Well. That was an amusing and instructive four-and-twenty hours. And the lessons appointed for the feast of Saint John Baptist were remarkably apt to it. This is going to be a very quick and no-frills commentary. Let us rehearse what happened. Gruppa Vagnera pulled out of the line, and, led by its proprietor, Yevgeny ViktorovichContinue reading “The end of the beginning”
Author Archives: Markham Shaw Pyle
Memorial Whitmonday: a personal reflection
A few thoughts on the day upon this year’s and every year’s consonance of Memorial Day in the United States of America and Eastertide, Ascensiontide, and Whitsuntide.
Done (pray God) with the cardiologist for another six months.
Regular, meaning desultory, service shall resume after Epiphany.
A Commination: Against VV Putin
Little Volodya, your doom is upon you. Hear me, Vladimir Vladimirovich! And hear me also, you sedulous, credulous bastard bootlicker and bumboy to Putin, Alyaksandr Ryhoravich Lukashenka! May all free peoples hear me: not only in Ukraine and in the world, but those in Russia who groan beneath your more than Mongol yoke, and whoContinue reading “A Commination: Against VV Putin”
Talkin’ Baseball
Congratulations to the Braves as a ballclub, from field to front office. Naturally, I’d have preferred that our lads had won it all, for this town and for Dusty. But this is baseball, the national pastime, the American game: a sport of individual effort in the service of a common cause, nine duels at aContinue reading “Talkin’ Baseball”
As the day draws to a close…
… here in the West, I, on behalf of Bapton Books as a whole as well as in propria persona, wish all of you a very Happy Hobbit Day 2021.
Newly released….
Uncle Grumpy’s Guide for the Perplexed:Volume I. Starting University. The first in a new series … in which Uncle Grumpy—me: the historian, critic, publisher, and retired attorney Markham Shaw Pyle—explains the purpose of a university; its pitfalls; how not to let it turn into a mere trade school for you; what tools to pick upContinue reading “Newly released….”
I am a man; I consider nothing human alien to me.
I’m not, as it happens, Jewish. In religion … I can do no better than to paraphrase Will Rogers: I’m not a member of any organized denomination, I’m an Anglican. My ancestors of record have, preponderantly, been Anglicans since the Elizabethan, though not necessarily the Henrician, Settlement. Before, and in some cases after, as recusants,Continue reading “I am a man; I consider nothing human alien to me.”
What have the Saxons ever done for us?
A late Lenten look at the adventus In a forthcoming video on my channel, I have occasion to say, “I do not (any more than do Francis Pryor and Susan Oosthuizen), credit the Anglo-Saxon invasion-and-replacement mythos.” (I may add that I am likewise unconvinced of the traditional view of the “Claudian” Roman arrival in Britain,Continue reading “What have the Saxons ever done for us?”
Common senses
The evidence of one’s senses is always in both senses material: a point which writers generally, and historians particularly, ought to bear in mind. Life is not carried on, carried out, lived, in hermetically sealed, soundproof rooms. The writing of history is a literary art. The writer of fiction is the historian of his orContinue reading “Common senses”
Markham Shaw Pyle, author & historian 