Oxford buys 11th century Arabic atlas

A combination of public and private investment has purchased the fascinating medieval artifact as a sort of 400th birthday present for the Bodleian Library.

Well, it's a start


Anglican clergy in England may soon face heresy trials for such trivial errors as preaching atheism from the pulpit.


Critics have already likened the proposed tribunals to "witch-hunts," which at least have a properly Protestant connotation. We await the Inquisition analogies sure to come as the debate heats up.

Kramer on Gauguin


Hilton Kramer, the great editor of The New Criterion and art critic of The New York Observer, reviews this week the minor Gauguin exhibit now on display at the Met. In what is a perceptive article from beginning to end, these lines are particularly trenchant:


"No matter how familiar his life story may be—the archetypal story of the painter 'who left his family and a career in finance to live like a native on an island in the South Seas,' as a wall text at the Met reminds us yet again—it continues to command attention, respect and, in some quarters, even envy from a public that would never dream of attempting such a radical departure from bourgeois convention. We go to museums instead."


It is also refreshing to read a critic with the moral clarity to render a verdict like this: "What a mercy for us that he was as great an artist as he was (at his best, anyway), for in every other respect Gauguin was a fairly disgusting character." And when Kramer cites "the biographical histrionics that add so much personal mythology to our aesthetic interest in his art," my mind immediately turns to another such character to whom, with slight adjustments, these various observations and judgments could likewise apply: Lord Byron.

Italy to return Ethiopian obelisk

Mussolini's troops took the monument from the ancient city of Axum in 1937 and erected it in the Piazza Porta Capena in Rome. At the direction of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi it will now go back to Africa, although some fear it is too fragile for transport.

Marquis de Lafayette to be given American citizenship

Their Kampf

David Pryce-Jones on the enduring, and sickening, popularity of Hitler's manifesto among the Arabs, including those in London.

V for Victory!


On this day in 1941, Winston Churchill inaugurated the famous V for Victory campaign to rally the peoples of Europe to oppose the Germans. By invoking the Bible and Beethoven's Fifth (V) Symphony, the V-campaigners insightfully appealed to a shared Western culture in their call for resistance to its Nazi perversion.


The quotation from the Book of Daniel reminds me of another heroic story from World-War-II-era Britain, related here. It is truly astonishing to consider how infused with Christianity Western society really was as recently as 60 years ago, and how rapidly and thoroughly the secularizing sandstorm has wiped all that away.

Brian McGuire, formerly of the National Catholic Register, is a fine fellow whom I knew when we were both in New Haven. Today he has an amusing report on the Wall Street Journal's Taste Page about the silly navel-gazing spectacle that was a New York summer seminar on Marxist thought.


You can read other Journal articles of his here and here.

William F. Buckley on the Nuremberg trials
An interview with National Review Online.

Monarchists March to Honor the Last Tsar

"Saddam Hussein is God's curse because the communists killed the king."
-- Iraqi quip


An op-ed in today's Telegraph explores the potential benefits of restoring a moderate Hashemite king in Iraq after toppling Saddam. Notice the same old Revolutionary story:


"July 14, 1958 [Bastille Day! -MGA], is a date most Iraqis wish to forget. Just after dawn, soldiers stormed the palace and murdered the 19-year-old King Faisal II and his family. For a decade after the revolution, there was sporadic street fighting, mass killings, assassination attempts and violent changes in government.

On July 30, 1968, the ethnic chauvinist Ba'ath party seized power. A young functionary named Saddam Hussein took charge of purging dissent, and did so with brutal efficiency, quickly ensconcing himself as Iraq's strongman. . . ."


The piece also reviews the part King Zahir Shah has played in Afghanistan's recovery from the Taliban's theocratic rule and calls attention to Reza Pahlavi's pro-democracy movement in Iran.


"Equally significant is the rise of Reza Pahlavi. In little more than a year, the son of the late Shah of Iran has risen from relative obscurity to become the leading catalyst for democracy in Iran. Iranians old enough to remember the Shah used to visualise their society as European, on a par with Spain, Portugal and Greece, but now see their country plunging into economic chaos.

Too young to remember the corruption and brutality of the last Shah, they long for the good life of the past. To many Iranians, such sentiment is not empty glorification. In 1977, Iran's per capita income was equivalent to Spain's; two years ago, it hovered near that of the Gaza Strip."

Franco and the Jews


El Caudillo, himself perhaps descended from Marranos (converted Jews), saved tens of thousands of Jews from Nazi extermination during the war either by issuing them Spanish passports or allowing them to pass through Spain on their way to a third country. This website provides, among other references, this quotation from James Michener's Iberia:


"...Generalissimo Franco is highly regarded by Jews; during the worst days of World War II, when pressures from Hitler were at their heaviest, Franco refused to issue anti-Jewish edicts and instead provided a sanctuary, never violated, for Jews who managed to make it to Spain. Many thousands of Jews owe their lives to Franco, and this is not forgotten."

The Spanish Civil War


I keep a list of things I should like to teach properly if I am ever blessed with the right
class and a secure position. Among these are the wartime record of Pius XII and the
Spanish Civil War. The latter began on this day in 1936, with General Franco leading a rebellion from Ceuta. (Interestingly, Ceuta is one of the Spanish African territories at the
center of the current row with Morocco.)


The Spanish Civil is frequently portrayed as the noble struggle of legitimate democracy
against the dark forces of Fascism. Historian Paul Johnson, however, will have none of
this. As quoted in First Things, he says:


“As Paul Claudel pointed out in a famous poem, the Spanish Reds, under Stalin’s
orders, murdered and tortured to death twelve thousand priests, monks, and nuns, as well
as burning down hundreds of churches, long before Franco came on the scene. It was his
arrival which prevented the church’s total destruction. It was not only right, it was
imperative that it [the Church in Spain] support him, quite apart from the fact that he kept
Spain out of the war, gave it forty years of peace and a middle class, and laid the
foundations of its present prosperity."


Johnson makes several necessary points in his summary, to which I should add that not
only did the Leftists slaughter thousands of religious and others simply for being Catholic,
but they also engaged in such savagery as cutting off their victims’ ears as trophies.


After taking over, Franco (who was not a fascist himself, although his coalition did
include them) did indeed keep Spain neutral in the Second World War. One article (which is reluctantly pro-Nationalist) even suggests that Franco’s control of Spain might have been key to an Allied victory, arguing, “a leftist regime in Spain might have given the Germans all the incentive they needed to invade the country when they were through with France. The British would have lost Gibraltar, which might have lost them the Mediterranean, which would probably have lost the Allies the war.”


It was also Franco who provided for the restoration of the monarchy, which oversaw
Spain’s transition to democracy after his death. (Catholic monarchists had, in fact, helped
to make up his diverse Nationalist coalition during the Civil War, belying the
oversimplified equation of Spanish Nationalism with Fascism.) The new king, as it
happens, would play a crucial role in preserving the post-Franco democratic order against
an attempted military coup in 1981.

Apart from the virtues and vices (of which there were plenty) of Franco’s government, there is the small matter of the Republic being a Soviet puppet. In one of the better articles on the web about the Civil War (called “Aiding Dictatorship, Not Democracy” ), The New York Times (!) acknowledges that “[h]ad the Republicans won the war, this effort would have turned Spain into a satellite state.” When describing what that would have meant, the analogies the piece draws are to Poland and Czechoslovakia.


Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is the classic account of Stalinist nastiness during the Spanish Civil War. You might also try The Last Crusade by Warren Carroll and Spain Betrayed, edited by Ronald Radosh, Mary Habeck, and Grigory Sevostianov. The latter is an installment in Yale University Press’s Annals of Communism series and is a collection of damning Soviet documents outlining their nefarious deeds and intentions.


This is a good article on the Catholic martyrs of the Civil War, although the link seems to be down temporarily. Here is a link to the Google cached version.

NY Post: Rebuild the Twin Towers


In its lead editorial this morning, The New York Post offers a practical fiscal case for rebuilding the World Trade Center exactly as before. In an accompanying front page article, the paper reports that the most popular Ground Zero designs in its (unscientific) website poll either replicate the original towers or allude to them.


In the days following the attacks, I wrote an essay laying out a cultural case for rebuilding the WTC. I may post it to this site tomorrow, but it is rather long. (Jonah Goldberg also wrote in favor of rebuilding in this fashion last September.)


For a different but worthwhile opinion, see Robert Locke, who, on 9 July, wrote in favor of building a new commuter railway station at Ground Zero.

Pius the hero


This week's Spectator contains an excellent article defending the great Pope Pius XII, who is often cruelly slandered as a Nazi-sympathizer. (I have written on this subject myself, but as the Speccie piece covers most of the same points, I shan't link to it.) What makes it particularly good is that it not only refutes the usual charges against the pope but also reviews the origin of those charges and exposes the ulterior motives of many of those who lodge them.


Two things have always struck me as peculiar about the case against Pius XII:


1. The present pope cannot even get practicing Catholics to heed his pronouncements and lay off the birth control. Why should anyone believe that, by scolding him, Pius XII could have got Hitler -- a seething apostate and a pagan -- to lay off pursuing the cornerstone of his ideology? Indeed, the Dutch case proved that ecclesiastical condemnation would intensify, not alleviate, persecution of the Jews.


2. The anti-Pius case implicitly values symbol over substance. Pius, amidst the threats and dangers of wartime, preferred the latter to the former and saved hundreds of thousands of Jews. Had he confronted the Nazis more directly than he did (and The Spectator points out that he did confront them), many, if not most, of those Jews would have died along with the rest. Is that really what the anti-Pius crowd would have wanted? (Remember, Oskar Schindler is considered one of the great heroes of the Holocaust.) Or are they rather, as the article suggests, perhaps trying to score some cheap moral points?

Tomorrow


I will be traveling tomorrow and therefore will not be able to post much, if anything. Please try back later in the day or on Friday.

Yousuf Karsh, RIP


I have just learned that renowned Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh passed away over the weekend at the age of 93. Mr Karsh was most famous for shooting the definitive portrait of Winston Churchill in 1941. After the war, he took a beautiful series of photographs of Archbishop Fulton Sheen celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass. Those pictures used to be online here, although the link doesn't seem to be working at the moment.

Vignette from post-Christian Europe


A would-be vampire in Wales has sacrificed an elderly widow in his quest for immortality. Thanks (I think) to The Widening Gyre for the reference.

The Third Moroccan Crisis?


The Spanish military has today reclaimed by force the island of Perejil, off the coast of Morocco. Morocco had invaded the island -- one of several historic Spanish possessions in or near Moroccan territory -- last week, claiming Perejil for herself. The Arab League and European Union are encouraging continued talks between the two belligerents over the disputed land -- no word yet on whether they will be held in Algeciras.

The Rights of Englishmen


The Labour Government and European Union are endeavoring to weaken four fundamental principles of the ancient English legal system: trial by jury, presumption of innocence, habeas corpus, and protection against double jeopardy. Paul Craig Roberts saw this coming.

Levelers grovel in your graves II


Today is the 84th anniversary of the assassination of Tsar Nicholas II and his family by
agents of the Ural Soviet in 1918. Four days later, The New York Times ran this article about the event on the front page.


The Communists explained that they executed the Tsar to head off a counter-revolutionary plot. Given the total nature of the Bolshevik Revolution, the aim of which was the complete transformation of society into something wholly new, this execution was inevitable. As long as he lived, the Tsar would be a potential focus of counter-revolutionary activity because he embodied the Old Regime and represented a standing challenge to the legitimacy of the Revolution. For this reason, the radicals had to eliminate him and exterminate the rest of the imperial family. In this way he and Louis XVI shared similar fates.


The details of this story are mostly well known, and rather than rehearse them, I should
like instead to mention two supporting characters whose actions helped to enable this loathesome incident.


The first, Rasputin, is a rank villain. Perhaps Nicholas’s greatest error in the last years of
his reign was his ill-advised decision to take front-line command of the army, thus leaving
power in the hands of the irrational Tsarina and the infamous Rasputin (“the Degenerate”) who controlled her. Together, their rule was erratic and abusive. Indeed, some wonder if the mad monk was demonically possessed, on account of his peculiar powers, disturbing vices, and near imperviousness to assassination. (In December 1916, it took a group of aristocrats seeking to preserve the reputation of the monarchy several attempts by various means to vanquish him.)


The second, King George V of Britain, is a more ambivalent figure. After the Tsar abdicated in 1917, the British government, upon being apprised by the Provisional Government that his life was in danger, offered Nicholas and his family asylum in the Isles. Ultimately, however, the British revoked their offer at the urging of the king. George and Nicholas were cousins; in fact, they very much resembled each other. George was bound by a twofold obligation to a family member and fellow sovereign, and he initially wished to come to his relative’s assistance. He changed his mind, however, on account of the extreme hostility the British public felt toward the Russian imperial family because of their absolutist record and perceived Germanophile inclinations.


Especially in light of subsequent events, George’s abandonment of Nicholas justifiably
arouses controversy as a dereliction of charity. Mitigating the severity of this judgment,
perhaps, is the fact that, of the major warring monarchies, only Britain’s throne still stood
in 1918. In addition to his responsibilities to Nicholas, George also had responsibilities to
the monarchy and its posterity, and his questionable decision, however damning it was for
the Romanovs, did ensure that he and the crown he wore would not share in their
opprobrium. Upon hearing of the Romanov executions, the king was stricken, seemingly
having been taken by surprise, but unfortunately he blamed British politicians for not
saving the Tsar for reasons of class. But it was the king who had had the opportunity to
direct such a rescue the previous year but who, for better or worse, did not act.


Tsar Nicholas was not a perfect ruler, probably not even a good one, but his faults were due more to dullness, weakness, and pliability than to willful malice. Indeed, he meant well and loved his country, and however repressive his regime might have been, it did not surpass the ruthless totalitarianism that was to follow.


Some monarchist friends of mine have proposed the restoration of the Tsar in Russia (if a
legitimate claimant could be found and agreed upon) as a constitutional monarch on the
Western European model. Such an emperor could offer unity and stability to the now post-Communist country. Even more, restoring the throne would represent a reassertion of the country’s Christian heritage and underpinnings after 70 years of official atheism and a decade of uncertainty. The history of schism and caesaropapism is problematic, but we trust in Our Lady of Fatima to take care of that.

Jonah Goldberg's Bastille Day column


is out at last, and, as one might expect, it is amusing. The opening lines remind me of my first thoughts upon hearing that a Neo-Nazi had shot at Monsieur le President, and missed by a mile: "Well of course he did; he's French. If those boys could shoot straight, they wouldn't have had such a bad run of luck with the Hun."

Coddling Commies, New York Times style


Andrew Stuttaford, one of the best columnists over at NRO, exposes this shameless Times piece on the American Communist Party vice chairman's opinions about the corporate scandals. He is right to ask at the outset if one can ever imagine a situation in which the Times would conduct such an interview with a racist (or, to put a finer point on it, a Nazi). Of course not, nor should it do so, but this is just the most recent example that many of those on the Left still refuse to admit the evil that Communism is.


Another example: overseas, the Euro establishment cries in apocalyptic tones about the rise of the "far right," whose representatives (however odious personally) have, if any, only distant (and often repudiated) connections to historic fascism. And yet, as John O'Sullivan notes, the European elite says not a word about the living former Communist officials actually governing in several European countries (not to mention received opinion on China, North Korea, and Cuba).


Leftist bias at the Times is news in the same way that "dog bites man" is, but that paper, along with similar media, still frame the issues for most educated people, which makes it required reading for conservatives as well. (This is also why we should continue exposing that bias at its most egregious.) In addition, The Times is largely without competition where daily arts coverage of any quality is concerned (although that quality is erroding -- on this point see this New Criterion comment). It is for these reasons, and because of the excellence of its older articles, that you will find links to many of its pieces on this page.

Derby Day


When I receive the Yale Alumni Magazine each month, I save time by turning immediately to the back. There one finds the Class Notes (worth reading to see which of one's schoolmates are getting married that month) and the delightful Old Yale column. This issue's installment describes Derby Day.


Yale in the '20s was more elegant, more redolent of collegiate charm, than when I attended in the late '90s (although some of us did try our best). Today one can even dine at Mory's in -- horribile dictu -- business casual attire.


But early in the last century, on the first Saturday in May, Yale men (especially the juniors) would ride up to Derby to watch the boat races -- in morning dress. There was probably more than a bit of spoof about all this, but at least it was carried off with wit and style.

Eakins, photography, and art


It is here and there advanced that, as if by evolution, the invention of photography was responsible for painting's departure from realism into greater and greater abstraction. But it was not as simple as that, and art certainly need not have inevitably developed in this fashion. Thomas Eakins, for example, employed the new technique in the service of painting, to bolster and support his realism. An accomplished photographer in his own right, Eakins would often project his photographs (by means of a "magic lantern") onto his canvases in order to trace the pictures' figures. Some have asked if he cheated by making use of this technique (a charge ably refuted in the aforementioned NYT piece), but he would never literally translate a photograph. Rather, he would frequently synthesize and blend several different photographs, adapting and altering them according to his original overall artistic conceptions. All of the coloring and fine detail work of the finished product would be his, and his sketches reveal him to have been a master of perspective. Besides, not all of his paintings made use of this technique, and taking as one's criterion the aesthetic quality of the finished canvas, such a quibble sounds rather silly.

A terror apologist may soon lead the Church of England


In last Friday's Wall Street Journal, the Rev Peter Mullen, rector of St Michael's, Cornhill and Anglican chaplain to the London Stock Exchange, wrote a discouraging piece about the probable next Archbishop of Canterbury. It seems that the Most Rev Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Wales, espouses all of the trite but trendy Leftist defenses of the Sept. 11th terrorists.


This is not the only recent indication we have received that Dr Williams is an unsuitable candidate. In an unprecedented move, he has agreed to address a gathering of the Anglican homosexual rights lobby. What's more, he has admitted ordaining a practicing homosexual to the ministry (something forbidden by the Church of England) and has adumbrated a desire to reverse the church's ban on such ordinations. Such a desire manifests not only the disconnect between the prelate's ideology and Christian morality but also a blind determination to ignore the lessons of the glaring Situation in the Catholic Church in America.


Readers of this blog will not be surprised that such a man could have been chosen to ascend the throne of Canterbury. In my recent post on Anglicanism (link not working, please scroll down to July 10th), I vaguely suspected that another internal Anglican schism might be coming, and when I expressed hope that, in such an event, good clerics and laymen might Cross the Tiber, I had in mind the likes of Dr Peter Mullen.

I don't do windows


Economics, either. Although I entered Yale intending to major in the subject -- and persevered in that course for my first three semesters -- I eventually decided (for reasons too tedious to recount here) to abandon that study in favor of the Humanities major. Although I am sufficiently qualified in the basics to blog on economic matters, for the sake of focus I shall leave that to those more interested, unless some story particularly excites me. To that end, I recommend you visit my friend Robert Locke's blog, as he has been doing some thought-provoking writing on the economy and markets.

Snobbery


Joseph Epstein, sometime editor of The American Scholar, has written a book on the fortunes of snobbery in America after the eclipse of the WASPs. Despite the mixed notice in this week's Times Book Review, I have little doubt it is a fine book. Mr Epstein is a man of wit as well as good taste and sense, as this article of his on the bow tie reflects.

The New York Times Learning page

is just full of interesting things today: 1) The front-page article on the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918, in which we ran the Jerries across that river; 2) the Times obituary for Dame Iris Murdoch; and 3) a Harper's cartoon about the Russian Revolution of 1905.

Elementary, my dear Watson


In the announcement of my new blog on his site, Mr De Feo introduced an anagram -- J.E. Sheep-Food -- that has been giving his readers fits. Subsequently, Mr Sheep-Food's Spanish cousin Jose P. Fehedo made an appearance. To those still struggling with it (and I don't blame you; Mr De Feo is a clever fellow), let me put your mind at ease.


Let us review the clues. The first is the context in which the anagram origially appeared, a discussion of a line by Metternich in which both Mr De Feo and I suspect the prince is actually quoting himself. It is after voicing such a suspicion that Mr De Feo goes on to quote from this mysterious Prof Sheep-Food.


Now, the names themselves. A cursory glance reveals that both J.E. Sheep-Food and Jose P. Fehedo contain the same letters and refer to the same person. But whom? Factor in the type of humor both Fehedo and Sheep-Food employ, and the answer presents itself.


Gentle reader, re-arranging the letters (and adjusting capitalization accordingly), one discovers that both the obscure philosopher and the failed poet are none other than Joseph De Feo himself.


As an aside, I thank my friend for attaching such a puzzle to his link to my page. His repeated references to it have surely boosted my exposure.

Tudor coins discovered beneath medieval priory


Archaeologists have found a cache of seven rare angel coins from the time of Henry VIII beneath what used to be the priory hospital of St Mary Spital in London. Such coins, although apparently once the focus of superstition, were also legal tender.


King Henry has figured in a flurry of stories of late. Yesterday, it transpired that a document the king had commissioned to propose arguments he might use to justify his divorce from Catherine will leave Britain for auction. This has the British historical community upset at the Government, with one historian remarking, "New Labour has shown itself extremely uncertain on the handling of heritage. Policies have been all about 'access' and 'social exclusion' and not about saving the artefacts or providing investment."

Given New Labour's record in other matters, is anyone really surprised?

OK, I did not follow my own advice regarding Bastille Day. Instead, I took in the exquisite Thomas Eakins show at the Metropolitan Museum. He is certainly among the finest American painters (if not the finest outright) and is so because of his passionate appreciation of the beauty of the human form. (He insisted on painting it accurately from life and required of his students intensive study of anatomy. How different from what passes for art 86 years after his death!)

His scientific quality of observation along with his bold imagination and what the New York Times reviewer called his "special ability . . . to convey the act of thinking" together make up his originality and brilliance.

On a related note . . .


I have for a while now pondered the idea of interviewing World War I veterans, who are even nearer extinction than their WWII counterparts. If anyone knows any such centenarians (English-speaking, please) or other, younger, people with memories of that war who might be interested in speaking with me, please e-mail me.

“We are the last generation that will be touched personally by the Holocaust, the last for whom it will be more than a matter of intellectual inquiry, the last to whom the dead are close enough to touch, yet frustratingly out of reach.”


This quotation comes from a thoughtful article in today’s New York Times Magazine in which the author describes the difficulties of searching for answers about his Jewish relatives 60 years after their murders. Beyond the personal details, it is a perceptive philosophical meditation on historical anxiety, on man’s doomed struggle against the merciless and impersonal force of Time.


Replacing the word “Holocaust” with the more general “World War II” (which embraces the former), I recognize and acutely share the author’s disquiet. That war, more than any other single event, has influenced our culture, both retroactively interpreting what came before and powerfully shaping what has succeeded. It was an epic, Manichaean confrontation waged on a mythological scale, and yet, in relation to it, we today occupy a singular point. 60 years on, we stand at the frontier between life and history, with each day seeing the war and its players fading ever more from the former into the latter.


The author of this piece -- a Mr Daniel Mendelsohn -- is right that we are saying goodbye to what no future generation will ever have again: an immediate, living connection to the events. I become aware of this when I consider that just ten years ago, the veterans I know were in their late 60s, of good health and sound mind. How far are most of them from that now, if indeed they still live. The Second World War will continue to influence our experience into the foreseeable future, but it will do so in a way that differs from the likes of the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, or the Persian War only in degree rather than in kind: as a relatively more recent and vivid moment in the only semi-differentiated body of the Past. Its transformation into an abstraction will be inevitable once society no longer has the tangible, visceral reminders of its reality in the persons of relatives who fought it.


Mr Mendelsohn is correct that those who come after us will view the war no more directly than words on a page. But what’s more, when its participants leave us, we shall lose our best reminder that, though mythological in scope, it was fought not by gods and giants but by men and boys like us. The loss of its living memory will necessarily leave our society more mundane and impoverished. This troubles me deeply; it feels wrong (and it is a sentimental reaction) that what happened to lesser eras should likewise befall The War. Such anxiety runs deep within.

Christopher's conservative brother


Britain's Peter Hitchens is one of the best columnists writing today. Although he was once a Trotskyite, he is now a traditional Tory -- the sort of conservative that understands the paramount importance of culture and morals. He brings to his cause intelligence, conviction, and tenacity, as seen both in his excellent book The Abolition of Britain and his weekly opinion pieces in The Mail on Sunday. This week he savages the Labour Government's recent decision to relax marijuana laws.

Levelers grovel in your graves


Today is Bastille Day, when most French will celebrate the violent overthrow of their ancient traditions and when some in New York will dance in the streets. Right-thinking people, of course, will have no part of such foolishness, but if some are looking for alternate activities, please allow me to offer a few suggestions.


As it is a Sunday, first hear Mass, offering your participation for the re-conversion of the
Eldest Daughter of the Church and invoking in your prayers St Denis, St Louis IX, St Jeanne d'Arc, St Bernadette, and the other great saints of French history.


Upon returning home, retire for the day to your study, put on some Machaut, and choose, perhaps, from among these books:


Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
King Louis XVI, Last Testament
Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre, Considerations on France
Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel
Warren Carroll, The Guillotine and the Cross
Simon Schama, Citizens
Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette
Paul Johnson, Napoleon


If it be still playing at a cinema in your area, you might cap your evening with a viewing of The Lady and the Duke.


And if you must commemorate the occasion in song, might I suggest, rather than "La Marseillaise," you hum "God Save the King." Although the authorship of this anthem is disputed, some say it was written for Louis XIV, with music by Lully and words by the abbess of Saint-Cyr.