Show Notes
It is astonishing to me that we went from the first powered flight of a few hundred feet in 1903 to attempting to fly the Atlantic in 1919. The Daily Mail had offered a prize of £10,000 to cross the Atlantic. The pilots called it the Big Hop. Nowadays we think nothing of it but back then they had open cockpits, primitive navigation tools, unreliable weather forecasting and many other problems. This was right on the edge of what was possible at the time. And not always on the right edge!...
More from Subject to Change
In part 2 of the story the hero finally arrives. Coxinga. Loyal subject of the Ming emperor or disobedient child? Coxinga is the son of Nicholas Iquan who made the journey from outlaw trader/pirate to Ming admiral. Iquan must have bitterly regretted his decision to give Coxinga the education of a Confucian scholar. While the rest of the family weighs how to deal with the invading Manchus in a thoroughly pragmatic manner, the high minded Coxinga is having none of it. This episode tells ...
Jonathan Clements is back to talk about Coxinga and the Fall of the Ming Dynasty, a tale so convoluted that its hero only gets born at the end of episode one! What happened in 17th century China for the Manchu invaders to just roll on in and take over? Includes thoughts on the benefits of spattering yourself in mud and risking tetanus, Manchu purges likened to "playing whack-a-mole with human beings", why Chinese people are scared of Slough, and the rebellious nature of haircuts.
Armand D'Angour (Professor of Classics at Oxford University and Fellow of Jesus College) gives his take on Chrisopher Nolan's Odyssey and (more to the point) talks about the poem and the poet. Along the way we talk about Emily Wilson's blistering review (which is where the title of this episode comes from). And Armand gives some readings from the poem including this gem of a translation by Alexander Pope (lightly reworked by Armand): Abandoned in neglect poor Argos lay, unhoused, unca...
At the start of WW2 the U-Boat threat gave the British sleepless nights. But even during the Happy Time (of which there were two) when ships were being sunk at a terrific rate the German effort was too little, too late. And then the war in the Atlantic turned against them and their casualties soared and successes became rarer. Roger Moorhouse has written a terrific book discussing all this (and much more), 'Wolfpack: Inside Hitler's U-Boat War' where he looks the campaign from the German po...
This one is about Gabriele D'Annunzio. Italian poet, born in 1863 . . . I can already sense your attention drifting. But hang in there! A more lurid description would be that he is the poet who seduced over a thousand women. It is still puzzling exactly what women saw in him. As one bewildered woman said: "I have just met D'Annunzio. Can this be the man the great Duse loved? He is small, he is bald, and his teeth are in three different colours." (The great Duse here being Eleonora Duse,...