Ben Wilson
Power to the People
‘New, new, new,’ Tony Blair marvelled early in his premiership; ‘everything is new.’ He personified a willing amnesia that is so much part of our age. The temptation to dwell in the present, with its bewildering newness and illusion of liberation, outweighs an interest in history as a vital part of our political life. This is an age ruled by restricted definitions of what is relevant. The decline of history and the languishing state of our democratic institutions and liberty are not unrelated.
It is perhaps a sign of the danger that democracy is facing that John Keane has been moved to write a history of it (the last such attempt on this scale was by the American Nahum Capen, whose first volume was published in 1874). It has become something
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George Mackay Brown's work 'not only captures the totality of Orcadian life but also draws from that life a humane vision of creaturely dwelling, of man’s symbiotic relationship with the land and its history'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/et-in-orcadia-ego
'Rather than concerning themselves with the machinations of great men', antiquaries 'sought to establish how people had lived, what they had worn, what stories they’d told and what games they’d played'.
http://ow.ly/abL350FcfW9
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