“Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the ( Read more... )

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British TV presenter Jeremy Paxman traces the story of the greatest empire the world has ever known: the British Empire. In the first programme, he asks how such a small country got such a big head, and how a tiny island in the North Atlantic came to rule over a quarter of the world’s population. He travels to India, where local soldiers and local ( Read more... )

Author Peter Ackroyd explores Victorian London, and reveals that although the city was the thriving heart of the British Empire, it was also home to a growing underclass. He examines the story of Jack the Ripper, asking why the Whitechapel murders continue to have such a strong hold over the public’s imagination, and celebrates the work of 19th- ( Read more... )

The British Council Film Collection is an archive of more than 120 short documentary films made by the British Council during the 1940s designed to show the world how Britain lived, worked and played. Preserved by the BFI National Film Archive and digitised by means of a generous donation by Google, the films are now yours to view, to download and ( Read more... )

Peter Ackroyd’s excellent biography of London is required reading for all Londonphiles, but I bet you didn’t know that he also presented a series based on the book. It’s not available in the USA (or many other places for that matter). So, we’ve uploaded to YouTube. Here is episode 2.

Peter Ackroyd explores the city’s frequently destructive ( Read more... )

Peter Ackroyd’s excellent biography of London is required reading for all Londonphiles, but I bet you didn’t know that he also presented a series based on the book. It’s not available in the USA (or many other places for that matter). So, we’ve uploaded to YouTube.

In episode 1 - Fire and Destiny - Author Peter Ackroyd explores the development of ( Read more... )

“Comparatively innocent”

Those who speak scornfully of the ignorance of the mob do not err as to the fact itself; their error is in not seeing that just as a crowd is comparatively ignorant, so a crowd is comparatively innocent. It will have the old and human faults; but it is not likely to specialise in the special faults of that particular society ( Read more... )

There are several best introductions to Chesterton. Tremendous Trifles is one of the best of the best.

Tremendous Trifles contains simply some of the best essays Chesterton ever wrote. They originally appeared in the Daily News, which Chesterton contributed to from 1901 to 1913, and which explains why people bought that paper. Besides the ( Read more... )

“So tiny a thing”

The very smallness of children makes it possible to regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with a new race, only to be seen through a microscope. I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so ( Read more... )