Saturday, December 29, 2007

Trevelyan: Whigs & Tories

Patonga Creek 7 IMG_7702
Casuarinas on Patonga Creek

I've been reading 'The Stuarts' by Trevelyan. It has the usual hagiography of Charles I, which I am not prepared to buy. But for the first time, I feel that the Tory/Whig difference started to make sense.

Churchill tries to tell the history of the English 'constitution' and political arrangements in his "History of the English Speaking Peoples", but despite his overriding interest in political arrangements and in his family, he makes fails to explain these or why the English made the peace they made after Marlborough's resounding victories, whereas, it all seems to make sense in Trevelyan.

And as for Charles I, I'll take Geoffrey Robertson (The Tyrannicide Brief) over the two authors above. (But given the English ended up with the Stuart monarchs, Charles I as a saint was bound to prevail as the official viewpoint.)

3 comments:

Diane said...

Merrick,
On one of your posts you mention a 'blue-flowered wandering jew'. I just wanted to let you know that this is actually a native plant, common to Australia and New Zealand, and seriously endangered now, not least because people conscious of ecology keep ripping it up, confusing it with the white-flowered invasive species.

Sorry I don't have time to hunt through the past posts..

Merricks said...

Thanks, Diane, for the comment. Not sure which blog, but if it had a photo, if you clicked you might have seen, that it was identified as Commelina cyanea, a native wandering jew..

Merricks said...

Aha. I finally found the post which bothered you: http://merricks-merricks.blogspot.com.au/2007/12/exotics.html.
I had in mind another:http://merricks-merricks.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/one-more-chapter.html (which has a photo and an ID and says the plant as native...)