Winston Churchill (center) inspects the ruins of Coventry Cathedral on Sept. 28, 1941. The English city of Coventry was bombed many times during World War II, most notably during the Coventry Blitz of Nov. 14 and 15, 1940. Photograph by Capt. Horton. Courtesy the Imperial War Museums.

Rethinking history: Churchill and cancel culture

October 28, 2021

Recently, I bought a copy of October/November issue of Military History magazine, which featured a cover story on Alexander the Great, who readers of this blog know has been a lifelong passion of mine, along with the ancient Greeks.

I was soon disappointed. His conquest of the Persian Empire in 331 B.C. was written off as pure narcissism. There was no mention of possible motives (the backdrop of the Greco-Persian wars; his father Philip II of Macedon’s dream of conquering Persia; his mother Olympias instilling in him a divine sense of purpose; his tutor Aristotle schooling him in the Homeric idea of arete, or excellence, which often saw its fulfillment in military glory; and finally his own inexplicable pothos, or longing, for the next horizon.)

There was no discussion of Alexander, having conquered Persia, instituting self-rule in the disparate regions of his far-flung empire. The notion that he killed all the men and enslaved the women and children is laughable. Who was going to run things and do the work? He wasn’t importing Greeks and Macedonians to do this.

Finally, there was no sense of his legacy, which includes the dissemination of Hellenistic culture, including Greek, the lingua franca of the empire. Centuries later, Greek translations of the Gospels would enable the spread of Christianity. In a sense, Alexander — who came from a world that knew how to spin stories and identities in words and images — made Jesus’ story more readily available. (Plus how could Alexander have no legacy? More than 2,000 years later there he was on a magazine cover.)

I thought about all this as I read The New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker’s review of Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s “Churchill’s Shadow: The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill.” To sum it up: He’s not a fan.

Read on…

My big fat Greek odyssey, Part V: Power and death in Vergina

December 11, 2016

With the recent death of Fidel Castro – and the return of “The Hollow Crown” series to PBS, based on Shakespeare’s Henry and Richard histories – my thoughts turn to Vergina, the highlight of My Big Fat Greek Odyssey and a place were leaders were made and unmade.

It was here in the ancient capital of Aigai that Philip II was assassinated on his daughter Cleopatra’s wedding day in a kind of “Godfather” moment. It was here that his son and Cleopatra’s full brother, Alexander, became king. And it was here that the ancient burial mounds of kings of Macedon were unearthed by archaeologist Manolis Andronokis in 1977.

Today, a museum sits on the site, with another coming. We arrived on a rainy morning and were immediately delivered into a world that is overwhelming. This is a dark space that throws the treasures it protects into dramatic relief. Crowns of gold leaves. ...

The once and future king

November 14, 2014

You would think that someone whose earthly life ended more than 2,000 years ago would be beyond controversy. But then look at Jesus. He’s still “a sign to be contradicted,” to quote the Gospels, almost two millennia after he was crucified.

So it is with Alexander the Great. Some 330 years before Jesus was born, this king of Macedon and hegemon of Greece conquered the Persian Empire, ushering in a Hellenistic age that would unite East and West. (The reason we call Jesus Christ “Jesus Christ” is because of the Alexandrian spread of the Greek language and culture.)

Such is the Alexander mystique – he never lost a battle but died at age 32 in Babylon, possibly of cerebral malaria – that he thrives in the imagination today as a metaphor for many things, including leadership from the front; the ultimate gay in the military (many consider him to have been the lover of his right-hand man, Hephaestion); and the tension between East and West.

That tension has escalated recently with Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s decision to give waxworks of Alexander, his father, Philip II of Macedon and his mother, Olympias, pride of place in a new archaeological museum in the capital city of Skopje, which already has the world’s largest statue of Alexander in its central square.

A little background here...