Charlottesville August 2017: Where is the Truth?

This article was first published in New View magazine Issue 85 Autumn 2017 When people in Britain recall the summer of 2017 they may remember the two blockbuster movies showing that season which evoked nostalgia for a summer 77 years earlier – June – August 1940: “Dunkirk” and “Churchill”. On release exactly a year after the Brexit referendum, these two films reinforced the British...
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Individual – Nation – World

This article was first published in New View magazine Issue 84 Summer 2017 One of the major features of human development over the past 100 years has been the relationship between nationalism and what is variously called ‘internationalism’, ‘supranationalism’ or ‘cosmopolitanism’. First, the difference between these latter three terms should be clarified. Internationalism simply...
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1849 and 2017: Thoughts on ‘Globalisation’

This article was first published in New View magazine Issue 86 Jan. – Mar. 2018 It seems to this writer that there has been a certain similarity between the events of the years 1848 and 1849 on the one hand and those of 2016 and 2017 on the other. In 1848 and 2016 there was a widespread populist revolt across the western world against the existing Establishment which was severely shaken by...
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The Year of the Black Swan – Brexit and Trump

This article was first published in New View magazine Issue 82, Jan. – Mar. 2017 The study of biography is an important and growing area of research in anthroposophy, related as it is to Rudolf Steiner’s work on the study of karma and reincarnation. As such, biographical work has a socially hygienic function, as it helps to promote the understanding of time (and timing) in one’s life...
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Moltke, the West’s War on Russia & the ‘New Roman Empire’

This article was first published  in The Present Age magazine Vol. 2, No. 3, June 2016   In his Reflections and Memories, written in Homburg in November 1914, Helmuth von Moltke makes quite clear that “Our failure to overwhelm France in the first attack was due to England’s fast intervention”(1). The British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey kept British military plans and...
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Echoes of the 9th Century in Our Time

This article was first published in New View magazine Issue 81 Autumn 2016 “Matthew was an angel as a young child – sensitive, well-behaved, affectionate, often joyful, and often dreaming away on another plane. After turning nine, however, he soon changed into quite a different person.  He was sometimes rude and critical, and often moody if not downright wretched…. Prior to age seven or...
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