Clay Lane
Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Clay Lane’
The Princely State of Mysore (today in Karnataka) was hailed as an example of good governance to all the world.
The Indian Kingdom of Mysore is associated with two remarkable figures, Tipu Sultan (1750-1799), ‘the Tiger of Mysore’, and Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV (1884-1940). Tipu fought the British and anyone else for nearly twenty years of unrelenting bloodshed; Krishnaraja made Mysore a world leader in industrial, artistic and social advancement.
A duke with a passion for the art of enchantment is stranded by his enemies on a deserted island.
The play begins in Milan, where Prospero, the Duke, is buried among the parchments of his library, studying the magical arts. His brother Antonio, however, feels that what Milan needs is not a wizard but a decent Duke, and Antonio thinks he knows just who that should be.
The most brilliant violinist of his generation, whose finely-crafted compositions showed off bravura and spoke tenderness.
Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762) was overshadowed in the country of his birth by Antonio Vivaldi, and in his adopted nation by George Frideric Handel. He deserves recognition, though, both as a brilliant violinist who challenged his fellow performers to surpass themselves, and as a composer of high merit in his own right.
Charles took his rights and duties as a King with religious seriousness, but Parliament’s sense of both right and duty was just as strong.
King Charles I of England and Scotland (1600-1649) was charming, clever and convinced that he had inherited a divine right and duty to govern the country his own way. Parliament disagreed, demanding a constitutional role in law-making and criticising his policies. It did not seem likely to end well.
When Parliament overthrew the capricious tyranny of Charles I, it discovered an uncomfortable truth about power.
For eleven years, between 1649 and 1660, Britain was a republic. Great claims are sometimes made for this ‘interregnum’, as if it were the birth of democracy, but really it proved only one thing: be it under monarchy or republic, be it at court or in parliament, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The British liberated the Ionian islands from Napoleon, then gave them fifty happy years and the game of cricket.
The Treaty of Paris in 1815 sought to settle the affairs of Napoleon Bonaparte, defeated at Waterloo and banished to the island of St Helena. Among the issues were the Ionian Islands (which include Zakynthos, Lefkada and Corfu) off the west coast of Greece.