Author Archives: Markham Shaw Pyle

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”

Civil rights – and wrongs – in America

Markham Shaw Pyle is a published legal, political, Congressional, diplomatic, and cultural historian, and the author of “Fools, Drunks, and the United States”: August 12, 1941; Benevolent Designs: The Countess and the General: George Washington, Selina Countess of Huntingdon, their correspondence, & the evangelizing of America; “Roses and Bayonets: A theory of civil disobedience;” andContinue reading “Civil rights – and wrongs – in America”

Credentialism, Careerism, and the Death of Academic History

This morning, on social media, I ran across a post in which a young PhD candidate at a Midwestern University was bemoaning the domination of the publishing lists in History by persons who were not academic historians. I’m not going to embarrass the young man, or those who commented on his post, by being moreContinue reading “Credentialism, Careerism, and the Death of Academic History”

Book review: Escape to the countryside: Peter Maughan’s Batch Magna Chronicles

Ham-on-Wye is a perfectly plausible English place-name. So is Honey Coombe. And so is Batch Magna. We’ll come back to that. A few days ago (it’s been pissing down rain since), on my morning constitutional, I saw, against the backdrop of oak, pecan, and magnolia, not only mockingbirds and cardinals, but egrets as well. We’llContinue reading “Book review: Escape to the countryside: Peter Maughan’s Batch Magna Chronicles”