Dear Lord, I hereby request an extra ten years to my life span!

Well, I need those extra years if I am ever going to get through the mounting pile (or perhaps that should be 'mountain'!) of waiting-to-be-read books!  No sooner do I finish reading the interesting details of John Lilburne's life (see below) than I came across another book review in 'The Speccie' on a subject that has long fascinated me but which I have neve quite got around to studying in any sort of detail - and yes, that is the story of my life!  I refer to the history of Britain and 'the Jewel of the East' - India, as told this time by David Gilmour in his book "The British in India: Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience".

Needless to say, to begin with it was all about money and loot but gradually it evolved into something rather different.  According to the review, it's possible that had it remained a relationship based on good (or bad!) old-fashioned greed it might have gone better.  But alas and alack, it wasn't too long before the 'memsahibs' came and then after them came the evangelical Christians.  It was, apparently, all downhill after that!  But what a story!  And what a truly remarkable collection of people they were who mostly volunteered to make that incredibly long and hugely dangerous sea journey round Africa and up to India.

I trust the shade of Charles Dickens will forgive me my trespasses if I tear one of his most famous passages from its context and use it here:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Couldn't have put it better myself!

 

 

Comments

[Whitewall]

Fabulous writing on your part David...and Mr. Dickens held his own pretty well too! Re Mr. Dickens' passage: "it was the age of wisdom"...presently we are in the age of ignoring and dismissing timeless wisdom. Meaning, Satan is at work in the world.