This article was first published in The Present Age magazine Nov. 2018 Vol.4 No.8 This month we commemorate the Armistice of 11 November 1918 and the end of the First World War, although fighting of various kinds went on in numerous countries for the next few years, and although the 1914-1918 conflict would soon be seen by more far-sighted observers as the ‘first round’ of a conflict that would sooner or later begin again. Anthroposophers are familiar with Rudolf Steiner’s statements about nationalism1 being a...
read moreThis article was first published in the monthly magazine The Present Age Vol. 4 No. 6 Sept 2018 The events in the eastern German city of Chemnitz (Karl-Marx-Stadt during the Communist era) in late August this year, the brutal murder and assaults, the angry reaction of the citizens, the paranoid, exaggerated response of the mainstream media and the cynical attempts of political parties and factions of the Far Right and Far Left to exploit the situation to their own advantage were a symptom of the social sickness that prevails in Europe today:...
read moreThis article was first published in New View magazine #89 Oct.-Dec. 2018 On 5 September the British government revealed, on the basis of what it called “exhaustive CCTV analysis”, the identities of the two men it claimed had arrived in Britain on 2 March and had been responsible for deliberate nerve agent poisonings in and near the city of Salisbury. It said that these men were Russian agents working for the Main Intelligence Directorate (GU, formerly GRU), the military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the...
read moreThis article was first published in The Present Age magazine Vol. 3 No. 12, March 2018 When I was teaching English in Japan many years ago, one of the many difficulties my students had with the English language was the difference between ‘a’ and ‘the’, which language teachers and linguists call the indefinite and definite article respectively. It was not surprising that the students had those difficulties, as there is no article at all in Japanese: in their own language the Japanese get by quite contentedly without...
read moreThis article was first published in the monthly magazine The Present Age Vol. 3 No. 7 in October 2017 This is the fourth in a short series of articles about the historical consequences of the rivalry between Philip IV (the Fair) of France (r.1285-1314), who destroyed the Order of the Knights Templar, and his rival Edward I of England (r. 1272-1307) who sought to conquer Wales and Scotland. Philip married his daughter to Edward’s son, and out of this fateful marriage later came the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) between France and England,...
read moreThis article was first published in the monthly magazine The Present Age September 2017, Vol. 3 No. 6 This is the third in a series of 5 articles which is rooted in the tortuous destiny between England and France, the two western countries which ‘pioneered’ modern nationalism, that view of life that has had such fateful consequences over the past 250 years. The modern western concept of the centralised, administrative state emerged in Britain and France 1300-1600 and there was a gradual identification of the British and French peoples with...
read moreThis article was first published in the monthly magazine The Present Age August 2017, Vol. 3 No. 5 The previous article to this one, in the July issue of “The Present Age” magazine, outlined how and why a certain mysterious and often tragic connection can be said to exist between the deeds of King Philip IV (‘the Fair’) of France (1285-1314) and those of King Henry VIII of England (1509-1547) via the destruction of the Knights Templar, the Hundred Years’ War between the two countries, the sons of Edward III of England, the...
read moreThis article was first published in The Present Age magazine Vol. 3 No. 5 July 2017 In a lecture of 1 October 1916 Rudolf Steiner discusses the superficiality of much of the modern study of history and points out that “when one traces things back to their causes in the superficial easy-going way that modern history largely employs, one comes to positive absurdities. Ultimately, one would have to come to the opinion that the greatest part – perhaps even the most widespread part of what happens – owes its existence not to sense but to...
read moreThis article was first published (with slight abridgements) in New View magazine Issue 80 July – Sept. 2016 On 23 June this year Britain’s referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) resulted in a dramatic decision to exit the European Union (EU), but the decision does not change certain fundamental underlying elements of our social and economic life today. The economic establishment has shown very little sign at all of changing its practices since the crisis of 2008, and furthermore, relations between the superpowers, the...
read moreThis 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 mythos of national unity in the face of imminent national disaster and threat. Although “Churchill” is about the period immediately before the...
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