History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘History’
Some likened tax-and-spend to a refreshing shower of rain, but for William Cobbett the rain wasn’t falling mainly on the plain man.
William Cobbett castigated the Government for overtaxing employers, and then congratulating themselves on handing out a little welfare to the underpaid and unemployed while pocketing the difference. Better, Cobbett said, to stop the job-killing taxes, so the working man can have a fair crack at dignified independence.
Arthur Wellesley watches on as one of his soldiers is rescued from a watery grave.
Arthur Wellesley (not yet the Duke of Wellington) spent the years 1797 to 1804 in India, confronting the Maratha Empire that threatened Indian princes and the British alike. Wisely, he learnt to make war as the Maratha did, and acquired a proper respect for the elephant.
That infernal nonsense ‘Pinafore’ took America by storm.
Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘HMS Pinafore’ (1878) was surprisingly slow to get going in England, picking up speed only after Hamilton Clarke arranged some numbers for orchestra and military band at the Proms in Covent Garden. In America, however, it was a smash hit right from the start, though some people tired of it sooner than others.
The East India Company’s top agent in India was also the man who put Calcutta on the world map.
Calcutta (Kolkata) in West Bengal was the capital of British India from the start of the Raj in 1857 to 1911, when King George V announced a move to Delhi. Calcutta was not the first choice location for British commercial activity in Bengal, but it proved to be the best, and that was to the credit of one man, Job Charnock.
William Cobbett makes a distinction between everyday business and the murky world of Westminster lobbyists and financial speculation.
William Cobbett, MP for Oldham, was sometimes accused of being anti-trade because he criticised the cosy arrangement between Government, big banks and big business. He replied with his customary vigour, distinguishing clearly between two kinds of commerce, the free trade that promotes liberty and the cronyism that endangers it.
A mother is determined to see that her disabled daughter gets the help she needs.
Fr George Skaramangás (1867-1944) was an energetic and popular figure on the Greek island of Paros, both as priest at the Ekatontapyliani (Church of the Hundred Doors) and as founder of the island’s Byzantine Museum. His adopted daughter married Spiros Mavris, a local hero of the Resistance. The following events took place in his time.