“Here, you see, are two kinds of work — one good, the other bad; one not far removed from a blessing, a lightening of life; the other a mere curse, a burden to life. What is the difference between them, then? This: one has hope in it, the other has not. It is manly to do the one kind of work, and manly also to refuse to do the other.” (William Morris, Useful Work versus Useless Toil, 1884)
In the course of the recent government mandated abolition of labour known as The Lockdown, I have become fascinated, perhaps even obsessed…
I’ve just been sent a very funny ‘joke’ on Whatsapp by a colleague, brightening an otherwise gloomy Cornish morning. It’s a link to the July 18th issue of The Economist, and ‘Bagehot’s’ column ‘The study of history is in decline in Britain’.
This is certainly the best piece of comic writing I’ve read in a long while. It might be worth someone putting together a few words on the decay of comic literature at some point, because this piece is a reminder, to an age that takes itself far too seriously, of the lost art of laughing at yourself.
I’ve…
What counts as a properly serious matter? To be more specific, what counts today as a serious topic for the historian? It is worth considering all the ways in which obscure, marginal and ‘eccentric’ practices have been rendered invisible by history. In some respects true history-making lies in asking and re-asking the question. What counts? In general, anything weird or eccentric has to cross a high threshold to reach into historical consciousness, precisely because it appears to be so unrepresentative of general historical tendencies.
Timothy Cooper
Experimental pieces
