A Lark Ascending

After being enthralled by Richard Evans' book on Nazi Germany 1933-39, this took a bit of getting into. A rather plain telling of the tale - not difficult to read or follow, there's just something a bit donnish and tight-lipped about the style. But having got Wellington to India it's starting to engage me. Might just be the problem I generally have with the start of biographies - I can't get too excited about ancestral background or the natures of siblings (although at least one of Wellington's had an import impact on his career and a sister had a bit of a harum-scarum experience in Revolutionary France). Alongside, another volume in one of my favourite detective series: I shouldn't really like these as most of the leading characters are aristocratic buggers (as was Wellington!) - but I do. Clearly part of some devious plot to brainwash us into thinking that the toffs are OK really.

Yes, it looks like it's going to walk away with all the awards. Last night saw the return of one of my favourite thriller series: Spiral (or 'Engrenages' as the original French series is called). Series 5 - gritty, exciting and packed with engaging characters.

I am very jealous (especially the quartet gig). Surman was on fine form with the Bergen Big Band at the London Jazz Festival in November. Always very gracious with his time with younger musicians. Before the concert he did a short performance with a choir in the foyer.

Didn't much enjoy this. Like watching a comic book. I suspect that was the point.

There's some more about the clip here: http://www.dgmlive.com/news.htm?entry=262 Ignore the first post which is a spoof from 2006. The 2015 comment is below it. I'd always wondered when this was broadcast - March 1970. I didn't even have a record player but it still left an impression (didn't have a KC record until the following spring). I assume the bassist is Gordon Haskell? [Favourite bit of miming on ToTP - Fairport Convention doing an instrumental medley. One tune had a mandolin part so Dave Swarbrick mimed with his fiddle; when the tune swapped to a fiddle lead he exchanged it for a mandolin. This was during a brief few weeks in 1971 when ToTP had an album spot where a 'head' band played three tracks from an album. The runes were saying the future lay in LPs - they were back to singles very quickly.]

Thanks for the rec, Shawn. The episodes are perfect for me. On a work day I like about 45 mins of engaging TV around 9.00 before bed. These fit perfectly. And there are lots of them!

So what did you think of it? I first saw it as a teen when I snuck into a screening held for a film studies class I was not enrolled in. It wowed me then and I have seen it several times since. It remains my all-time favorite dramatic film. Enjoyed it. Can understand why it was so influential. Not convinced by 'the greatest film of all time' hype but that sort of thing generally passes me by. I'm not a film buff. Have to say I didn't see the 'Rosebud' ending coming until about a minute before the climax. The main flaw in that film is nobody was around to actually hear him say "Rosebud". Apart from the film crew. Maybe Welles invented Post-modern too. I'm onto disc 3 of Series 1 of The Good Wife....really starting to enjoy this now the themes are getting established.

I remember seeing the TOTP broadcast when it was first broadcast. Never seen it since. Keith Tippett miming! Never thought I'd see that.

So what did you think of it? I first saw it as a teen when I snuck into a screening held for a film studies class I was not enrolled in. It wowed me then and I have seen it several times since. It remains my all-time favorite dramatic film. Enjoyed it. Can understand why it was so influential. Not convinced by 'the greatest film of all time' hype but that sort of thing generally passes me by. I'm not a film buff. Have to say I didn't see the 'Rosebud' ending coming until about a minute before the climax.

I too think this is a marvellous disc. Sometimes when you hear these discs put out long after the event you can feel 'well that was nice but...'. But this one really held my attention.

That's always been it for me. The narrative drive. I've never much cared for history books that adopt a thematic approach. I recall many I had to use at university with chapters like 'Elites' with a survey of similarities and differences across European countries. Scholarly, undoubtedly, and important at the research end of history. But I need the narrative grip - my favourite writers manage to handle analysis within a broadly narrative approach. I'm the same with music. I find modernist deconstructions of narrative and conventional time frames interesting. But nothing grips me like a Mahler symphony sweeping forward on a path that can be followed. The debating thing with the teacher I always found fun too. I spent my last year at school trying to convince my teacher (I had a string of superb history teachers) that Prince Eugene of Savoy was more significant than the Duke of Marlborough. Why did I care? I was 18, for god's sake. One of the light bulb moments for me was entering 6th Form (16-18). History suddenly changed from being what happened to interpretations of what happened - historiography and all that. I loved seeing things I'd learnt earlier challenged and disputed. Probably why I get a bit prickly about mythologies that build up around 'great' jazz or classical musicians. I was taught to be sceptical about the 'Great Man' theory of history at an early age.

Strangely I can recall distinguishing history as the thing I really like at school at about the age of 7!!! When I was 13 I persuaded my dad to buy me a magazine series based round Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples (a chapter from Churchill's book followed by six or seven articles by contemporary historians). I don't think I read much of it at the time but the colour pictures were astounding and helped give me a mental picture of the past. I've still got the 7 bound volumes - must have taken 3 years to collect them all. I grew up on Royal Air Force bases so we were surrounded by Battle of Britain mythology - a Spitfire or Hurricane at the gate, Battle of Britain day etc. I devoured the autobiographies of World War II pilots as a 12/13 year old. Think I was still reading the Famous Five in terms of 'literature' at the same time.

Yeah, but that's just the history they've lived. Like most things, enjoyment/understanding of history comes from context. Kids are hitting history with a very limited context (and that becomes more the case as you move down the social scale). Some get hooked - by a person or period or event or by a particularly inspiring teacher (as is the case with other subjects). I did. Most don't. Adults watch TV, read, have broad interests, travel and gain that context where what once seemed like 'facts to learn' starts to have a purpose and meaning. One of the most common comments I get from parents are along the lines of 'I didn't much like history at school but I've learnt to love it since'. I don't think that's necessarily a result of poor teaching (though it can be); more that as kids they did not have the context to be receptive. By the time I reached 21 (at the end of a History degree) I knew a lot about some quite narrow areas of history. Having to teach over a broad area of time and place sped up my knowledge but much of what I've come to really love has been a result of novels read, things seen on TV, places visit and, above all, music I've heard (that kick started an interest in the civil rights movement). I do think adults forget how little they really did know as kids. They tend to become fixated on what they consider important as a result of a lifetime of historical interest and then feel it is imperative that kids know those things. Sometimes they get to be education ministers and create completely daft curriculum models that show no understanding of where kids are coming from! I've always been against the 'things young people must know' approach to history. A nation that has its young people learning different areas of history (related in some areas to the experiences of their own communities) will, to my mind, lead to a diversity of experience in the nation as a whole that can only be beneficial. Not the way politicians see it, however, who see history teaching as a means of inculcating a national story in order to assist social cohesion.

I'll have to play it again!

I only heard it a long time after release - late 1990s. So it was interesting to hear where they came from. But I can't have played it more than 3 or 4 times.

You don't need anything more than what you have mentioned there. If, Grey and Waterloo are the heart of their pastoral proggery. Lots of lovely Jimmy Hastings on flute. There's a live album from around that time with orchestra (a concert I attended) which is nice but duplicates what you find elsewhere. Also one recorded in Croydon that I've never heard but will probably be much the same. 'Cunning Stunts' (dreadful title but Caravan seemed to delight in toilet humour) has its moments but they 'rawk-out' to fill up the time in too many places. Better to look into the Egg, Hatfield and the North and National Health records which operate in a similar zone. Having said that, I was a listener when these things came out so might simply be unsympathetic to what came after. They still play quite regularly. Here are a couple of them receiving "honorary fellowships by Canterbury Christ Church University" for services to music. Not to literature, I notice: http://officialcaravan.co.uk/blog/2012/11/23/pye-hastings-and-geoffrey-richardson-receive-honorary-fellowships/

Most people gain their knowledge of history as adults. They are then outraged that kids are unaware of those things.

I don't think I've ever paid more than about £20 for a single CD (and very rarely at that). Spending on CDs peaked in the mid-noughties when £15 was the norm for full price. As a downloader now £7.99 is the usual maximum though things are often much cheaper. My e-music account has a legacy package that for some reason gives me each track at 21p instead of the usual 42p. So a 12 track album comes out at around £2.50. Which is mad! Encourages hoarding...but also experimentation and chance taking.

Thanks for that. I thought it would be more than what history teachers over here call 'pub quiz' history. In England students take no formal tests in history until 16 (and only then if they chose to carry it that far - many drop it at 14). Assessment is carried out by schools themselves within a framework set by government up to that point. I assess my 13-14 year olds about 6 times in the year based on end of unit assessments. They are measured on a series of Levels from 1 to 8 which are skills rather than content related (based on Bloom's taxonomy) - although you clearly need good factual knowledge to progress beyond Level 4. Things like causation, change over time, source analysis, historical interpretation underlie what the students learn. Though it's all in the air at the moment. The last secretary of state detested skills-based teaching and just wanted students to learn national myths off by heart. So the skills levels got swept away but with nothing to replace them - I think he expects the market to provide!

I'm not familiar with the US education system so this is a serious question. Do 8th graders (13-14 year olds?) have to pass a history test? What happens if they fail? And are the tests multiple choice like this? Or is this just a web thing based on the standard curriculum? (we get similar things regularly cropping up on British websites bearing no resemblance to how students are assessed in school).

Context was:

24/30 And they let me teach American history! Clueless about all those internal explorers. I've also never seen 'Pearl Harbor'. Picked up a tip for making tests more popular though - surround the page with pictures of scantily clad girls and celebrities.

tergiversation Came across it in the context of the diplomacy of the late 1930s. Assumed it was a typo.