agreement. As already noted, studying history provides options, not a universal blueprint for what it to be done.

Fig.2 Engraved portrait of the intent figure of Patrick Henry (1736-99), his eye-glasses pushed up onto his lawyer’s wig: a Virginia planter who turned to law and politics, Patrick Henry served as first and also sixth post-colonial Governor of the State of Virginia.

What, then, is the appeal and power of the past? The truth is that Henry’s dictum, while evocative, does not go nearly far enough. Experience/history provides much, much more than a pool of light. It provides the entire bedrock of existence. Everything comes from the past. Everyone learns from the past. The cosmos, global biology, languages, thought-systems, the stock of knowledge, diseases, human existence …  arrive in the present from the past.5

All that is because Time is unidirectional. Humans live in the present but have to rely upon the collective databank of past human experience. That great resource is not just a lamp, sending out a single beam. Instead, collective experience provides the entire context and content of surviving successfully in Time. All humans, as living histories, are part of the process, and contribute their personal quota. The better, fuller and more accurate is that collective knowledge, the better the long-term prospects for the species.

Humans in history are restless problem creators. Yet they are also impressive problem solvers. It’s time, not just for renewed human escape from an obvious viral danger, but equally for urgent collective action to halt, and where possible to reverse, the accelerating environmental degradation, which is damaging the global climate and global biodiversity – let alone the global habitat of humans.

Now needed – not just a Lamp but a mental Sunburst, drawing upon experience and transmuting into sustained action. Stirring times! What comes from the past will have a mighty effect on the future. And decisions taken in the present contribute crucially too.
1 See e.g. M. Honigsbaum, A History of the Great Influenza Pandemics: Death, Panic and Hysteria, 1830-1920 (2013; ppbk 2020)..

2 D. Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722; and many later edns); A. Camus, La Peste (Paris, 1947), in Eng. transl. by S. Gilbert as The Plague (1960).

3 P. Henry, ‘Speech at 2nd Virginia Convention, 23 March 1775’, in L. Copeland and L.W. Lamm (eds), The World’s Great Speeches (New York, 1999), pp. 232-3; T.S. Kidd, Patrick Henry: First among Patriots (New York, 2011).

4 P.D.G. Thomas, British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis: The First Phase of the American Revolution, 1763-9 (Oxford, 1975); E.S. and H.M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (1974; 1995).

5 P.J. Corfield, ‘All People are Living Histories’ (2007), available on PJC website www.penelopejcorfield.co.uk/essaysonwhatishistory/pdf1

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MONTHLY BLOG 112, ON RECONSIDERING THE (INTERRUPTED) FUTURE

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Fig.1 Silhouettes of grass in fog

It is not possible to learn from the future that has not yet unfolded. The unidirectional nature of Time forbids it. So when people assert airily: ‘We don’t learn from the past’, I am incredulous. What? Of course, humans must learn from the past because they can’t learn from the future – and the unstable present, in which they learn, is constantly morphing, nano-second by nano-second, into the past.

However, while humans can’t learn from the future, it is certainly pertinent to think again about future expectations, now that routine life has been so suddenly interrupted. Diaries that were full of engagements and plans have suddenly been voided. The clear future has become foggy. It’s disconcerting but educational, particularly for those, like myself, living voluntarily under something near to house-arrest for the duration of the health emergency.

In fact, humans have a lot of advance knowledge about the long-term future. One certainty, confirmed by universal past experience, is that all living creatures will, sooner or later, die. Generally, however, humans manage to live their daily lives without dwelling on that thought. But, in the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic – a contemporary plague – an awareness of the reality and ubiquity of death is sharpened. It’s a valuable jolt. Remember to finish projects; to express affection; to help others; to enjoy every immediate minute; to make the mental leap into long-term history which will continue whatever; and to breathe deeply.

Then there’s the immediate future. That’s much more under personal control. Coming through the fog more clearly. Living indoors and making minimal trips outside heightens appreciation of the usefulness of daily routines. It helps to have a structure to the day, without over-organising. Remember to exercise; to laugh; to contact friends; to eat healthily; to think about others; to do a daily crossword; to study history; to tend the plants; to listen to music (sometimes to sing); and (vital for me personally) to write.

Yet the most problematic area of the suddenly interrupted future is the uncertainty of the intermediate span of the soon-to-follow weeks, months and years. Very far ahead will look after itself. Close at hand can be managed. But the intermediate future is the foggiest of all. Very disconcerting. For how long will the lockdown continue? Will the containment policy work? For how long will the population consent to the current state of affairs? Will historians judge the government’s efforts kindly or unkindly? Will the laid-back Swedish approach to the health emergency prove to have been the right one? How far will life in Britain be radically changed once the crisis is over? No-one knows.

Informed guesses can be ventured, based upon past experience. One pattern suggests that the people – and particularly those at the ‘foot’ of the social hierarchy – will want major reforms, after the great upheaval and sacrifices of a collectively fought war. Yet the actual outcome is unknown.

The foggy shapelessness of the intermediate future contains threats and promises. Remember to roll with the punches; to keep a measured optimism; to avoid being disconcerted by history’s capacity to spring surprises; to recall also the staying power of history’s deep continuities; to be ready to resume life outdoors and on the move; to enjoy hugging friends and family again; to look for the wood in the trees – the big picture in the daily details – the pattern emerging from the fog; and, above all, to embrace the unknown future, which will become the past from which humans can learn. Unseen, social energies are being recharged. Through the fog,  community options are emerging. Yet only Time will reveal the precise story, as it always does.

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MONTHLY BLOG 94, THINKING LONG – STUDYING HISTORY

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History is a subject that deals in ‘thinking long’. The human capacity to think beyond the immediate instant is one of our species’ most defining characteristics. Of course, we live in every passing moment. But we also cast our minds, retrospectively and prospectively, along the thought-lines of Time, as we mull over the past and try to anticipate the future. It’s called ‘thinking long’.

Studying History (indicating the field of study with a capital H) is one key way to cultivate this capacity. Broadly speaking, historians focus upon the effects of unfolding Time. In detail, they usually specialise upon some special historical period or theme. Yet everything is potentially open to their investigations.

Sometimes indeed the name of ‘History’ is invoked as if it constitutes an all-seeing recording angel. So a controversial individual in the public eye, fearing that his or her reputation is under a cloud, may proudly assert that ‘History will be my judge’. Quite a few have made such claims. They express a blend of defiance and  optimism. Google: ‘History will justify me’ and a range of politicians, starting with Fidel Castro in 1963, come into view. However, there’s no guarantee that the long-term verdicts will be kinder than any short-term criticisms.

True, there are individuals whose reputations have risen dramatically over the centuries. The poet, painter and engraver William Blake (1757-1827), virtually unknown in his own lifetime, is a pre-eminent example. Yet the process can happen in reverse. So there are plenty of people, much praised at the start of their careers, whose reputations have subsequently nose-dived and continue that way. For example, some recent British Prime Ministers may fall into that category. Only Time (and the disputatious historians) will tell.

Fig. 1 William Blake’s Recording Angel has about him a faint air of an impish magician as he points to the last judgment. If this task were given to historians, there would be a panel of them, arguing amongst themselves.

In general, needless to say, those studying the subject of History do not define their tasks in such lofty or angelic terms. Their discipline is distinctly terrestrial and Time-bound. It is prone to continual revision and also to protracted debates, which may be renewed across generations. There’s no guarantee of unanimity. One old academic anecdote imagines the departmental head answering the phone with the majestic words: ‘History speaking’.1 These days, however, callers are likely to get no more than a tinny recorded message from a harassed administrator. And academic historians in the UK today are themselves being harried not to announce god-like verdicts but to publish quickly, in order to produce the required number of ‘units of output’ (in the assessors’ unlovely jargon) in a required span of time.

Nonetheless, because the remit of History is potentially so vast, practitioners and students have unlimited choices. As already noted, anything that has happened within unfolding Time is potentially grist to the mill. The subject resembles an exploding galaxy – or, rather, like the cosmos, the sum of many exploding galaxies.

Tempted by that analogy, some practitioners of Big History (a long-span approach to History which means what it says) do take the entire universe as their remit, while others stick merely to the history of Planet Earth.2 Either way, such grand approaches are undeniably exciting. They require historians to incorporate perspectives from a dazzling range of other disciplines (like astro-physics) which also study the fate of the cosmos. Thus Big History is one approach to the subject which very consciously encourages people to ‘think long’. Its analysis needs careful treatment to avoid being too sweeping and too schematic chronologically, as the millennia rush past. But, in conjunction with shorter in-depth studies, Big History gives advanced students a definite sense of temporal sweep.

Meanwhile, it’s also possible to produce longitudinal studies that cover one impersonal theme, without having to embrace everything. Thus there are stimulating general histories of the weather,3 as well as more detailed histories of weather forecasting, and/or of changing human attitudes to weather. Another overarching strand studies the history of all the different branches of knowledge that have been devised by humans. One of my favourites in this genre is entitled: From Five Fingers to Infinity.4 It’s a probing history of mathematics. Expert practitioners in this field usually stress that their subject is entirely ahistorical. Nonetheless, the fascinating evolution of mathematics throughout the human past to become one globally-adopted (non-verbal) language of communication should, in my view, be a theme to be incorporated into all advanced courses. Such a move would encourage debates over past changes and potential future developments too.

Overall, however, the great majority of historians and their courses in History take a closer focus than the entire span of unfolding Time. And it’s right that the subject should combine in-depth studies alongside longitudinal surveys. The conjunction of the two provides a mixture of perspectives that help to render intelligible the human past. Does that latter phrase suffice as a summary definition?5 Most historians would claim to study the human past rather than the entire cosmos.

Yet actually that common phrase does need further refinement. Some aspects of the human past – the evolving human body, for example, or human genetics – are delegated for study by specialist biologists, anatomists, geneticists, and so forth. So it’s clearer to say that most historians focus primarily upon the past of human societies in the round (ie. including everything from politics to religion, from war to economics, from illness to health, etc etc). And that suffices as a definition, provided that insights from adjacent disciplines are freely incorporated into their accounts, wherever relevant. For example, big cross-generational studies by geneticists are throwing dramatic new light upon the history of human migration around the globe and also of intermarriage within the complex range of human species and the so-called separate ‘races’ within them.6 Their evidence amply demonstrates the power of longitudinal studies for unlocking both historical and current trends.

The upshot is that the subject of History can cover everything within the cosmos; that it usually concentrates upon the past of human societies, viewed in the round; and that it encourages the essential human capacity for thinking long. For that reason, it’s a study for everyone. And since all people themselves constitute living histories, they all have a head-start in thinking through Time.7

1 I’ve heard this story recounted of a formidable female Head of History at the former Bedford College, London University; and the joke is also associated with Professor Welch, the unimpressive senior historian in Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim: A Novel (1953), although upon a quick rereading today I can’t find the exact reference.

2 For details, see the website of the Big History’s international learned society (founded 2010): www.ibhanet.org. My own study of Time and the Shape of History (2007) is another example of Big History, which, however, proceeds not chronologically but thematically.

3 E.g. E. Durschmied, The Weather Factor: How Nature has Changed History (2000); L. Lee, Blame It on the Rain: How the Weather has Changed History (New York, 2009).

4 F.J. Swetz (ed.), From Five Fingers to Infinity: A Journey through the History of Mathematics (Chicago, 1994).

5 For meditations on this theme, see variously E.H. Carr, What is History? (Cambridge 1961; and many later edns); M. Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (in French, 1949; in English transl. 1953); B. Southgate, Why Bother with History? Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Motivations (Harlow, 2000); J. Tosh (ed.), Historians on History: An Anthology (2000; 2017); J. Black and D.M. MacRaild, Studying History (Basingstoke, 2007); H.P.R. Finberg (ed.), Approaches to History: A Symposium (2016).

6 See esp. L.L. Cavalli-Sforza and F. Cavalli-Sforza, The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution, transl. by S. Thomas (Reading, Mass., 1995); D. Reich, Who We Are and Where We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (Oxford, 2018).

7 P.J. Corfield, ‘All People are Living Histories: Which is why History Matters’. A conversation-piece for those who ask: Why Study History? (2008) in London University’s Institute of Historical Research Project, Making History: The Discipline in Perspective www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/why_history_matters.html; and also available on www.penelopejcorfield.co.uk/ Pdf1.

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MONTHLY BLOG 92, HISTORIANS AT WORK THROUGH TIME

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Historians, who study the past, don’t undertake this exercise from some vantage point outside Time. They, like everyone else, live within an unfolding temporality. That’s very fundamental. Thus it’s axiomatic that historians, like their subjects of study, are all equally Time-bound.1

Nor do historians undertake the study of the past in one single moment in time. Postmodernist critics of historical studies sometimes write as though historical sources are culled once only from an archive and then adopted uncritically. The implied research process is one of plucking choice flowers and then pressing them into a scrap-book to some pre-set design.

On such grounds, critics of the discipline highlight the potential flaws in all historical studies. Sources from the past are biased, fallible and scrappy. Historians in their retrospective analysis are also biased, fallible and sometimes scrappy. And historical writings are literary creations only just short of pure fiction.2

Historians should welcome scepticism this dose of scepticism – always a useful corrective. Yet they entirely reject the proposition that trying to understand bygone eras is either impossible or worthless. Rebuttals to postmodernist scepticism have been expressed theoretically;3 and also directly, via pertinent case studies which cut through the myths and ‘fake news’ which often surround controversial events in history.4

When at work, historians should never take their myriad of source materials literally and uncritically. Evidence is constantly sought, interrogated, checked, cross-checked, compared and contrasted, as required for each particular research theme. The net is thrown widely or narrowly, again depending upon the subject. Everything is a potential source, from archival documents to art, architecture, artefacts and though the gamut to witness statements and zoological exhibits. Visual materials can be incorporated either as primary sources in their own right, or as supporting documentation. Information may be mapped and/or tabulated and/or statistically interrogated. Digitised records allow the easy selection of specific cases and/or the not-so-easy processing of mass data.

As a result, researching and writing history is a slow through-Time process – sometimes tediously so. It takes at least four years, from a standing start, to produce a big specialist, ground-breaking study of 100,000 words on a previously un-studied (or under-studied) historical topic. The exercise demands a high-level synthesis of many diverse sources, running to hundreds or even thousands. Hence the methodology is characteristically much more than a ‘reading’ of one or two key texts – although, depending upon the theme, at times a close reading of a few core documents (as in the history of political ideas) is essential too.

Mulling over meanings is an important part of the process too. History as a discipline encourages a constant thinking and rethinking, with sustained creative and intellectual input. It requires knowledge of the state of the discipline – and a close familiarity with earlier work in the chosen field of study. Best practice therefore enjoins writing, planning and revising as the project unfolds. For historical studies, ‘writing through’ is integral, rather than waiting until all the hard research graft is done and then ‘writing up’.5

The whole process is arduous and exciting, in almost equal measure. It’s constantly subject to debate and criticism from peer groups at seminars and conferences. And, crucially too, historians are invited to specify not only their own methodologies but also their own biases/assumptions/framework thoughts. This latter exercise is known as ‘self-reflexivity’. It’s often completed at the end of a project, although it’s then inserted near the start of the resultant book or essay. And that’s because writing serves to crystallise and refine (or sometimes to reject) the broad preliminary ideas, which are continually tested by the evidence.

One classic example of seriously through-Time writing comes from the classic historian Edward Gibbon. The first volume of his Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire appeared in February 1776. The sixth and final one followed in 1788. According to his autobiographical account, the gestation of his study dated from 1764. He was then sitting in the Forum at Rome, listening to Catholic monks singing vespers on Capitol Hill. The conjunction of ancient ruins and later religious commitments prompted his core theme, which controversially deplored the role of Christianity in the ending of Rome’s great empire. Hence the ‘present’ moments in which Gibbon researched, cogitated and wrote stretched over more than 20 years. When he penned the last words of the last volume, he recorded a sensation of joy. But then he was melancholic that his massive project was done.6 (Its fame and the consequent controversies last on today; and form part of the history of history).

1 For this basic point, see PJC, ‘People Sometimes Say “We Don’t Learn from the Past” – and Why that Statement is Completely Absurd’, BLOG/91 (July 2018), to which this BLOG/92 is a companion-piece.

2 See e.g. K. Jenkins, Re–Thinking History (1991); idem (ed.), The Postmodern History Reader (1997); C.G. Brown, Postmodernism for Historians (Harlow, 2005); A. Munslow, The Future of History (Basingstoke, 2010).

3 J. Appleby, L. Hunt and M. Jacob, Telling the Truth about History (New York, 1994); R. Evans, In Defence of History (1997); J. Tosh (ed.), Historians on History (Harlow, 2000); A. Brundage, Going to the Sources: A Guide to Historical Research and Writing (Hoboken, NJ., 2017).

4 H. Shudo, The Nanking Massacre: Fact versus Fiction – A Historian’s Quest for the Truth, transl. S. Shuppan (Tokyo, 2005); Vera Schwarcz, Bridge across Broken Time: Chinese and Jewish Cultural Memory (New Haven, 1998).

5 PJC, ‘Writing Through a Big Research Project, not Writing Up’, BLOG/60 (Dec.2015); PJC, ‘How I Write as a Historian’, BLOG/88 (April 2018).

6 R. Porter, Gibbon: Making History (1989); D.P. Womersley, Gibbon and the ‘Watchmen of the Holy City’: The Historian and his Reputation, 1776-1815 (Oxford, 2002).

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