Tag Archives: history

Eadweard – A Story Of 1066 by Victoria (Tori) Zigler

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Title: Eadweard – A Story Of 1066
Author: Victoria Zigler
Release date: 14th October 2016

Book description:
“It’s October 14th 1066, and King Harold’s Saxon army is about to go in to battle against Duke William’s invading Norman army. Among the ranks of the Saxons are two boys who shouldn’t be there: Eadweard, and his best friend, Cerdic.

Daydreams of becoming great war heroes had the boys convinced to disobey their Fathers and go to war, despite the possibility of punishment if they were caught. Now it’s time for the battle to begin, and Eadweard is starting to wish he’d stayed home after all. But it’s too late to turn back now, and Eadweard finds himself witnessing the events of the battle that would later be called The Battle Of Hastings, and learning how different from his imaginings the reality of war actually is.

*Note: This is a work of fiction, which is based on actual events. It tells the story of the battle between King Harold’s Saxon army and Duke William’s Norman army, which took place a short distance away from the town of Hastings on October 14th 1066, in a place now known simply as Battle. Though this is a children’s story, the recommended reading age for this book is eight years and over, since it is a story that takes place on a battlefield, and therefore contains scenes of violence that are not suitable for younger, or more sensitive, readers.”

Buy links:
Smashwords
Barnes & Noble
Apple iTunes / iBooks
Also available from other sites Smashwords distributes to.

Paperback coming soon!

“Dane-Geld” By Rudyard Kipling

IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: –
“We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: –
“Though we know we should defeat you,
we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: —

“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danegeld

Slavery’s Stain

The crack of the whip
Does strip
The past bare.
Who would dare
To lift the curtain
For it is certain
To make the sensitive squirm.

Growing up in Liverpool I was told
A tale of how the city was built on slave owner’s gold.
Many there money gave
In the hope their soul to save
To schools and foundations
That dignify the nation.

What can one say
For it is a long way
Back and distance
Leads to resistance
To compensation
For the Caribbean and African nations.
An injustice vast
Stains our past
But should the Europeans of today
Pay for the injustices of yesterday?

One can apologise for one’s own mistake
But what good can an apology make
For a wrong long gone
And done by another one?

Great Britain abolished slavery in 1807
And all was right and god was in his heaven.
No,
The woe
Caused by slavery did persist,
But should one then insist
On the payment of gold
To right wrongs untold?

We can not and should not forget
And yet
We must move on.
The slave owners are gone
And to apply modern morality to the past
Is, perhaps a thankless task.
Can we in conscience ask the guiltless of today
To reparations pay?
And, if so to whom
For the gloom
Has long since closed
Over those
Who where so cruely whipped
And stripped.

(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/24/slave-owning-families-influenced-uk-jane-austen-modern-rroyalty-eugenie-beatrice).

Nostalgia

In a recent article in The Daily Mail, entitled “Forget the Age of Plenty, We Were Happier in the 1700’s” (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3756368/Forget-age-plenty-happier-1700s-Briton-s-content-life-era-slums-gin-mothers-workhouses-today.html), it is reported that research shows the 18th century was the period in which people were happiest, despite the grinding poverty in which much of the population lived.
The above article reminded me of a comment made by a reviewer of my collection of poetry “Lost in the Labyrinth of My Mind” that “ There is a feeling of nostalgia in some poems, e.g. “Modernity”, (https://emmalee1.wordpress.com/2016/05/11/lost-in-the-labyrinth-of-my-mind-k-morris/). The poem is reproduced below in order that my readers may judge for themselves:

“Give me something real

Not this plastic I feel.

Give me books in cloth boards

That I may not be bored.

Give me a chime

To measure time.

Give me solid wood

To caress and love.

Give me objects that last

A link to the past.

The world moves fast

Vast

Nothingness beccons.

Enumerable seconds

engaged

In rage

Against the gleam

Of the machine

That haunts my dream”.

(For “Modernity” and the other poems in “Lost in The Labyrinth of My Mind” please visit http://moyhill.com/lost/.

“The Life that I Have” by Leo Marx

While strolling around Kew Gardens, with my friend Brian on Saturday 30 July, we came across Leo Marx’s moving poem “The Life that I have”, on a bench which stood in one of the many tranquil spots to be found in the gardens, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraphtv/3460867/Virginia-McKenna-recites-The-Life-That-I-Have.html.

Kevin

Crystal Ball Gazing

Will the click of a mouse
In the virtual house
Of the brain
Replace
Nature’s sweet face?
Or can man restrain
The genie who, perhaps already half woken,
His words as yet unspoken,
Holds out visions of heaven and hell.

Will men dwell
In the half light
Where day and night
Lose all meaning
And seeming
And fact become as one?
Has man gone
So far
That we lose who we are?

Can rich variety be reduced
And man seduced
By the girl made up of data?

Sooner or later
These things may come
To pass, but history does run
In strange ways, and the historian shakes his head
At the futurologist, now long since dead
Who said
“It is inevitable, For X must lead to Y”.

Ideas live and die.
The historian sighs
And thinks on why
Man tries to make the world conform to some abstract law.
He has seen it all before
And puts but little store
On those enamoured by neat little rows.
The futurologist may into the future stare
While history’s winding track leads heaven knows where.

Squire and Peasant

I see a vanished land
Where the squire held command
Over the countryside,
Before the tide
Turned
And paternalism was spurned,
Or merely ebbed away
Ushering in a new day.

To hounds he rode
Or through his estate strode
In search of grouse or pheasant.
With countenance pleasant
Or severe
He ruled his peasants
Far and near.

Sometimes a thinker
And often a drinker
He felt a connection with the whole
Estate, his soul
Was as one
with generations long since gone.
Frequently inarticulate
He did hate
The untried
And cried
Out for the preservation of the old ways.

Nothing stays
Unaltered.
The rock-like squire faltered
As the wind of progress
That does redress
All ills, brought salvation
To the nation.
Now those who the price of everything know, hold command
While squire and peasant stand
Bemused, upon this altered land.

A Flag Flapping

A February wind gusts down Whitehall.
The thin flag flaps but does not fall.
I hear water lapping
And see a flag flapping
Over receeding shores
And rugged moors.

Pale
Ships sail.
Gulls wail.
Masts crack.
There is no turning back.

An old man looks out
Upon the rout.
The shouting dies.
His eyes
Fixed upon the flag, which still flies
Red, white, and blue, against the darkening skies.

On The Closure Of A Retro Shop

The retro
Must go.
A version of the past
Is sold off fast.
Perhaps I will take a look.
Perchance happen upon an old book.
I meant to visit before
But now the door
Will soon close
On retro clothes.
People are interested in the old ways.
The days
When all was right, or seemed so.
The stock must go
For a song.
Before long
Another business will take the shop’s place.
The bland corporate face
Will occupy another space.
We race
Knowing not where we are going
Or what we may be sewing.
Without a feel for the past
The future beccons, bleak and vast.