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Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 1.Β
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Saturday, 26th June 2010
Coming to grips with the scale of historic periods before you were born is naturally difficult.
Here's a little trick.
Choose an event you remember as a mature adult, or late teenager. Something which still seems a prominent part of your existence. Calculate the number of years to the present day. Call it 30 years.
This is the roughly same period between the death of the Old Queen and the Great Depression. Apart from placing your life precisely in context, it also tends to undermine the historic stereotypes which are the raw material of the false, 'pageant' of history, in which be-whigged sophisticates speaking in perfect sentences are transformed into top-hatted cotton-barons at the chimes of the C19th.
It is also very scary.
Try it.
I can remember 30 years fairly clearly, and that means I am only the same distance now from the boycotted 1980 Olympics as I was then from the election of the Churchill government in 1950.
The more time you've got to play with, the chillier it gets.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 2
Posted by U2133447 (U2133447) on Saturday, 26th June 2010
Translation please
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Message 3
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Saturday, 26th June 2010
Too scary for a Saturday night, Dai. What is both scary and fascinating as you get older [like me] is recalling grandparents and counting back to old people they may have known when they were young. How quickly that takes you back over time.
I remember hearing a programme a while ago about native Australians and how they visualised their place on a chain of ancestors and those coming after them.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 4
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Saturday, 26th June 2010
Many points in the "pageant" seem further apart than they "should" be due to fundamental changes which had happened in the meantime. Taking only one example from English history, it is slightly unnerving when one considers that the two very different Englands as represented by the Spanish Armada and the outbreak of the English Civil War are separated by exactly the period which separates today from the beginiing of the Suez Crisis - a mere 54 years and well within living memory of still a substantial number of people.
Graphic timelines when teaching history, especially for periods before one was born, are often an invaluable tool. They readily display periods of intense social and political change, which are often surprisingly short. On the other hand, when one forms a mental impression of the passage of time from the amount of pertinent data available to be studied, even if one knows the dates involved, it seems to be human nature to "stretch" these periods in accordance with the amount of such detail one has absorbed.
Your trick, Dai, is as good as anybody's to serve as a reminder to keep a sense of temporal perspective, as is silverjenny's.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 5
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Saturday, 26th June 2010
We had a thread along these lines a while ago - about films that are as far distant from us now as they were from the events they were portraying at the time.
Here in NZ I remember reading a few years ago that there would soon be no one around with connections to the Treaty of Waitangi (signed in 1840) They meant anyone who could remember anyone who could remember those events. Old people who had grandparents who lived a long time.
When I think back the first political/historical event that springs to my mind is Winston Churchill dying (I was in our woolshed) but I was 15 then. Even so that takes me back 45 years from then to 1920. Vaguer memories of NZ politians would get that back closer to 1910. Which does feel like another country.
Cheers, Caro.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 6
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
Message posted by silverjenny
Too scary for a Saturday night, Dai. What is both scary and fascinating as you get older [like me] is recalling grandparents and counting back to old people they may have known when they were young. How quickly that takes you back over timeΒ
It shows how near history is. That whatever history is, it is happening all the time, and maybe if we sensed that, we could help mould it?
When I overlay my 30 years back a step or two to 1900-30, the amount of change it covers is staggering.
The Russian Revolution, pain-free surgery, universal suffrage, the Great War, electrification, the Roaring 20's, The General Strike..
Looking back, it all seems a bit like a fairy tale, until we realise we're living in the same one.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 7
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
Taking only one example from English history, it is slightly unnerving when one considers that the two very different Englands as represented by the Spanish Armada and the outbreak of the English Civil War are separated by exactly the period which separates today from the beginiing of the Suez Crisis - a mere 54 years and well within living memory of still a substantial number of people.Β
That's a good one Nordmann.
Here's one from American history which is more of a remarkable lifetime span. It's of General John Pershing. He was born before the American Civil War during the presidency of James Buchanan in 1860 and was 16 when Ulysses S. Grant retired from the presidency in 1877. Later as a 25-year-old West Point cadet he escorted Grant's funeral cortege. He was an officer in the US 6th Cavalry seeing action against the Apache in New Mexico in the 1880s and against the Sioux in Iowa and the Dakotas (including the Massacre at Wounded Knee) in the 1890s.
As a 37-year-old Lieutenant he saw action in the Spanish American War in 1898 and the following year was in the Philippines during the Philippine-American War. The 45-old Colonel Pershing was then the US military attache in Tokyo during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. As a 56-year-old General Pershing took command of the US Army in France as the US entered the First World War in 1917 and aged 61 he became Chief of Staff of the US army retiring 3 years later in 1924.
At the age of 80 in 1940 he was making speeches and campaigning in favour of the US entering the Second World War and he was 84 years old when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He was still alive after the Nuremburg Trials had concluded in 1946 and lived to see Philippine independence that same year and also the independendence of India in 1947 before dying aged 87 in 1948.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 8
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
After seeing all that, no wonder he pegged it.
Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 9
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
I like the story of when Black Jack Pershing was appointed "General of The Armies of The United States of America" in 1919, a new rank for which no insignia had yet been devised. When he asked what "they" proposed to do by way of stars he was told he would naturally be henceforth a "six-star general", to which he replied that the rank was obviously a job whose uniform insignia could only be worn without looking stupid by "fat (expletive deleted)s" and they could therefore go forth and multiply with their stars. He himself opted for his normal four stars but switched from silver to gold.
But you're right about Pershing's lifespan and what he'd witnessed. Almost as spooky as when one considers that the gap between the armistice ending the War To End All Wars and the outbreak of WWII is exactly the same as that between Laurie Sanchez's unlikely header against Liverpool and Louis Saha's equally unlikely fastest ever FA Cup Final goal.
Which reminds me of the old chestnut regarding FA Cup Final quiz questions: Who scored teh winning FA Cup Final goal between Sunderland and Villa?Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 10
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
Only ten years between Revolver and never Mind the Bo**ocks.
Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 11
Posted by Secundus (U14480241) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
I remember when I was 5 in 1960 I attended the 80th birthday party of a neighbour. I can't remember which month it was, but he was born in the year that Disraeli lost his last general election to Gladstone, so one or the other was Prime Minister at the time. That makes me feel old!
Incidentally, this neighbour, a man named Walter, only spent one night away from the house in which he was born in his entire life of over 80 years.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 12
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
And only ten years between Never Mind The Bo**ocks and Lady In Red!
Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 13
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
My grandmother was born in 1896, during the rein of Victoria and at the height of the Empire and she died in 1996. She lived through the reins of 5 monarchs, Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II plus seen a full century of the most amazing and devestating historical events, inventions and changes.
The cost of witnessing so much history was out-living and burying the very ones that mattered to her. Parents, 9 brothers and sisters, husband, 2 children and 3 grandchildren. An aspect we sometimes forget when we praise and marvel over longetivity.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 14
Posted by Mr_Edwards (U3815709) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
I only had one surviving grandparent when I was born in 1960. She was born in 1886 (and died in 1965).
In my own life we've had the first space race, the development of the personal computer, the cellphone, video at a price the home could afford, the complete lifespan of some technologies such as supersonic passenger flight.
We've also had the latest round of the Troubles from 1969 to nineteen ninety something. The end of the Soviet Union, almost the complete history of apartheid, globalisation, a former member of the Hitler Youth elected Pope, female leaders in Ceylon (as it was), Israel, Britain, Iceland, Norway, New Zealand, Turkey, Australia, a Black man elected President of the USA. We've had a President resign in disgrace, another impeached, another murdered.
In England, it's felt sometimes as if History is out of control, but imagine if we lived in Serbia, or Chile, or South Africa?Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 15
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
It is interesting to note that Winston Churchill knew every Prime Minister (along with himself) from W.E.Gladstone to Harold Wilson and Ted Heath and that, as a child, Gladstone sat on the lap of George Canning (d. 1827).
H.M The Queen has known every British Prime Minister since Ramsay Macdonald (16 in all). The only other living person I know of who met Ramsay Macdonald is Tony Benn who, at the age of 6, was taken to tea with Macdonald at 10 Downing Street by his father who was then Secretary of State for India.
In the 1970s I heard Ramsay Macdonald's son, Malcolm, who first entered Parliament in 1929 and became a Cabinet Minister in 1935, talk about his career, as well as Harold Macmillan describing his impressions of Oxford in 1912.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 16
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
Churchill would have also known Jim Callaghan, who was a junior minister in the Attlee Government, thus making him personally acquainted with every Prime Minister between 1880-1979, a total of 18 in all (excluding himself).
Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 17
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
Although Mrs Thatcher's tenure as an MP overlapped with that of Churchill in 1959-64 he was largely an honorific MP during that period and scarcely attended the Commons. She also fought her first campaigns in 1950 & 1951 as Tory candidate for Dartford whilst he was Conservative leader but he did not speak on her behalf so there is no record they ever met, which is a pity.
Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 18
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
Hi Allan D
Why wasn't Churchill personally acquainted with himself?
But seriously
Leaving aside the fact that no one could be acquainted at all with a prime minister before Campbell-Bannerman (for reasons you know) I've a different tally of 20 (or 19 if he quite forgot himself, something I'm quite prone to doing these days too).
Disraeli
Salisbury
Gladstone
Rosebery
Balfour
Campbell-Bannerman
Asquith
Lloyd-George
Bonar Law
Baldwin
McDonald
Chamberlain
Himself
Attlee
Eden
McMillan
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ
Wilson
Heath
CallaghanLink to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 19
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
Incidentally, this neighbour, a man named Walter, only spent one night away from the house in which he was born in his entire life of over 80 years.Β
What an incredibly sad statement, Secundus, for someone living in the 20th century. No holidays, no treats to the seaside for a night, no honeymoon (no wife?), no mad dashes to be with someone very ill.
Why was he away for that night, do you know?
My great-uncle, born around 1880, lived in our household till I was 16. I don't recall ever asking about any of his memories or people he remembered. Or his war experiences. The lost opportunities of living with two people born in the 19th century (my grandmother - other side of the family - brought me up) are rather galling to me now.
Cheers, Caro.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 20
Posted by WarsawPact (U1831709) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
When you think of all the 'stuff' that's happened between 1000AD to 2000AD, did a similar amount of 'stuff' happen between 1AD to 999AD - at time which (from an English perspective) covers Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings?*
*With all due apologies for the inaccuracies of those terms.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 21
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 27th June 2010
There is no evidence that Churchill ever met Disraeli (who died when Churchill was 6) but Disraeli was responsible for Churchill spending his infancy in Dublin after he appointed Winston's grandfather, the Duke of Marlborough, as Lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1877 (with Lord Randolph as his private secretary) after Lord Randolph and his brother, the Marquess of Blandford, heir to the dukedom, had offended the Prince of Wales by becoming embroiled in the Aylesford divorce case. So the count still stands at 18 or 19, by your reckoning.
Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 22
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Monday, 28th June 2010
Message posted by Caro
What an incredibly sad statement, Secundus, for someone living in the 20th century. No holidays, no treats to the seaside for a night, no honeymoon (no wife?), no mad dashes to be with someone very ill. Β
I don't know how sad it is, but get a load of this.
The Man who Lived in a Haystack.
Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 23
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Monday, 28th June 2010
Ok, Allan. Since you grant yourself the privilege of defining acquaintanceship according to a rule which suits your tally I'll have to grant you are quite correct (assuming there is evidence that Churchill "met" all the others on your list, of course).
What did they do with little Winnie when Disraeli was on one of his frequent visits to Blenheim, by the way?Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 24
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Monday, 28th June 2010
The Churchills did not live at Blenheim after Lord Randolph, the younger son of the Duke, were married. They were paying a social visit in November 1874 when Winston arrived prematurely in a servant's bedroom.
Looking at the evidence I'm not so sure that Churchill ever met Gladstone now although he certainly heard Gladstone's last great Parliamentary performance when, according to Randolph Churchill's biography of his father, as an 18yo son of an MP (although a considerably detached one given Lord Randolph's illness, then at an advanced stage) still struggling to pass the Sandhurst entrance exam, he was 'squeezed into' the Distinguished Strangers' Gallery to hear the GOM wind up on the 2nd Reading of the Irish Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Rule Bill (which was ultimately vetoed by the House of Lords) in April 1893. Churchill read a collected edition of Gladstone's speeches whilst a subaltern in India but fortunately did not allow them to affect his own style later.
62 years before this a 21yo Gladstone, then the "rising hope of the stern, unbending Tories" and yet-to-be elected MP (for a pocket borough) heard Earl Grey deliver his speech in favour of the Great Reform Bill which, although he was opposed to its sentiments at the time, Gladstone always declared was the greatest speech he ever heard delivered. Almost exactly 62 years after Churchill heard Gladstone speak Churchill himself retired as Prime Minister and, although an MP for a further 9 years, never spoke in the Commons again.
The first Prime Minister with whom Churchill had a 1-on-1 conversation was probably his father's nemesis, Lord Salisbury, to whom Churchill nonetheless dedicated his second book, "The River War", his account of Kitchener's expedition to the Sudan, when he presented it to him in the Foreign Office (which Salisbury preferred to Downing Street as he was also Foreign Secretary) in 1899 although Rosebery was also a friend of the family and supported the Churchills after Lord Randolph's death.
I have been looking at the number of Prime Ministers two other statesmen of great longevity, notably Lord Palmerston (who became an MP in 1807 and died in office as Prime Minister in 1865) and W.E. Gladstone (whose Parliamentary career lasted from 1832 to 1895) knew (apart from themselves, of course).
As far as Palmerston goes I think the list is as follows:
Henry Addington (Viscount Sidmouth)
Lord Grenville
Duke of Portland
Spencer Perceval
Lord Liverpool
George Canning
Viscount Goderich
Duke of Wellington
Earl Grey
Viscount Melbourne
Sir Robert Peel
Lord John Russell
Earl of Derby
Earl of Aberdeen
Benjamin Disraeli
W.E.Gladstone
Marquess of Salisbury
Although Palmerston unsuccessfully contested the vacant seat at Cambridge University caused by Pitt the Younger's death in 1806 I can find no evidence the two actually met although Palmerston may well have heard Pitt speak. Excluding Pitt and himself, this gives Palmerston a tally of 17. Rosebery and Balfour wwere at Oxford and Eton respectively when Palmerston died in 1865 but, coming from political families, may well have seen him speak.
In Gladstone's case the list of certainties is as follows:
George Canning
Viscount Goderich (later Marquess of Ripon)
Duke of Wellington
Viscount Melbourne
Sir Robert Peel
Lord John Russell
Earl of Derby
Earl of Aberdeen
Viscount Palmerston
Benjamin Disraeli
Marquess of Salisbury
Earl of Rosebery
A.J.Balfour
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
H.H.Asquith
David Lloyd George
Neville Chamberlain
According to Roy Jenkins' biography of Gladstone the GOM stayed with Joe Chamberlain in Birmingham in May 1877 in order to speak at the inaugural meeting of the National Liberal Federation and would have met Chamberlain's children, including 8yo Neville.
This again makes a tally of 17. I have omitted Earl Grey since although Gladstone certainly heard him speak on the Reform Bill in 1831 and became an MP a year later whilst Grey was still Prime Minister there is no evidence they ever met. The two other possibilities are Pitt's successor, Lord Grenvillle, who was Chancellor of Oxford University until his death in 1834 which might have brought Gladstone into contact with him and Henry Addington, Viscount Sidmouth, who lived for 40 years after he left Downing Street in 1804, the longest by any Prime Minister (the nearest in modern times is the 31 years by Sir Alec Douglas-Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ), although he was also Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Secretary for 10 years until Liverpool dismissed him in 1822. However he never attended the House of Lords again after he voted against the Reform Bill in 1832. Stanley Baldwin, who was the son of a Conservative MP elected in 1892 when Gladstone formed his last government, and Ramsay Macdonald, who worked as secretary to a Liberal MP, may well have seen Gladstone speak.
In the 1960s I remember hearing Baroness Asquith (previously Lady Violet Bonham-Carter) give a talk on the radio about a visit she had made with her father, then Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Secretary in Gladstone's fourth and last administration, for tea with the Great Man in Downing Street when she was around the same age that Tony Benn was when his father took him to see Ramsay Macdonald in 1931.
From my recollection Lady Asquith recalled Gladstone as having very hairy ears and bolting his food when he ate which she had been brought up never to do.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 25
Posted by Triceratops (U3420301) on Monday, 28th June 2010
Pershing was at the dedication of the Liberty Memorial, in Kansas City, Missouri dedicated to US servicemen killed in WW1.One of the veterans he met was Frank Buckle. Buckle had lied about his age and joined up in 1917 at the age of 16 and served as an ambulance driver and dispatch rider in France.The ship which took him to Europe was the RMS Carpathia and Buckle spoke with crew members who had helped rescue survivors from the Titanic.
In WW2,Buckle spent 3 years as a prisoner of the Japanese after being captured while working as a civilian with a shipping firm in the Phillipines.
The thing about Mr Buckle is, at the age of 109,he is still alive.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 26
Posted by Secundus (U14480241) on Monday, 28th June 2010
Caro
Your message 19.
Walter lived in a two bedroomed cottage in a small village a few miles from Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. He worked on the land - a smallholding on which he grew fruit and veg. He was married twice. I only knew his second wife, by whom he had three daughters. I know he had at least one son by his first wife, but I never met him or knew anything about him.
The one night away from home was when he was forced to go with his family to Great Yarmouth for the weekend. I understand he hated being away from his own bed so much he would never go again.
Being born in 1880, he would have been 34 at the outbreak of the Great War and too old to be expected to join up (and in a reserved occupation if they had such things in WW1), so in that respect, he was fortunate that he did not have to spend a lot longer away from home.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 27
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Monday, 28th June 2010
My great-uncle, mentioned above, was 36 when he went to war (I almost wrote 'was called up' but I have no idea whether he volunteered or was conscripted) as a private. One of the things I would ask about now, since it seems so old.
Walter obviously never learnt that it always takes at least one night in it to become accustomed to a new bed!
Cheers, Caro.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 28
Posted by Gran (U14388334) on Monday, 28th June 2010
My Great Grandfather said he attended one of Charles Dickens public readings which he would have enjoyed as he was illiterate, it would have been towards the end of such readings as G Grandpa was born in 1858
By the way, Grandpa served in the great war he was 37 with a wife and 2 children, they called him up in 1916. This must have been when they were desparate for more men as so many were killed. Thankfully, he survived, not without scars!!
GranLink to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 29
Posted by Mr_Edwards (U3815709) on Tuesday, 29th June 2010
My grandfather was also in his late thirties when he went to war. It cost him his lungs.
My other grandfather was 30 when war broke out and as far as I know, took no part in the Great War.
On the other hand, my five greats grandfather on that side of the family, Walter Savage Landor was present when Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself but soon decided he was less impressed about Napoleon and volunteered to help out in the Peninsular War (although in the end, this help was financial).Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 30
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Tuesday, 29th June 2010
Dai Digital,
Only ten years between Revolver and never Mind the Bo**ocks.Β
Only four years between Please Please Me and Revolver.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 31
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Tuesday, 29th June 2010
And nearly thirty years between "There's No-One Quite Like Grandma" and "There's No-One Quite Like Grandma" re-release.
Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 32
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Wednesday, 30th June 2010
114 years 199 days between the first death of one of Queen Victoria's grandchildren, Prince Sigismund of Prussia on 18 June 1866, and the last, Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, on 3 January 1981.
Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 33
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Wednesday, 30th June 2010
That is quite an amazing statistic, Allan. There might be similar sorts of dates for some of those other large families. Though many of them included huge numbers of stillborns and early deaths and not many people living on to breed.
Cheers, Caro.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 34
Posted by Mr_Edwards (U3815709) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
Not counting stillbirths, the first of my grandmother's children died in 1905 and my mother and one uncle are still alive. (the first child had been dead for 25 years before my mum (the sixteenth of seventeen children) was born.
Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 35
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
Coming from a family of two just 14 months apart, I am struggling to get my head round that, Mr Edwards. Not just not knowing your sibling, but such a distance to breech to get to their life. All my grandparents' 13 grandchildren are alive and aged about 45 upwards to 62. If someone died now it might be possible to have a range of about 50 years, but not much more.
Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 36
Posted by Mr_Edwards (U3815709) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
Oh, sorry, grandchildren... as far as I know, my mother has only one nephew who is older than her but there may have been others so I couldn't begin to guess when my grandmother's first grandchild died. I do know that when one of my aunts (now dead) celebrated her golden wedding anniversary in 1987 (which was also the hundredth anniversary of my grandmother's birth), she invited all of my grandmother's living descendants and their spouses if they had them, and there were over four hundred people there, about two thirds of which were children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of my grandmother.
Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 37
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
Oh, I was only using grandchildren as they are at least possibly spread out. My grandmother's four sons all died within about 25 years. My other grandmother's three children had more than 50 years between them, my mother dying before she was thirty and her sister being over 80 and the youngest. I have never quite thought of that time distance between them like that before.
Cheers, Caro.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 38
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
Message posted by Temperance
And nearly thirty years between "There's No-One Quite Like Grandma" and "There's No-One Quite Like Grandma" re-release.Β
20 years since the first Only Fools and Horses in 1981.
Almost the same distance as that between the end of WW1 and Hitler's invasion of Poland.
Did the period from the treaty of Versailles to 'I have to announce that no such undertaking was been received' seem longer to those alive at the time than our perception of the time since our first glimpse of Delboy Trotter?Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 39
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
20 years since the first Only Fools and Horses in 1981.Β
??? Are you dyslexic or merely behind the times? 29 years, methinks - the gap between the film "The Battle of Britain" and the real thing.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 40
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
There you go. It seems ten years less than it actually was. In my head, I'm still in 2000.
My point entirely.
So in fact, the brief flash of my life since DelBoy is equivalent to the period between Bleriot's flight across the channel and Hitler's invasion of Poland.
Ten years does not seem long now, but how did it feel to our forefathers. They didn't have TV.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 41
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
I realise that part of my problem with the OP is that life does not look scary when the present that you are growing up in has living and vibrant roots or foundations that create a continuity with the Past.
J.R. Green described in the introduction to his once radically new and now classic "History of the English People" how wandering through Oxford, then out through Marston and into the surrounding countryside you can be aware of treading in the footsteps of history.
Or as I wrote on Caro's place names thread the crows in our remnant of the Great North Wood had given their name to this place by Domesday- the valley of the crows.
Of course if we focus on "the Angel of Death" and the way that everything must pass away- even our universe, and focus too on things on which we depend for our sense of identity- there is cause to be scared.. But to quote Bolt's Thomas More yet again "they are terrors for children, Master Secretary" - or they should be if we have a grasp of life "for all seasons".
CassLink to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 42
Posted by stalti (U14278018) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
Hi Dai (poetry)
with you on the 30 year gap and have a similar scenario to share - lol
in the 60s when i was a kid - i used to see photos of the town taken 30 years before and be amazed by the change
ie that bloke was standing in in the 30s was now, in the 60s, the site of a council estate built in the 30s, the church had been demolished and was now a supermarket shop and flats
to me that was a quantum leap and people must have been astounded by the huge change
30 years later there was still that quantum leap - the chip shop is now retirement flats etc etc etc but it all passed by with barely a whisper - i cant even remember what was there before
ie time and changes go by very slowly and gradually when u are living it
anyone know what i mean or shall i book a carer now
stLink to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 43
Posted by stalti (U14278018) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
i meant of course "that FIELD the bloke was standing in"
stLink to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 44
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
So in fact, the brief flash of my life since DelBoy is equivalent to the period between Bleriot's flight across the channel and Hitler's invasion of Poland.
Ten years does not seem long now, but how did it feel to our forefathers. They didn't have TV.Β
This is probably difficult to judge precisely because we are living in the 'present'. It's a bit like when an absent relative (grandparent, uncle, aunt etc) returne after a year or two to exclaim "My! How the children have grown!". To the parents of the children in question, however, (and to the children themselves) the growth is barely perceptible as it takes place gradually every day of their lives.
That said - it is astonishing to think that time from the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II to the appointment of Adolph Hitler as Chancellor of Germany was only 14 years, 2 months and 21 days. That is the same time as from now back to the spring of 1996 when Manchester United beat Liverpool 1-0 in the FA Cup Final and 'Don't Look Back In Anger' by Oasis was on the airwaves.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 45
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
'It all seems like yesterday' is a useful thing to remember when considering other 30 year periods.
At our distance, they seem to encompass different worlds. That to have experienced both the Battle of Britain and Woodstock, as my parents did, is almost impossible.
Is this the way we are taught history, or merely a trick of the light, as it were?Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 46
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
Not a 30 year period this example but similar.
49 years after Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in Space. We are now ourselves 49 years on from Gagarin's achievement.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 47
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
To be accurate in trying to carry out Dai's exercise one should use "real time" and not clockwork time. But only the latter saves us from anarchy.
As a teacher I tried to avoid passing on the wisdom told us by one of our teachers i.e.that the years go faster as you get older.
This is related to the fact that "real time"- that is the potential that we have to do something within a time frame- is directly linked to the heart-beat. Consequently the child's day is much longer than his/her parents day, and much much longer than his grandparents day.. .Though the numbers of hours and minutes are the same, the number of heartbeats is usually very different.
So children have "time" to get bored and feel that time is dragging when they have nothing to do. As you get older this gradually becomes less of a problem.
CassLink to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 48
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
I remember reading advice to parents once that contained the idea that time for children is much slower, and to say something will happen in a week was like saying to an adult it would happen in a month (or a year even).
I am always aware that the two world wars happened within a (comparatively) very short time from each other, and it seems to me most reasonable that people and politicians would have tried anything they could to stave off another war. I don't really understand why this is considered a fault. It is the same distance in time now as 1990, which is, in Cass's clockwork time, just yesterday now, isn't it?
Cheers, Caro.Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 49
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 1st July 2010
Caro
I may get into trouble for going off topic, but your last post raises one of my obsessions-- the way that it became customary to write off the inter-war period so that the living too became something of a Lost Generation.
And since 1945, because the earlier effort to ensure that "the War To End All Wars" had been fought did not prevent the Second World War, much of the creative and original thinking of that period has been largely cast into oblivion.
As I have just quoted in an piece on the UK Labour Party, in 1918 it reunited and produced a paper envisaging a New Social Order and a New Civilization. Ninety years later I think that Iraqis, Afghans and others are entitled to challenge whether the current use of our "Overwhelming Force" is really in the interests of, or reflects, Civilization as any serious thinker of the past would define it.
It is difficult to counter-argue those who see a state of decadence.
And, to return to the OP, one of the things that make the passage of time for example between 1918 and 1939 seem so short and the change so brutal, is because with Hindsight we ignore so much that was/is going on.
Last year I really enjoyed "In Our Time", a treatment by Commander King Hall of the years since 1913 published in 1935, and then updated in 1938. It was not a world history but it did open up the range of other options before humanity than the collective course that was eventually steered.
CassLink to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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Message 50
Posted by Mr_Edwards (U3815709) on Friday, 2nd July 2010
Well... a lifetime can be an awfully long time... imagine if that lifetime was 1588-1648 (from 'Good Queen Bess' to 'Is he guilty? Sign')
Link to this forum: Historical Perspective. Or How to Scare Yourself Rigid.
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