Podcasts about Abyssinian

Episode: 3319 Perhaps WWII really began when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935.  Today, when did World-War-Two begin?

Shahadat of Sons of Hazrat Muslim bin Aqil (a)Wednesday June 18th 202522nd Dhul Hijjah 1446 AH* Muslim bin ‘Aqil's martyrdom marks the beginning of the Karbala tragedy, and his two sons, Muhammad and Ibrahim, were martyred brutally about a year later.* The Quran's 31st chapter is named after Luqmān, an Abyssinian sage known for his wisdom, though not necessarily a prophet.* Allah granted Luqmān wisdom and used his words of advice in the Quran to teach key values to humanity.* Luqmān's first advice to his son is Tawhid: never associate partners with Allah, as shirk is a grave injustice.* He reminds his son about Qiyāmat: that even the smallest deeds will be brought forth by Allah for judgment, reinforcing accountability.* Luqmān stresses the importance of establishing prayer as an act of submission, gratitude, and seeking divine support.* He instructs his son to command good and forbid evil, showing concern for the moral wellbeing of society.* Luqmān emphasizes patience as essential for fulfilling duties and withstanding hardships and opposition.* He teaches humility in behavior: do not act arrogantly, be moderate in walking, and keep the voice gentle and low.* Allah adds advice about gratitude to parents, obedience within limits, and how Muslim bin ‘Aqil's sons embodied strong faith, duty, patience, and sacrifice even in hardship.Donate towards our programs today: https://jaffari.org/donate/Jaffari Community Centre (JCC Live)

Send me a messageThe story of the British expedition to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) to rescue British civilians being held captive by the Emperor Tewodros in his mountain fortress at Magdala.Become A PatronMake A DonationSupport the show

In this episode, James Marriott and I discuss who we think are the best twenty English poets. This is not the best poets who wrote in English, but the best British poets (though James snuck Sylvia Plath onto his list…). We did it like that to make it easier, not least so we could base a lot of our discussion on extracts in The Oxford Book of English Verse (Ricks edition). Most of what we read out is from there. We read Wordsworth, Keats, Hardy, Milton, and Pope. We both love Pope! (He should be regarded as one of the very best English poets, like Milton.) There are also readings of Herrick, Bronte, Cowper, and MacNiece. I plan to record the whole of ‘The Eve of St. Agnes' at some point soon.Here are our lists and below is the transcript (which may have more errors than usual, sorry!)HOGod Tier* Shakespeare“if not first, in the very first line”* Chaucer* Spenser* Milton* Wordsworth* Eliot—argue for Pope here, not usually includedSecond Tier* Donne* Herbert* Keats* Dryden* Gawain poet* Tom O'Bedlam poetThird Tier* Yeats* Tennyson* Hopkins* Coleridge* Auden* Shelley* MarvellJMShakespeareTier* ShakespeareTier 1* Chaucer* Milton* WordsworthTier 2* Donne* Eliot* Keats* Tennyson* Spencer* Marvell* PopeTier 3* Yeats* Hopkins* Blake* Coleridge* Auden* Shelley* Thomas Hardy* Larkin* PlathHenry: Today I'm talking to James Marriott, Times columnist, and more importantly, the writer of the Substack Cultural Capital. And we are going to argue about who are the best poets in the English language. James, welcome.James: Thanks very much for having me. I feel I should preface my appearance so that I don't bring your podcast and disrepute saying that I'm maybe here less as an expert of poetry and more as somebody who's willing to have strong and potentially species opinions. I'm more of a lover of poetry than I would claim to be any kind of academic expert, just in case anybody thinks that I'm trying to produce any definitive answer to the question that we're tackling.Henry: Yeah, no, I mean that's the same for me. We're not professors, we're just very opinionated boys. So we have lists.James: We do.Henry: And we're going to debate our lists, but what we do agree is that if we're having a top 20 English poets, Shakespeare is automatically in the God Tier and there's nothing to discuss.James: Yeah, he's in a category of his own. I think the way of, because I guess the plan we've gone for is to rather than to rank them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 into sort of, what is it, three or four broad categories that we're competing over.Henry: Yes, yes. TiersJames: I think is a more kind of reasonable way to approach it rather than trying to argue exactly why it should be one place above Shelly or I don't know, whatever.Henry: It's also just an excuse to talk about poets.James: Yes.Henry: Good. So then we have a sort of top tier, if not the first, in the very first line as it were, and you've got different people. To me, you've got Chaucer, Milton, and Wordsworth. I would also add Spenser and T.S. Eliot. So what's your problem with Spenser?James: Well, my problem is ignorance in that it's a while since I've read the Fairy Queen, which I did at university. Partly is just that looking back through it now and from what I remember of university, I mean it is not so much that I have anything against Spenser. It's quite how much I have in favour of Milton and Wordsworth and Chaucer, and I'm totally willing to be argued against on this, but I just can't think that Spenser is in quite the same league as lovely as many passages of the Fairy Queen are.Henry: So my case for Spenser is firstly, if you go through something like the Oxford Book of English Verse or some other comparable anthology, he's getting a similar page count to Shakespeare and Milton, he is important in that way. Second, it's not just the fairy queen, there's the Shepherd's Calendar, the sonnets, the wedding poems, and they're all highly accomplished. The Shepherd's Calendar particularly is really, really brilliant work. I think I enjoyed that more as an undergraduate, actually, much as I love the Fairy Queen. And the third thing is that the Fairy Queen is a very, very great epic. I mean, it's a tremendous accomplishment. There were lots of other epics knocking around in the 16th century that nobody wants to read now or I mean, obviously specialists want to read, but if we could persuade a few more people, a few more ordinary readers to pick up the fairy queen, they would love it.James: Yes, and I was rereading before he came on air, the Bower of Bliss episode, which I think is from the second book, which is just a beautifully lush passage, passage of writing. It was really, I mean, you can see why Keats was so much influenced by it. The point about Spenser's breadth is an interesting one because Milton is in my top category below Shakespeare, but I think I'm placing him there pretty much only on the basis of Paradise Lost. I think if we didn't have Paradise Lost, Milton may not even be in this competition at all for me, very little. I know. I don't know if this is a heresy, I've got much less time for Milton's minor works. There's Samuel Johnson pretty much summed up my feelings on Lycidas when he said there was nothing new. Whatever images it can supply are long ago, exhausted, and I do feel there's a certain sort of dryness to Milton's minor stuff. I mean, I can find things like Il Penseroso and L'Allegro pretty enough, but I mean, I think really the central achievement is Paradise Lost, whereas Spenser might be in contention, as you say, from if you didn't have the Fairy Queen, you've got Shepherd's Calendar, and all this other sort of other stuff, but Paradise Lost is just so massive for me.Henry: But if someone just tomorrow came out and said, oh, we found a whole book of minor poetry by Virgil and it's all pretty average, you wouldn't say, oh, well Virgil's less of a great poet.James: No, absolutely, and that's why I've stuck Milton right at the top. It's just sort of interesting how unbelievably good Paradise Lost is and how, in my opinion, how much less inspiring the stuff that comes after it is Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regained I really much pleasure out of at all and how, I mean the early I think slightly dry Milton is unbelievably accomplished, but Samuel Johnson seems to say in that quote is a very accomplished use of ancient slightly worn out tropes, and he's of putting together these old ideas in a brilliant manner and he has this sort of, I mean I guess he's one of your late bloomers. I can't quite remember how old he is when he publishes Paradise Lost.Henry: Oh, he is. Oh, writing it in his fifties. Yeah.James: Yeah, this just extraordinary thing that's totally unlike anything else in English literature and of all the poems that we're going to talk about, I think is the one that has probably given me most pleasure in my life and the one that I probably return to most often if not to read all the way through then to just go over my favourite bits and pieces of it.Henry: A lot of people will think Milton is heavy and full of weird references to the ancient world and learned and biblical and not very readable for want of a better word. Can you talk us out of that? To be one of the great poets, they do have to have some readability, right?James: Yeah, I think so, and it's certainly how I felt. I mean I think it's not a trivial objection to have to Milton. It's certainly how I found him. He was my special author paper at university and I totally didn't get on with him. There was something about his massive brilliance that I felt. I remember feeling like trying to write about Paradise Lost was trying to kind of scratch a huge block of marble with your nails. There's no way to get a handle on it. I just couldn't work out what to get ahold of, and it's only I think later in adulthood maybe reading him under a little less pressure that I've come to really love him. I mean, the thing I would always say to people to look out for in Milton, but it's his most immediate pleasure and the thing that still is what sends shivers done my spine about him is the kind of cosmic scale of Paradise Lost, and it's almost got this sort of sci-fi massiveness to it. One of my very favourite passages, which I may inflict on you, we did agree that we could inflict poetry on one another.Henry: Please, pleaseJames: It's a detail from the first book of Paradise Lost. Milton's talking about Satan's architect in hell Mulciber, and this is a little explanation of who or part of his explanation of who Mulciber is, and he says, Nor was his name unheard or unadoredIn ancient Greece; and in Ausonian landMen called him Mulciber; and how he fellFrom Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry JoveSheer o'er the crystal battlements: from mornTo noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,A summer's day, and with the setting sunDropt from the zenith, like a falling star,On Lemnos, th' Aegaean isle. Thus they relate,ErringI just think it's the sort of total massiveness of that universe that “from the zenith to like a falling star”. I just can't think of any other poet in English or that I've ever read in any language, frankly, even in translation, who has that sort of scale about it, and I think that's what can most give immediate pleasure. The other thing I love about that passage is this is part of the kind of grandeur of Milton is that you get this extraordinary passage about an angel falling from heaven down to th' Aegean Isle who's then going to go to hell and the little parenthetic remark at the end, the perm just rolls on, thus they relate erring and paradise lost is such this massive grand thing that it can contain this enormous cosmic tragedy as a kind of little parenthetical thing. I also think the crystal battlements are lovely, so wonderful kind of sci-fi detail.Henry: Yes, I think that's right, and I think it's under appreciated that Milton was a hugely important influence on Charles Darwin who was a bit like you always rereading it when he was young, especially on the beagle voyage. He took it with him and quotes it in his letters sometimes, and it is not insignificant the way that paradise loss affects him in terms of when he writes his own epic thinking at this level, thinking at this scale, thinking at the level of the whole universe, how does the whole thing fit together? What's the order behind the little movements of everything? So Milton's reach I think is actually quite far into the culture even beyond the poets.James: That's fascinating. Do you have a particular favourite bit of Paradise Lost?Henry: I do, but I don't have it with me because I disorganised and couldn't find my copy.James: That's fair.Henry: What I want to do is to read one of the sonnets because I do think he's a very, very good sonnet writer, even if I'm going to let the Lycidas thing go, because I'm not going to publicly argue against Samuel Johnson.When I consider how my light is spent,Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,And that one Talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my Soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest he returning chide;“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”I fondly ask. But patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies, “God doth not needEither man's work or his own gifts; who bestBear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His stateIs Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speedAnd post o'er Land and Ocean without rest:They also serve who only stand and wait.”I think that's great.James: Yeah. Okay. It is good.Henry: Yeah. I think the minor poems are very uneven, but there are lots of gems.James: Yeah, I mean he is a genius. It would be very weird if all the minor poems were s**t, which is not really what I'm trying… I guess I have a sort of slightly austere category too. I just do Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth, but we are agreed on Wordsworth, aren't we? That he belongs here.Henry: So my feeling is that the story of English poetry is something like Chaucer Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, T.S. Eliot create a kind of spine. These are the great innovators. They're writing the major works, they're the most influential. All the cliches are true. Chaucer invented iambic pentameter. Shakespeare didn't single handedly invent modern English, but he did more than all the rest of them put together. Milton is the English Homer. Wordsworth is the English Homer, but of the speech of the ordinary man. All these old things, these are all true and these are all colossal achievements and I don't really feel that we should be picking between them. I think Spenser wrote an epic that stands alongside the works of Shakespeare and Milton in words with T.S. Eliot whose poetry, frankly I do not love in the way that I love some of the other great English writers cannot be denied his position as one of the great inventors.James: Yeah, I completely agree. It's funny, I think, I mean I really do love T.S. Eliot. Someone else had spent a lot of time rereading. I'm not quite sure why he hasn't gone into quite my top category, but I think I had this—Henry: Is it because he didn't like Milton and you're not having it?James: Maybe that's part of it. I think my thought something went more along the lines of if I cut, I don't quite feel like I'm going to put John Donne in the same league as Milton, but then it seems weird to put Eliot above Donne and then I don't know that, I mean there's not a very particularly fleshed out thought, but on Wordsworth, why is Wordsworth there for you? What do you think, what do you think are the perms that make the argument for Wordsworth having his place at the very top?Henry: Well, I think the Lyrical Ballads, Poems in Two Volumes and the Prelude are all of it, aren't they? I'm not a lover of the rest, and I think the preface to the Lyrical Ballads is one of the great works of literary criticism, which is another coin in his jar if you like, but in a funny way, he's much more revolutionary than T.S. Eliot. We think of modernism as the great revolution and the great sort of bringing of all the newness, but modernism relies on Wordsworth so much, relies on the idea that tradition can be subsumed into ordinary voice, ordinary speech, the passage in the Wasteland where he has all of them talking in the bar. Closing time please, closing time please. You can't have that without Wordsworth and—James: I think I completely agree with what you're saying.Henry: Yeah, so I think that's for me is the basis of it that he might be the great innovator of English poetry.James: Yeah, I think you're right because I've got, I mean again, waiting someone out of my depth here, but I can't think of anybody else who had sort of specifically and perhaps even ideologically set out to write a kind of high poetry that sounded like ordinary speech, I guess. I mean, Wordsworth again is somebody who I didn't particularly like at university and I think it's precisely about plainness that can make him initially off-putting. There's a Matthew Arnold quote where he says of Wordsworth something like He has no style. Henry: Such a Matthew Arnold thing to say.James: I mean think it's the beginning of an appreciation, but there's a real blankness to words with I think again can almost mislead you into thinking there's nothing there when you first encounter him. But yeah, I think for me, Tintern Abbey is maybe the best poem in the English language.Henry: Tintern Abbey is great. The Intimations of Immortality Ode is superb. Again, I don't have it with me, but the Poems in Two Volumes. There are so many wonderful things in there. I had a real, when I was an undergraduate, I had read some Wordsworth, but I hadn't really read a lot and I thought of I as you do as the daffodils poet, and so I read Lyrical Ballads and Poems in Two Volumes, and I had one of these electrical conversion moments like, oh, the daffodils, that is nothing. The worst possible thing for Wordsworth is that he's remembered as this daffodils poet. When you read the Intimations of Immortality, do you just think of all the things he could have been remembered for? It's diminishing.James: It's so easy to get into him wrong because the other slightly wrong way in is through, I mean maybe this is a prejudice that isn't widely shared, but the stuff that I've never particularly managed to really enjoy is all the slightly worthy stuff about beggars and deformed people and maimed soldiers. Wandering around on roads in the lake district has always been less appealing to me, and that was maybe why I didn't totally get on with 'em at first, and I mean, there's some bad words with poetry. I was looking up the infamous lines from the form that were mocked even at the time where you know the lines that go, You see a little muddy pond Of water never dry. I've measured it from side to side, 'Tis three feet long and two feet wide, and the sort of plainness condescend into banality at Wordsworth's worst moments, which come more frequently later in his career.Henry: Yes, yes. I'm going to read a little bit of the Intimations ode because I want to share some of this so-called plainness at its best. This is the third section. They're all very short Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,And while the young lambs boundAs to the tabor's sound,To me alone there came a thought of grief:A timely utterance gave that thought relief,And I again am strong:The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,And all the earth is gay;Land and seaGive themselves up to jollity,And with the heart of MayDoth every Beast keep holiday;—Thou Child of Joy,Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy.And I think it's unthinkable that someone would write like this today. It would be cringe, but we're going to have a new sincerity. It's coming. It's in some ways it's already here and I think Wordsworth will maybe get a different sort of attention when that happens because that's a really high level of writing to be able to do that without it descending into what you just read. In the late Wordsworth there's a lot of that really bad stuff.James: Yeah, I mean the fact that he wrote some of that bad stuff I guess is a sign of quite how carefully the early stuff is treading that knife edge of tripping into banality. Can I read you my favourite bit of Tintern Abbey?Henry: Oh yes. That is one of the great poems.James: Yeah, I just think one of mean I, the most profound poem ever, probably for me. So this is him looking out over the landscape of Tinton Abbey. I mean these are unbelievably famous lines, so I'm sure everybody listening will know them, but they are so good And I have feltA presence that disturbs me with the joyOf elevated thoughts; a sense sublimeOf something far more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean and the living air,And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:A motion and a spirit, that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things. Therefore am I stillA lover of the meadows and the woodsAnd mountains; and of all that we beholdFrom this green earth; of all the mighty worldOf eye, and ear,—both what they half create,And what perceive; well pleased to recogniseIn nature and the language of the senseThe anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soulOf all my moral being.I mean in a poem, it's just that is mind blowingly good to me?Henry: Yeah. I'm going to look up another section from the Prelude, which used to be in the Oxford Book, but it isn't in the Ricks edition and I don't really know whyJames: He doesn't have much of the Prelude does he?Henry: I don't think he has any…James: Yeah.Henry: So this is from an early section when the young Wordsworth is a young boy and he's going off, I think he's sneaking out at night to row on the lake as you do when you with Wordsworth, and the initial description is of a mountain. She was an elfin pinnace; lustilyI dipped my oars into the silent lake,And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boatWent heaving through the water like a swan;When, from behind that craggy steep till thenThe horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,As if with voluntary power instinct,Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,And growing still in stature the grim shapeTowered up between me and the stars, and still,For so it seemed, with purpose of its ownAnd measured motion like a living thing,Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,And through the silent water stole my wayBack to the covert of the willow tree;It's so much like that in Wordsworth. It's just,James: Yeah, I mean, yeah, the Prelude is full of things like that. I think that is probably one of the best moments, possibly the best moments of the prelude. But yeah, I mean it's just total genius isn't it?Henry: I think he's very, very important and yeah, much more important than T.S. Eliot who is, I put him in the same category, but I can see why you didn't.James: You do have a little note saying Pope, question mark or something I think, don't you, in the document.Henry: So the six I gave as the spine of English literature and everything, that's an uncontroversial view. I think Pope should be one of those people. I think we should see Pope as being on a level with Milton and Wordsworth, and I think he's got a very mixed reputation, but I think he was just as inventive, just as important. I think you are a Pope fan, just as clever, just as moving, and it baffles me that he's not more commonly regarded as part of this great spine running through the history of English literature and between Milton and Wordsworth. If you don't have Pope, I think it's a missing link if you like.James: I mean, I wouldn't maybe go as far as you, I love Pope. Pope was really the first perch I ever loved. I remember finding a little volume of Pope in a box of books. My school library was chucking out, and that was the first book of poetry I read and took seriously. I guess he sort of suffers by the fact that we are seeing all of this through the lens of the romantics. All our taste about Shakespeare and Milton and Spenser has been formed by the romantics and hope's way of writing the Satires. This sort of society poetry I think is just totally doesn't conform to our idea of what poetry should be doing or what poetry is. Is there absolutely or virtually nobody reads Dryden nowadays. It's just not what we think poetry is for that whole Augustine 18th century idea that poetry is for writing epistles to people to explain philosophical concepts to them or to diss your enemies and rivals or to write a kind of Duncia explaining why everyone you know is a moron. That's just really, I guess Byron is the last major, is the only of figure who is in that tradition who would be a popular figure nowadays with things like English bards and scotch reviewers. But that whole idea of poetry I think was really alien to us. And I mean I'm probably formed by that prejudice because I really do love Pope, but I don't love him as much as the other people we've discussed.Henry: I think part of his problem is that he's clever and rational and we want our poems always to be about moods, which may be, I think why George Herbert, who we've both got reasonably high is also quite underrated. He's very clever. He's always think George Herbert's always thinking, and when someone like Shakespeare or Milton is thinking, they do it in such a way that you might not notice and that you might just carry on with the story. And if you do see that they're thinking you can enjoy that as well. Whereas Pope is just explicitly always thinking and maybe lecturing, hectoring, being very grand with you and as you say, calling you an idiot. But there are so many excellent bits of Pope and I just think technically he can sustain a thought or an argument over half a dozen or a dozen lines and keep the rhyme scheme moving and it's never forced, and he never has to do that thing where he puts the words in a stupid order just to make the rhyme work. He's got such an elegance and a balance of composition, which again, as you say, we live under romantic ideals, not classical ones. But that doesn't mean we should be blind to the level of his accomplishment, which is really, really very high. I mean, Samuel Johnson basically thought that Alexander Pope had finished English poetry. We have the end of history. He had the end of English poetry. Pope, he's brought us to the mightiest of the heroic couplers and he's done it. It's all over.James: The other thing about Pope that I think makes us underrate him is that he's very charming. And I think charm is a quality we're not big on is that sort of, but I think some of Pope's charm is so moving. One of my favourite poems of his is, do you know the Epistle to Miss Blount on going into the country? The poem to the young girl who's been having a fashionable season in London then is sent to the boring countryside to stay with an aunt. And it's this, it's not like a romantic love poem, it's not distraught or hectic. It's just a sort of wonderful act of sympathy with this potentially slightly airheaded young girl who's been sent to the countryside, which you'd rather go to operas and plays and flirt with people. And there's a real sort of delicate in it that isn't overblown and isn't dramatic, but is extremely charming. And I think that's again, another quality that perhaps we're prone not to totally appreciate in the 21st century. It's almost the kind of highest form of politeness and sympathyHenry: And the prevailing quality in Pope is wit: “True wit is nature to advantage dressed/ What often was thought, but ne'er so well expressed”. And I think wit can be quite alienating for an audience because it is a kind of superior form of literary art. This is why people don't read as much Swift as he deserves because he's so witty and so scornful that a lot of people will read him and think, well, I don't like you.James: And that point about what oft was thought and ne'er so well expressed again, is a very classical idea. The poet who puts not quite conventional wisdom, but something that's been thought before in the best possible words, really suffers with the romantic idea of originality. The poet has to say something utterly new. Whereas for Pope, the sort of ideas that he express, some of the philosophical ideas are not as profound in original perhaps as words with, but he's very elegant proponent of them.Henry: And we love b******g people in our culture, and I feel like the Dunciad should be more popular because it is just, I can't remember who said this, but someone said it's probably the most under appreciated great poem in English, and that's got to be true. It's full of absolute zingers. There's one moment where he's described the whole crowd of them or all these poets who he considers to be deeply inferior, and it turns out he was right because no one reads them anymore. And you need footnotes to know who they are. I mean, no one cares. And he says, “equal your merits, equal is your din”. This kind of abuse is a really high art, and we ought to love that. We love that on Twitter. And I think things like the Rape of the Lock also could be more popular.James: I love the Rape of the Lock . I mean, I think anybody is not reading Pope and is looking for a way in, I think the Rape of the Lock is the way in, isn't it? Because it's just such a charming, lovely, funny poem.Henry: It is. And probably it suffers because the whole idea of mock heroic now is lost to us. But it's a bit like it's the literary equivalent of people writing a sort of mini epic about someone like Elon Musk or some other very prominent figure in the culture and using lots of heroic imagery from the great epics of Homer and Virgil and from the Bible and all these things, but putting them into a very diminished state. So instead of being grand, it becomes comic. It's like turning a God into a cartoon. And Pope is easily the best writer that we have for that kind of thing. Dryden, but he's the genius on it.James: Yeah, no, he totally is. I guess it's another reason he's under appreciated is that our culture is just much less worshipful of epic than the 18th century culture was. The 18th century was obsessed with trying to write epics and trying to imitate epics. I mean, I think to a lot of Pope's contemporaries, the achievement they might've been expecting people to talk about in 300 years time would be his translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey and the other stuff might've seen more minor in comparison, whereas it's the mock epic that we're remembering him for, which again is perhaps another symptom of our sort of post romantic perspective.Henry: I think this is why Spenser suffers as well, because everything in Spenser is magical. The knights are fairies, not the little fairies that live in buttercups, but big human sized fairies or even bigger than that. And there are magical women and saucers and the whole thing is a sort of hodgepodge of romance and fairy tale and legend and all this stuff. And it's often said, oh, he was old fashioned in his own time. But those things still had a lot of currency in the 16th century. And a lot of those things are in Shakespeare, for example.But to us, that's like a fantasy novel. Now, I love fantasy and I read fantasy, and I think some of it's a very high accomplishment, but to a lot of people, fantasy just means kind of trash. Why am I going to read something with fairies and a wizard? And I think a lot of people just see Spenser and they're like, what is this? This is so weird. They don't realise how Protestant they're being, but they're like, this is so weird.James: And Pope has a little, I mean, the Rape of the Lock even has a little of the same because the rape of the lock has this attendant army of good spirits called selfs and evil spirits called gnomes. I mean, I find that just totally funny and charming. I really love it.Henry: I'm going to read, there's an extract from the Rape of the Lock in the Oxford Book, and I'm going to read a few lines to give people an idea of how he can be at once mocking something but also quite charming about it. It's quite a difficult line to draw. The Rape of the Lock is all about a scandalous incident where a young man took a lock of a lady's hair. Rape doesn't mean what we think it means. It means an offence. And so because he stole a lock of her hair, it'd become obviously this huge problem and everyone's in a flurry. And to sort of calm everyone down, Pope took it so seriously that he made it into a tremendous joke. So here he is describing the sort of dressing table if you like.And now, unveil'd, the Toilet stands display'd,Each silver Vase in mystic order laid.First, rob'd in white, the Nymph intent adores,With head uncover'd, the Cosmetic pow'rs.A heav'nly image in the glass appears,To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;Th' inferior Priestess, at her altar's side,Trembling begins the sacred rites of Pride.What a way to describe someone putting on their makeup. It's fantastic.James: It's funny. I can continue that because the little passage of Pope I picked to read begins exactly where yours ended. It only gets better as it goes on, I think. So after trembling begins the sacred rites of pride, Unnumber'd treasures ope at once, and hereThe various off'rings of the world appear;From each she nicely culls with curious toil,And decks the Goddess with the glitt'ring spoil.This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.The Tortoise here and Elephant unite,Transformed to combs, the speckled, and the white.Here files of pins extend their shining rows,Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux.It's just so lovely. I love a thing about the tortoise and the elephant unite because you've got a tortoise shell and an ivory comb. And the stuff about India's glowing gems and Arabia breathing from yonder box, I mean that's a, realistic is not quite the word, but that's a reference to Milton because Milton is continually having all the stones of Arabia and India's pearls and things all screwed through paradise lost. Yeah, it's just so lovely, isn't it?Henry: And for someone who's so classical and composed and elegant, there's something very Dickensian about things like the toilet, the tortoise and the elephant here unite, transform to combs. There's something a little bit surreal and the puffs, powders, patches, bibles, it has that sort of slightly hectic, frantic,James: That's sort of Victorian materialism, wealth of material objects,Henry: But also that famous thing that was said of Dickens, that the people are furniture and the furniture's like people. He can bring to life all the little bits and bobs of the ordinary day and turn it into something not quite ridiculous, not quite charming.James: And there is a kind of charm in the fact that it wasn't the sort of thing that poets would necessarily expect to pay attention to the 18th century. I don't think the sort of powders and ointments on a woman's dressing table. And there's something very sort of charming in his condescension to notice or what might've once seemed his condescension to notice those things, to find a new thing to take seriously, which is what poetry or not quite to take seriously, but to pay attention to, which I guess is one of the things that great perch should always be doing.Henry: When Swift, who was Pope's great friend, wrote about this, he wrote a poem called A Beautiful Young Lady Going to Bed, which is not as good, and I would love to claim Swift on our list, but I really can't.James: It's quite a horrible perm as well, that one, isn't it?Henry: It is. But it shows you how other people would treat the idea of the woman in front of her toilet, her mirror. And Swift uses an opportunity, as he said, to “lash the vice” because he hated all this adornment and what he would think of as the fakery of a woman painting herself. And so he talks about Corina pride of Drury Lane, which is obviously an ironic reference to her being a Lady of the Night, coming back and there's no drunken rake with her. Returning at the midnight hour;Four stories climbing to her bow'r;Then, seated on a three-legged chair,Takes off her artificial hair:Now, picking out a crystal eye,She wipes it clean, and lays it by.Her eye-brows from a mouse's hide,Stuck on with art on either side,Pulls off with care, and first displays 'em,Then in a play-book smoothly lays 'em.Now dexterously her plumpers draws,That serve to fill her hollow jaws.And it goes on like this. I mean, line after this is sort of raw doll quality to it, Pope, I think in contrast, it only illuminates him more to see where others are taking this kind of crude, very, very funny and witty, but very crude approach. He's able to really have the classical art of balance.James: Yes. And it's precisely his charm that he can mock it and sympathise and love it at the same time, which I think is just a more sort of complex suite of poetic emotions to have about that thing.Henry: So we want more people to read Pope and to love Pope.James: Yes. Even if I'm not letting him into my top.Henry: You are locking him out of the garden. Now, for the second tier, I want to argue for two anonymous poets. One of the things we did when we were talking about this was we asked chatGPT to see if it could give us a good answer. And if you use o1 or o1 Pro, it gives you a pretty good answer as to who the best poets in English are. But it has to be told that it's forgotten about the anonymous poets. And then it says, oh, that was stupid. There are quite a lot of good anonymous poets in English, but I suspect a lot of us, a lot of non artificial intelligence when thinking about this question overlook the anonymous poets. But I would think the Gawain poet and the Tom O' Bedlam poet deserve to be in here. I don't know what you think about that.James: I'm not competent to provide an opinion. I'm purely here to be educated on the subject of these anonymous poets. Henry: The Gawain poet, he's a mediaeval, assume it's a he, a mediaeval writer, obviously may well not be a man, a mediaeval writer. And he wrote Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, which is, if you haven't read it, you should really read it in translation first, I think because it's written at the same time as Chaucer. But Chaucer was written in a kind of London dialect, which is what became the English we speak. And so you can read quite a lot of Chaucer and the words look pretty similar and sometimes you need the footnotes, but when you read Gawain and The Green Knight, it's in a Northwestern dialect, which very much did not become modern day English. And so it's a bit more baffling, but it is a poem of tremendous imaginative power and weirdness. It's a very compelling story. We have a children's version here written by Selena Hastings who's a very accomplished biographer. And every now and then my son remembers it and he just reads it again and again and again. It's one of the best tales of King Arthur in his knights. And there's a wonderful book by John Burrow. It's a very short book, but that is such a loving piece of criticism that explicates the way in which that poem promotes virtue and all the nightly goodness that you would expect, but also is a very strange and unreal piece of work. And I think it has all the qualities of great poetry, but because it's written in this weird dialect, I remember as an undergraduate thinking, why is this so bloody difficult to read? But it is just marvellous. And I see people on Twitter, the few people who've read it, they read it again and they just say, God, it's so good. And I think there was a film of it a couple of years ago, but we will gloss lightly over that and not encourage you to do the film instead of the book.James: Yeah, you're now triggering a memory that I was at least set to read and perhaps did at least read part of Gawain and the Green Knight at University, but has not stuck to any brain cells at all.Henry: Well, you must try it again and tell me what you think. I mean, I find it easily to be one of the best poems in English.James: Yeah, no, I should. I had a little Chaucer kick recently actually, so maybe I'm prepared to rediscover mediaeval per after years of neglect since my degree,Henry: And it's quite short, which I always think is worth knowing. And then the Tom Bedlam is an anonymous poem from I think the 17th century, and it's one of the mad songs, so it's a bit like the Fool from King Lear. And again, it is a very mysterious, very strange and weird piece of work. Try and find it in and read the first few lines. And I think because it's anonymous, it's got slightly less of a reputation because it can't get picked up with some big name, but it is full of tremendous power. And again, I think it would be sad if it wasn't more well known.From the hag and hungry goblinThat into rags would rend ye,The spirit that stands by the naked manIn the Book of Moons defend ye,That of your five sound sensesYou never be forsaken,Nor wander from your selves with TomAbroad to beg your bacon,While I do sing, Any food, any feeding,Feeding, drink, or clothing;Come dame or maid, be not afraid,Poor Tom will injure nothing.Anyway, so you get the sense of it and it's got many stanzas and it's full of this kind of energy and it's again, very accomplished. It can carry the thought across these long lines and these long stanzas.James: When was it written? I'm aware of only if there's a name in the back of my mind.Henry: Oh, it's from the 17th century. So it's not from such a different time as King Lear, but it's written in the voice of a madman. And again, you think of that as the sort of thing a romantic poet would do. And it's strange to find it almost strange to find it displaced. There were these other mad songs. But I think because it's anonymous, it gets less well known, it gets less attention. It's not part of a bigger body of work, but it's absolutely, I think it's wonderful.James: I shall read it.Henry: So who have you got? Who else? Who are you putting in instead of these two?James: Hang on. So we're down to tier two now.Henry: Tier two.James: Yeah. So my tier two is: Donne, Elliot, Keats, Tennyson. I've put Spenser in tier two, Marvell and Pope, who we've already discussed. I mean, I think Eliot, we've talked about, I mean Donne just speaks for himself and there's probably a case that some people would make to bump him up a tier. Henry: Anybody can read that case in Katherine Rudell's book. We don't need to…James: Yes, exactly. If anybody's punching perhaps in tier two, it's Tennyson who I wasn't totally sure belonged there. Putting Tenon in the same tier as Donne and Spenser and Keets. I wonder if that's a little ambitious. I think that might raise eyebrows because there is a school of thought, which I'm not totally unsympathetic to this. What's the Auden quote about Tennyson? I really like it. I expressed very harshly, but I sort of get what he means. Auden said that Tennyson “had the finest ear perhaps of any English poet who was also undoubtedly the stupidest. There was little that he didn't know. There was little else that he did.” Which is far too harsh. But I mentioned to you earlier that I think was earlier this year, a friend and I had a project where we were going to memorise a perva week was a plan. We ended up basically getting, I think three quarters of the way through.And if there's a criticism of Tennyson that you could make, it's that the word music and the sheer lushness of phrases sometimes becomes its own momentum. And you can end up with these extremely lovely but sometimes slightly empty beautiful phrases, which is what I ended up feeling about Tithonus. And I sort of slightly felt I was memorising this unbelievably beautiful but ever so slightly hollow thing. And that was slightly why the project fell apart, I should say. Of course, they absolutely love Tennyson. He's one of my all time favourite poets, which is why my personal favouritism has bumped him up into that category. But I can see there's a case, and I think to a lot of people, he's just the kind of Victorian establishment gloom man, which is totally unfair, but there's not no case against Tennyson.Henry: Yeah, the common thing is that he has no ideas. I don't know if that's true or not. I'm also, I'm not sure how desperately important it is. It should be possible to be a great poet without ideas being at the centre of your work. If you accept the idea that the essence of poetry is invention, i.e. to say old things in a fantastically new way, then I think he qualifies very well as a great poet.James: Yes..Henry: Well, very well. I think Auden said what he said because he was anxious that it was true of himself.James: Yeah, I mean there's a strong argument that Auden had far too many ideas and the sorts of mad schemes and fantastical theories about history that Auden spent his spare time chasing after is certainly a kind of argument that poets maybe shouldn't have as many ideas, although it's just reading. Seamus Perry's got a very good little book on Tennyson, and the opening chapter is all about arguments about people who have tended to dislike Tennyson. And there are all kinds of embarrassing anecdotes about the elderly Tennyson trying to sort of go around dinner parties saying profound and sage-like things and totally putting his foot in it and saying things are completely banal. I should have made a note that this was sort of slightly, again, intensifying my alarm about is there occasionally a tinsely hollowness about Tennyson. I'm now being way too harsh about one of my favourite poets—Henry: I think it depends what you mean by ideas. He is more than just a poet of moods. He gives great expression, deep and strongly felt expression to a whole way of being and a whole way of conceiving of things. And it really was a huge part of why people became interested in the middle ages in the 19th century. I think there's Walter Scott and there's Tennyson who are really leading that work, and that became a dominant cultural force and it became something that meant a lot to people. And whether or not, I don't know whether it's the sort of idea that we're talking about, but I think that sort of thing, I think that qualifies as having ideas and think again, I think he's one of the best writers about the Arthurian legend. Now that work doesn't get into the Oxford Book of English Verse, maybe that's fair. But I think it was very important and I love it. I love it. And I find Tennyson easy to memorise, which is another point in his favour.James: Yeah.Henry: I'm going to read a little bit of Ulysses, which everyone knows the last five or six lines of that poem because it gets put into James Bond films and other such things. I'm going to read it from a little bit from earlier on. I am become a name;For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known; cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;And drunk delight of battle with my peers,Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fadesFor ever and for ever when I move.I think that's amazing. And he can do that. He can do lots and lots and lots of that.James: Yeah, he really can. It's stunning. “Far on the ringing planes of windy Troy” is such an unbelievably evocative phrase.Henry: And that's what I mean. He's got this ability to bring back a sort of a whole mood of history. It's not just personal mood poetry. He can take you into these places and that is in the space of a line. In the space of a line. I think Matthew Arnold said of the last bit of what I just read is that he had this ability in Ulysses to make the lines seem very long and slow and to give them this kind of epic quality that far goes far beyond the actual length of that poem. Ulysses feels like this huge poem that's capturing so much of Homer and it's a few dozen lines.James: Yeah, no, I completely agree. Can I read a little bit of slightly more domestic Tennyson, from In Memoriam, I think his best poem and one of my all time favourite poems and it's got, there are many sort of famous lines on grief and things, but there's little sort of passage of natural description I think quite near the beginning that I've always really loved and I've always just thought was a stunning piece of poetry in terms of its sound and the way that the sound has patented and an unbelievably attentive description natural world, which is kind of the reason that even though I think Keats is a better poet, I do prefer reading Tennyson to Keats, so this is from the beginning of In Memoriam. Calm is the morn without a sound,Calm as to suit a calmer grief,And only thro' the faded leafThe chesnut pattering to the ground:Calm and deep peace on this high wold,And on these dews that drench the furze,And all the silvery gossamersThat twinkle into green and gold:Calm and still light on yon great plainThat sweeps with all its autumn bowers,And crowded farms and lessening towers,To mingle with the bounding main:And I just think that's an amazing piece of writing that takes you from that very close up image that it begins with of the “chestnut patterning to the ground” through the faded leaves of the tree, which is again, a really attentive little bit of natural description. I think anyone can picture the way that a chestnut might fall through the leaves of a chestnut tree, and it's just an amazing thing to notice. And I think the chestnut pattern to the ground does all the kind of wonderful, slightly onomatopoeic, Tennyson stuff so well, but by the end, you're kind of looking out over the English countryside, you've seen dew on the firs, and then you're just looking out across the plane to the sea, and it's this sort of, I just think it's one of those bits of poetry that anybody who stood in a slightly wet and romantic day in the English countryside knows exactly the feeling that he's evoking. And I mean there's no bit of—all of In Memoriam is pretty much that good. That's not a particularly celebrated passage I don't think. It's just wonderful everywhere.Henry: Yes. In Memoriam a bit like the Dunciad—under appreciated relative to its huge merits.James: Yeah, I think it sounds, I mean guess by the end of his life, Tennyson had that reputation as the establishment sage of Victorian England, queen of Victoria's favourite poet, which is a pretty off-putting reputation for to have. And I think In Memoriam is supposed to be this slightly cobwebby, musty masterpiece of Victorian grief. But there was just so much, I mean, gorgeous, beautiful sensuous poetry in it.Henry: Yeah, lots of very intense feelings. No, I agree. I have Tennyson my third tier because I had to have the Gawain poet, but I agree that he's very, very great.James: Yeah, I think the case for third tier is I'm very open to that case for the reasons that I said.Henry: Keats, we both have Keats much higher than Shelly. I think Byron's not on anyone's list because who cares about Byron. Overrated, badly behaved. Terrible jokes. Terrible jokes.James: I think people often think Byron's a better pert without having read an awful lot of the poetry of Byron. But I think anybody who's tried to wade through long swathes of Don Juan or—Henry: My God,James: Childe Harold, has amazing, amazing, beautiful moments. But yeah, there's an awful lot of stuff that you don't enjoy. I think.Henry: So to make the case for Keats, I want to talk about The Eve of St. Agnes, which I don't know about you, but I love The Eve of St. Agnes. I go back to it all the time. I find it absolutely electric.James: I'm going to say that Keats is a poet, which is kind of weird for somebody is sent to us and obviously beautiful as Keats. I sort of feel like I admire more than I love. I get why he's brilliant. It's very hard not to see why he's brilliant, but he's someone I would very rarely sit down and read for fun and somebody got an awful lot of feeling or excitement out of, but that's clearly a me problem, not a Keats problem.Henry: When I was a teenager, I knew so much Keats by heart. I knew the whole of the Ode to a Nightingale. I mean, I was absolutely steeped in it morning, noon and night. I couldn't get over it. And now I don't know if I could get back to that point. He was a very young poet and he writes in a very young way. But I'm going to read—The Eve of St. Agnes is great. It's a narrative poem, which I think is a good way to get into this stuff because the story is fantastic. And he had read Spenser, he was part of this kind of the beginning of this mediaeval revival. And he's very interested in going back to those old images, those old stories. And this is the bit, I think everything we're reading is from the Oxford Book of English Verse, so that if people at home want to read along they can.This is when the heroine of the poem is Madeline is making her escape basically. And I think this is very, very exciting. Her falt'ring hand upon the balustrade,Old Angela was feeling for the stair,When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid,Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware:With silver taper's light, and pious care,She turn'd, and down the aged gossip ledTo a safe level matting. Now prepare,Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed;She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray'd and fled.Out went the taper as she hurried in;Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died:She clos'd the door, she panted, all akinTo spirits of the air, and visions wide:No uttered syllable, or, woe betide!But to her heart, her heart was voluble,Paining with eloquence her balmy side;As though a tongueless nightingale should swellHer throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,All garlanded with carven imag'riesOf fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,And diamonded with panes of quaint device,Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.I mean, so much atmosphere, so much tension, so many wonderful images just coming one after the other. The rapidity of it, the tumbling nature of it. And people often quote the Ode to autumn, which has a lot of that.James: I have to say, I found that totally enchanting. And perhaps my problem is that I need you to read it all to me. You can make an audio book that I can listen to.Henry: I honestly, I actually might read the whole of the E and put it out as audio on Substack becauseJames: I would actually listen to that.Henry: I love it so much. And I feel like it gets, when we talk about Keats, we talk about, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer and Bright Star and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and these are great, great poems and they're poems that we do at school Ode to a Nightingale because I think The Great Gatsby has a big debt to Ode to a Nightingale, doesn't it? And obviously everyone quotes the Ode to Autumn. I mean, as far as I can tell, the 1st of October every year is the whole world sharing the first stands of the Ode to Autumn.James: Yeah. He may be one of the people who suffers from over familiarity perhaps. And I think also because it sounds so much what poetry is supposed to sound like, because so much of our idea of poetry derives from Keats. Maybe that's something I've slightly need to get past a little bit.Henry: But if you can get into the complete works, there are many, the bit I just read is I think quite representative.James: I loved it. I thought it was completely beautiful and I would never have thought to ever, I probably can't have read that poem for years. I wouldn't have thought to read it. Since university, I don't thinkHenry: He's one of those people. All of my copies of him are sort of frayed and the spines are breaking, but the book is wearing out. I should just commit it to memory and be done. But somehow I love going back to it. So Keats is very high in my estimation, and we've both put him higher than Shelly and Coleridge.James: Yeah.Henry: Tell me why. Because those would typically, I think, be considered the superior poets.James: Do you think Shelly? I think Keats would be considered the superior poetHenry: To Shelly?James: Certainly, yes. I think to Shelly and Coleridge, that's where current fashion would place them. I mean, I have to say Coleridge is one of my all time favourite poets. In terms of people who had just every so often think, I'd love to read a poem, I'd love to read Frost at Midnight. I'd love to read the Aeolian Harp. I'd love to read This Lime Tree Bower, My Prison. I'd love to read Kubla Khan. Outside Milton, Coleridge is probably the person that I read most, but I think, I guess there's a case that Coleridge's output is pretty slight. What his reputation rest on is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, the conversation poems, which a lot of people think are kind of plagiarised Wordsworth, at least in their style and tone, and then maybe not much else. Does anybody particularly read Cristabel and get much out of it nowadays? Dejection an Ode people like: it's never done an awful lot for me, so I sort of, in my personal Pantheon Coleridge is at the top and he's such an immensely sympathetic personality as well and such a curious person. But I think he's a little slight, and there's probably nothing in Coleridge that can match that gorgeous passage of Keats that you read. I think.Henry: Yeah, that's probably true. He's got more ideas, I guess. I don't think it matters that he's slight. Robert Frost said something about his ambition had been to lodge five or six poems in the English language, and if he'd done that, he would've achieved greatness. And obviously Frost very much did do that and is probably the most quotable and well-known poet. But I think Coleridge easily meets those criteria with the poems you described. And if all we had was the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I would think it to be like Tom O' Bedlam, like the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, one of those great, great, great poems that on its own terms, deserves to be on this list.James: Yeah, and I guess another point in his favour is a great poet is they're all pretty unalike. I think if given Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a conversation poem and Kubla Khan and said, guess whether these are three separate poets or the same guy, you would say, oh, there's a totally different poems. They're three different people. One's a kind of creepy gothic horror ballad. Another one is a philosophical reflection. Another is the sort of Mad Opium dream. I mean, Kubla Khan is just without a doubt, one of the top handful of purposes in English language, I think.Henry: Oh yeah, yeah. And it has that quality of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard that so many of the lines are so quotable in the sense that they could be, in the case of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, a lot of novels did get their titles from it. I think it was James Lees Milne. Every volume of his diaries, which there are obviously quite a few, had its title from Kubla Khan. Ancient as the Hills and so on. It's one of those poems. It just provides us with so much wonderful language in the space of what a page.James: Sort of goes all over the place. Romantic chasms, Abyssinian made with dulcimer, icy pleasure dome with caves of ice. It just such a—it's so mysterious. I mean, there's nothing else remotely like it at all in English literature that I can think of, and its kind strangeness and virtuosity. I really love that poem.Henry: Now, should we say a word for Shelly? Because everyone knows Ozymandias, which is one of those internet poems that goes around a lot, but I don't know how well known the rest of his body of work is beyond that. I fell in love with him when I read a very short lyric called “To—” Music, when soft voices die,Vibrates in the memory—Odours, when sweet violets sicken,Live within the sense they quicken.Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,Love itself shall slumber on.I found that to be one of those poems that was once read and immediately memorised. But he has this very, again, broad body of work. He can write about philosophical ideas, he can write about moods, he can write narrative. He wrote Julian and Maddalo, which is a dialogue poem about visiting a madman and taking sympathy with him and asking the question, who's really mad here? Very Swiftian question. He can write about the sublime in Mont Blanc. I mean, he has got huge intellectual power along with the beauty. He's what people want Tennyson to be, I guess.James: Yeah. Or what people think Byron might be. I think Shelly is great. I don't quite get that Byron is so much more famous. Shelly has just a dramatic and, well, maybe not quite just as, but an incredibly dramatic and exciting life to go along with it,Henry: I think some of the short lyrics from Byron have got much more purchase in day-to-day life, like She Walks in Beauty.James: Yeah. I think you have to maybe get Shelly a little more length, don't you? I mean, even there's something like Ode to the West Wind is you have to take the whole thing to love it, perhaps.Henry: Yes. And again, I think he's a bit like George Herbert. He's always thinking you really have to pay attention and think with him. Whereas Byron has got lots of lines you can copy out and give to a girl that you like on the bus or something.James: Yes. No, that's true.Henry: I don't mean that in quite as rude a way as it sounds. I do think that's a good thing. But Shelly's, I think, much more of a thinker, and I agree with you Childe Harold and so forth. It's all crashing bore. I might to try it again, but awful.James: I don't want move past Coledridge without inflicting little Coledridge on you. Can I?Henry: Oh, yes. No, sorry. We didn't read Coledridge, right?James: Are just, I mean, what to read from Coledridge? I mean, I could read the whole of Kubla Khan, but that would be maybe a bit boring. I mean, again, these are pretty famous and obvious lines from Frost at Midnight, which is Coledridge sitting up late at night in his cottage with his baby in its cradle, and he sort of addressing it and thinking about it. And I just think these lines are so, well, everything we've said about Coledridge, philosophical, thoughtful, beautiful, in a sort of totally knockout, undeniable way. So it goes, he's talking to his young son, I think. My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heartWith tender gladness, thus to look at thee,And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,And in far other scenes! For I was rearedIn the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breezeBy lakes and sandy shores, beneath the cragsOf ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,Which image in their bulk both lakes and shoresAnd mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hearThe lovely shapes and sounds intelligibleOf that eternal language, which thy GodUtters, who from eternity doth teachHimself in all, and all things in himself.Which is just—what aren't those lines of poetry doing? And with such kind of confidence, the way you get from talking to your baby and its cradle about what kind of upbringing you hope it will have to those flashes of, I mean quite Wordsworthian beauty, and then the sort of philosophical tone at the end. It's just such a stunning, lovely poem. Yeah, I love it.Henry: Now we both got Yeats and Hopkins. And Hopkins I think is really, really a tremendous poet, but neither of us has put Browning, which a lot of other people maybe would. Can we have a go at Browning for a minute? Can we leave him in shreds? James: Oh God. I mean, you're going to be a better advocate of Browning than I am. I've never—Henry: Don't advocate for him. No, no, no.James: We we're sticking him out.Henry: We're sticking him.James: I wonder if I even feel qualified to do that. I mean, I read quite a bit of Browning at university, found it hard to get on with sometimes. I think I found a little affected and pretentious about him and a little kind of needlessly difficult in a sort of off-puttingly Victorian way. But then I was reading, I reviewed a couple of years ago, John Carey has an excellent introduction to English poetry. I think it's called A Little History of Poetry in which he described Browning's incredibly long poem, The Ring in the Book as one of the all time wonders of verbal art. This thing is, I think it's like 700 or 800 pages long poem in the Penguin edition, which has always given me pause for thought and made me think that I've dismissed Browning out of hand because if John Carey's telling me that, then I must be wrong.But I think I have had very little pleasure out of Browning, and I mean by the end of the 19th century, there was a bit of a sort of Victorian cult of Browning, which I think was influential. And people liked him because he was a living celebrity who'd been anointed as a great poet, and people liked to go and worship at his feet and stuff. I do kind of wonder whether he's lasted, I don't think many people read him for pleasure, and I wonder if that maybe tells its own story. What's your case against Browning?Henry: No, much the same. I think he's very accomplished and very, he probably, he deserves a place on the list, but I can't enjoy him and I don't really know why. But to me, he's very clever and very good, but as you say, a bit dull.James: Yeah, I totally agree. I'm willing. It must be our failing, I'm sure. Yeah, no, I'm sure. I'm willing to believe they're all, if this podcast is listened to by scholars of Victorian poetry, they're cringing and holding their head in their hands at this—Henry: They've turned off already. Well, if you read The Ring and the Book, you can come back on and tell us about it.James: Oh God, yeah. I mean, in about 20 years time.Henry: I think we both have Auden, but you said something you said, “does Auden have an edge of fraudulence?”James: Yeah, I mean, again, I feel like I'm being really rude about a lot of poets that I really love. I don't really know why doesn't think, realising that people consider to be a little bit weak makes you appreciate their best stuff even more I guess. I mean, it's hard to make that argument without reading a bit of Auden. I wonder what bit gets it across. I haven't gotten any ready. What would you say about Auden?Henry: I love Auden. I think he was the best poet of the 20th century maybe. I mean, I have to sort of begrudgingly accept T.S. Eliot beside, I think he can do everything from, he can do songs, light lyrics, comic verse, he can do occasional poetry, obituaries. He was a political poet. He wrote in every form, I think almost literally that might be true. Every type of stanza, different lines. He was just structurally remarkable. I suspect he'll end up a bit like Pope once the culture has tur

Every Thursday Kathryn from Connecticut Humane Society joins the show to tell us about another pet that needs a home.  This week we have guinea pigs, Panda and Sakura! Panda is a 1-year-old female smooth hair guinea pig. She's the black and white guinea pig pictured.  Sakura is a 1-year-old female Abyssinian guinea pig (her hair is a little fluffier than Panda's) and she's the brown and Chestnut guinea pig pictured  They both came from another Connecticut rescue just after Christmas who needed a hand finding these cuties a new home. Before that, their previous owner had developed allergies and was no longer able to keep them  They are both great little guinea pigs who enjoy being picked up and cuddled.  They are a bonded pair which means that they love each other so much they must go home together.  Guinea pigs are relatively easy to care for once you know how. They are curious critters who love to explore, and they can even be trained to respond to tricks!  They're both available out of our Westport location so you can fill out an online adoption application to come and meet them.  Learn more about Panda and Sukura here

I had the privilege of talking with Dr. Reggie Williams, author of "Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus." In this episode we discuss Bonhoeffer's history prior to his trip to NYC and his experience with the Harlem church community. Dr. Williams discusses this transformational time in Bonhoeffer's life and how it prepared him for the fight he was to take to the Nazis. A huge thanks to Seth White for the awesome music!Thanks to Palmtoptiger17 for the beautiful logo: https://www.instagram.com/palmtoptiger17/Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/thewayfourth/?modal=admin_todo_tourYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTd3KlRte86eG9U40ncZ4XA?view_as=subscriberInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/theway4th/ Kingdom Outpost: https://kingdomoutpost.org/My Reading List Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21940220.J_G_Elliot"Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus" Williams: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20967189-bonhoeffer-s-black-jesus"The Cloud of Witnesses: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Harlem 1930/31" Documentary: Email preview@bonhoeffer-documentary.info  Thanks to our monthly supporters Laverne Miller Jesse Killion ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City has been around since 1808, with the house of worship's new pastor on a profound mission: to "make traditional church cool."“Abyssinian, it will always be a traditional Baptist church,” Rev. Kevin R. Johnson told The Christian Post's Leonardo Blair. “We have to make it engaging so that those who want this type of experience with Christ will feel like, ‘you know what? I can wear a tie and still be cool. I can wear a dress and still be cool.'”Listen to Blair discuss the church's history and mission.

On this episode we talk about the premeditated murder of some large Abyssinian bananas, how Leslie is meh on winter berries, peonies (Leslie protests the look of singles, Marianne protests Leslie's color choices), a good thing to do with excess cherry tomatoes (an alternative from leaving them in unlocked cars). We do several "Book Moments". Who are we kidding... only Marianne has book moments while Leslie continues to rely on the brain that lives in her back pocket. Deer deterrents, when plants fail, is it our fault and should we consider Mahjnong if we have a a black thumb? Also, Black Thumb; is that code for "I don't like to fuss with plants"? Winter annuals, and then finally (it's another long one, good people), shouldn't we have a guest for the next episode? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thegardenmixer/support

Britain and France reckoned they'd secured the support of Italy, in the Stresa Front, for their efforts to contain Hitler. Britain was the first to undermine that pleasant understanding, by signing a naval agreement with Nazi Germany on its own. Even so, the British government did what it could to keep Mussolini's Italy in the Front, a position shared by Winston Churchill. He was already ringing alarm bells over Germany but, proving how difficult prediction can be, he got Italy (and indeed Japan) completely wrong. Then Mussolini showed his true colours by preparing to launch an invasion of Abyssinia, which is now Ethiopia, to extend Italy's imperial holdings in Africa. Doing so meant spitting in the face of the League of Nations, even though Italy was a member. But Mussolini could do that with impunity. The League, only as powerful as its members, and above all its great power members, Britain and France, allowed it to be, took no effective action against it. In the face of that spinelessness, Mussolini went ahead with his invasion. That had a surprising impact on the Labour Party, whose annual conference started the day after news of the Italian invasion arrived in Britain. Labour decided that it had no further patience with its declared pacifist leader, George Lansbury. He resigned and the jostling started to pick a successor. Clement Attlee, who'd been Lansbury's deputy, was given the job on a temporary basis, as Britain went into the 1935 general election. It was a huge win for the Tories but Labour also did well, winning nearly three times as many seats as in 1931. Attlee who'd led the party into that success was boosted by it. Viewed by many as poorly qualified for the job and short of personality, he saw off others who thought themselves better suited, and to the surprise of many, was confirmed as leader. Illustration: Italian officers consulting maps as they advance into Abyssinian territory. Public domain Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License

Ahwooooooooo there Herders, and welcome back the wolves episode! We have been holding off on all the good episodes for when the deployment ended!Wolf, any of two species of wild doglike carnivores. The gray, or timber, wolf (Canis lupus) is the better known. It is the largest nondomestic member of the dog family (Canidae) and inhabits vast areas of the Northern Hemisphere. The Ethiopian, or Abyssinian, wolf (C. simensis) inhabits the highlands of Ethiopia; until recently it was considered a jackal. Pervasive in mythology, folklore, and language, the gray wolf has had an impact on the human imagination and has been the victim of levels of misunderstanding that few animals have shared. With the exception of humans and the lion, the gray wolf 

Deborah Wolfe talks about Taylor Swift's 3 cats, what old pets need & trick training tips for dogs and cats! See Deb Wolfe-Pet Expert on YouTube for cat and dog training demos and how to test puppy temperament/personality with 2 cute 8 week old rescued pups. Where does your cat come from? The last 3 original cats; Siamese, Abyssinian, Chinchilla. ‘Karma is a cat purring on my lap because it loves me!!!' Taylor Swift. A little Taylor talk about Meredith Grey the Scottish Fold you might spot in Deadpool 2. Deb says the fastest learners are Standard Poodles and trick cats. Check out Deb Wolfe-Pet Expert on Facebook to see a fantastic Poodle photo shoot. Please send your text, type or voice clip pet questions, problems or guest suggestions to deb@petliferadio.comEPISODE NOTES: Taylor Swift Loves Her Cats!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/animal-party-dog-cat-news-animal-facts--6666735/support.

Deborah Wolfe talks about Taylor Swift's 3 cats, what old pets need & trick training tips for dogs and cats! See Deb Wolfe-Pet Expert on YouTube for cat and dog training demos and how to test puppy temperament/personality with 2 cute 8 week old rescued pups. Where does your cat come from? The last 3 original cats; Siamese, Abyssinian, Chinchilla. ‘Karma is a cat purring on my lap because it loves me!!!' Taylor Swift. A little Taylor talk about Meredith Grey the Scottish Fold you might spot in Deadpool 2. Deb says the fastest learners are Standard Poodles and trick cats. Check out Deb Wolfe-Pet Expert on Facebook to see a fantastic Poodle photo shoot. Please send your text, type or voice clip pet questions, problems or guest suggestions to deb@petliferadio.com EPISODE NOTES: Taylor Swift Loves Her Cats!

Lesson 4 of The SIx Fundamental Principles of Shaykhul Islam Mohammad ibn Abdul Wahhab by Ustadh  AbdulHakeem Mitchell  using the explanation of Shaikh Saleh bin Fawzan bin Abdullah al-Fawzann and Shaykh 'Abdullah Al-Bukhaari. In this lesson ustadh covered "THE THIRD PRINCIPLE – HEARING AND OBEYING THOSE IN AUTHORITY" Verily, from the completion of unity is hearing and obeying the one who has taken authority over us, even if it be an Abyssinian slave. So Allaah explained this with a clear, broad (general) and sufficient explanation , by way of many aspects of numerous types of explanation, both legislatively [in the Sharee ' ah] , and in terms of [divine] decree [in what He willed to occur in the creation] . Then this foundation became unknown to many of those who claim knowledge, so how then could it be acted upon? Lesson will be on every Tuesday at 8pm Brothers & Sisters all welcome VENUE: Phil Martin Centre,  139 Princess Road,  Moss Side, M14 4RE Broadcast live on: Mixlr.com/learnaboutislam Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SalafiCentre Subscribe to our Telegram Channel: https://t.me/salaficentre SUBSCRIBE AND SHARE THE VIDEOS SO OTHERS MAY BENEFIT إن شاء الله بارك الله فيكم

If you want to hear the full version go to: https://www.patreon.com/posts/election-debates-105633791?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link At the end of the show a question from ian Currie Recommendations:  Eamonn Fiennes Return to the Wild - National Geographic Sir Ranulph Fiennes, ‘the greatest living explorer', and his cousin, actor Joseph Fiennes, revisit Ran's 1971 expedition of Canada's British Columbia. Catriona Night Train to Odesa by Jen Stout - BBC Radio 4 Eric - Netflix A desperate father, alongside a tenacious cop, battles his own demons on the streets of 1980s New York as he searches for his missing nine-year-old son. David S.O.E.: An outline history of the special operations executive 1940 - 46 - book SOE, the Special Operations Executive, was a small, tough British secret service, a dirty tricks department, set up in July 1940. Recruited from remarkably diverse callings, the men and women who were members of this most secret agency in the Second World War lived in great and constant danger. Their job was to support and stimulate resistance behind enemy lines; their credentials fortitude, courage, immense patience and a devotion to freedom. The activity of the SOE was world-wide. Abyssinian tribesmen, French farmers, exiled Russian grandees, coolies, smugglers, printers, policemen, telephonists, tycoons, prostitutes, rubber workers, railwaymen, peasants from the Pyranees to the Balkans, even the regent of Siam - all had a part to play as saboteurs, informers, partisans or secret agents. In this engrossing and illuminating study, the eminent Second World War historian, M.R.D. Foot, sheds light on the heroism of individual SOE agents across the world and provides us with the definitive account of the Executive's crucial wartime work.

The Dreadnought Hoax is one of the most fantastical events of all naval and maritime history. In 1910 four white English people – three men and one woman – pretended to be members of the Abyssinian royal family, complete with black face make up, false beards and magnificent robes, and were given a tour of HMS Dreadnought, the most powerful battleship ever built, the pride of the Royal Navy and the pride of the British Empire. The hoax worked like a dream. No-one suspected a thing. Even more remarkable, one of those people was none other than the young Virgina Woolf, yet to be married and take the name of Woolf and yet to amaze with world with her intellect and literary skill. It is a story that touches on questions of race, gender and empire; on credulity, outrage and humour; on cultural norms and expectations; and all wrapped in ideas about seapower. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Danell Jones, author of the excellent new book The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race and the Dreadnought Hoax. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1910 Virginia Woolf and a group of friends caused a stir when they were welcomed on board the HMS Dreadnought, disguised as a delegation of Abyssinian royalty. At the 2017 Conservative Party conference, Theresa May was handed a P45 in the middle of giving her speech. Both these events made the headlines, but what was the intention behind them and did they have any impact beyond provoking either amusement or outrage? Matthew Sweet is joined by Danell Jones who has looked in detail at the Dreadnought Hoax, Simon Brodkin who has staged various high profile stunts including delivering Theresa May's P45 and Kerry Shale whose father was an inveterate prankster who sold practical jokes for a living.Producer: Torquil MacLeodThe Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race and the Dreadnought Hoax by Danell Jones is out now. Simon Brodkin's 'Screwed Up' tour continues throughout the UK from May onwards.

Haaaappy Thursday Cousins!!!You already know what time it issss, another week, another episode of the CCP!As black history month comes to an end, we wanted to dedicate this episode to highlighting some prominent Black Muslims who were trailblazers in Black (and Islamic) history. And with Ramadan right around the corner…do you want us to bring back the Ramadan series??? We really enjoyed doing it last year and so many of you have expressed that it was a nice alternative to listen to in place of listening to music sooo let us know in the comments below ⬇️If you'd like your comment to potentially be shouted out in future episodes, don't forget to comment on our YouTube video

We review every animal in the world this time it's an Abyssinian Roller and wow its a doozy hope you guys enjoy this soon to be weekly podcast https://dashboard.twitch.tv/u/derpmarcosyt/home link to Discord!!!!! https://discord.gg/Gmf4TsMsfQ ALSO NOW SPOTIFY https://open.spotify.com/show/6UWzHjr39Z0GKc9aj1cMfq?si=3032caa490ba4564 AND APPLE https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/derpyology/id1587012233

Things You'll Learn In This Episode of Our Prophet:- Why the Prophet objected to calling a Muslim killed at Khaybar a 'Martyr'?- Similarities between this incident and the story of Prophet Sulaiman and Hudhud- Prophet's dua before battle and the initial fight between Muslims and Jews- Story of an Abyssinian shepherd who accepted Islam at Khaybar- Martyrdom of the new convert and Prophet's posthumous statement praising himJoin us in creating the most comprehensive life story (seerah) of Prophet Muhammad (s). Dedicate episodes in the memory of your loved ones by visiting https://thaqlain.org/ourprophet.Visit https://app.thaqlain.org and download the first "Knowledge App" from the School of Ahlulbayt.#ProphetMuhammad #PropheticBiography #OurProphetSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/our-prophet/donations

In 1910, four Abyssinian royals toured the H.M.S. Dreadnought, the most technologically advanced ship in the British Royal Navy. Afterward, however, it leaked to the press that the captain and crew of the vessel had been duped: they had given a tour not to foreign dinitaries but British citizens. The Dreadnought affair caused a minor scandal, and what started as a practical joke threatened to end in legal repercussions for the hoaxers. Show notes and full transcripts available at www.artofcrimepodcast.com.   If you'd like to support the show, please consider becoming a patron at www.patreon.com/artofcrimepodcast.   The Art of Crime is part of the Airwave Media network. To learn more about Airwave, visit www.airwavemedia.com. If you'd like to advertise on The Art of Crime, please email advertising@airwavemedia.com.

In this episode, my guest Italo Brandimarte discussed his journal article 'Breathless war: martial bodies, aerial experiences and the atmosphere of empire.' Italo's article covers the use of poison gas by the Italian air force in the Abyssinian War. We covered the following questions: Why do you think that the usual discussions of aerial warfare tend to split between the strategic, technical and the ontological plane on one hand, and the intimate, embodied and phenomenological on the other, and how does your use of concepts such as the 'envelope', the 'weather', and 'warfare beyond the human' in your analysis overcome this split? Why was it that imperial Italy had come to frame its desire for imperial dominance so strongly through the frame of the weaponisation of the air in the Abyssinian war? If the Futurist conception of aerial warfare resisted the full fusion of human subject and machine in the 'dissolution of the body as a locus of elemental sensing', what is different about modern drone warfare in which this seems to be the goal? What is the relationship between Mussolini's use of poison gas in Ethiopia and the use of gas chambers by the Nazis? When Italy is bombing Ethiopia, Italy sees aerial bombardment as the act of an advanced civilisation, yet when Nazi Germany bombs Europe, aerial bombardment is seen as a barbarian tactic. How are hierarchies of imperial dominance inscribed in the logic of: civilised=bomber, uncivilised=bombed? Italo Brandimarte is a PhD Candidate in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. His research is broadly concerned with the relations between the techno-scientific and the bodily dimensions of war and security, particularly with reference to racial and colonial violence. In his current project – provisionally titled ‘The Technology of Empire: War Experience and the Embodied Production of the International' - Italo develops a theory of war experience that takes seriously the role of technology in the imperial history of world politics. Some of the findings from this research have been published in the European Journal of International Relations. His previous work on the politics of measurement in global counterterrorist surveillance has appeared in International Political Sociology. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hypervelocity/message

There were plenty of news drops late on Friday plus a load more today to keep us busy.First up is Wildcat (WC8) who have merged from suspension with lithium results that the market is loving.We provide an update on the Abyssinian 249D which went to a vote on Friday, then talk of another company who are in the midst of corporate changes at VHM limited (VHM).Next up is Develop Global (DVP), where the Independent Experts left MD Bill Beament with some ripping quotes in the AFR by classing the scheme with Essential Metals to be ‘not fair but reasonable.'Red5 (RED) came on our radar with a big block of stock changing hands and turning heads, with Silver Lake (SLR) being identified as the buyer.Last up, De Grey (DEG) dropped their annual report late of Friday, which gave us an excuse to snoop through and have a yarn about their upcoming and hot anticipated DFS. All Money of Mine episodes are for informational purposes only and may contain forward-looking statements that may not eventuate. The co-hosts are not financial advisers and any views expressed are their opinion only. Please do your own research before making any investment decision or alternatively seek advice from a registered financial professional. Thank you to our Podcast Partners:Terra Capital – Specialist Investment manager in the natural resources sectorAnytime Exploration Services – Exploration workers, equipment, core cutting/storage + much moreJP Search – Recruitment specialists for the financial worldK-Drill – Safe, reliable, and productive surface RC drillingSMEC Power & Technology – Electrical specialists for the mining industry Join our exclusive Facebook Group for the Money Miners and request access to the Hooteroo chat group. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter HOOTEROO HERALD Follow Money of Mine on YouTubeFollow Money of Mine on TwitterFollow Money of Mine on LinkedInFollow Money of Mine on Instagram Chapters:(0:00) Preview(1:01) Intro(5:31) Wildcat flying on lithium hits(21:43) Abyssinian shareholder go to vote(24:32) VHM ringing the board changes(27:29) Develop's takeover of Essential deemed ‘Not Fair'(36:09) A block of Red5 stock changes hands, Silver Lake the buyer(45:50) Pre-empting De Grey's DFS

We start today's pod in the best way we know how, with some more Banjo Paterson-esque poetry. Then, for the news, we share what the Abyssinian board had to say in response to the 249D (action to remove the board) discussed on Tuesday's episode with Rusty of Nero and Eddie of Argonaut. We crack on with more deals – Lotus (LOT.asx) and A-Cap Energy (ACB.asx) to merge via a Scheme of Arrangement… what is the rationale here?To round off we share our ideas on AIC Mines (A1M.asx) release of the Maiden Ore Reserve at Jericho in Northern Queensland and what they've got in store to scale up to a 20ktpa copper producer! All Money of Mine episodes are for informational purposes only and may contain forward-looking statements that may not eventuate. The co-hosts are not financial advisers and any views expressed are their opinion only. Please do your own research before making any investment decision or alternatively seek advice from a registered financial professional. Join our exclusive Facebook Group for the Money Miners and request access to the Hooteroo chat group. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter HOOTEROO HERALD Follow Money of Mine on YouTubeFollow Money of Mine on TwitterFollow Money of Mine on LinkedInFollow Money of Mine on Instagram Chapters:(0:00) Preview(0:31) Intro(1:10) Some Poetry(4:52) Abyssinian Rebuttal(8:45) Lotus to merge with A-Cap(16:33) AIC Mines release Jericho Reserve

Dan and Julia discuss how to spot and deal with common summertime pests, including cabbage white butterflies, red spider mites and asparagus beetles. Julia gets stuck into salads, explaining how to grow a succession of lush leaves throughout the year. Dan recalls happy memories of Dame Edna Everage and her wonderful gladies, sharing tips on how to grow these fabulous flowers without all the stiffness and formality they've become known for.Julia's Favourite Salad Leaves:Lettuce 'Black Seeded Simpson'.Lettuce (Little Gem) ‘Delight'.Lettuce 'Cocarde' - very attractive arrowhead leaf green-tinged red. Good for spring, summer and autumn growing.Lettuce 'Salad Bowl' - both green and red, RHS recommended.Lettuce 'Lollo Rosso'.Lettuce 'Butterhead'.Lettuce 'Winter Density' - good for cooler months.Wild rocket - hardy and the best flavour.Dan's Favourite Gladioli:G. papilio ‘Ruby' - just delicious - the colour of crushed blackberries.G. communis subsp. byzantinus - Mediterranean but naturalised in the UK.G. murielae - the Abyssinian gladiolus - very late flowering and needs baking in a sunny spot, but the flowers are deliciously fragrant.G. ‘Sancerre' - pure white.G. ‘Shaka Zulu' - deep, deep purple.The ‘Flevo' varieties, such as G. 'Flevo Cool' and G. 'Flevo Laguna' are perfect for small gardens and growing in pots.Where you'll find us:Dan will be at Gilbert White's House in Selborne near Petersfield for their 30th Annual Unusual Plants Fair on June 17th and 18th , ready to supply visitors with any last-minute Father's Day Gifts. Alitex is hosting an open morning on 16th June 9 am - 4 pm, at Torberry Farm, near Petersfield. To book a visit, use this link. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He made the Room. Become a patron and help me make this show Bonus episodes every week: >> ⁠https://www.patreon.com/theblissoftheabyss⁠ Send some coffee pennies my way! ⁠https://paypal.me/robertneumark?country.x=GB&locale.x=en_GB⁠ Or support the show through other ways: ⁠Subscribe to the show⁠ ⁠Give us a rating & review⁠ Like and follow us on ⁠Facebook ⁠or ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠My Webpage⁠ for all enquiries © Robert Neumark Jones

We preview the performances this Sunday and Monday evening at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside of the Abyssinian Mass by Wynton Marsalis. My guests: Dr. James Kinchen, director of choral activities at UW-Parkside, and Russ Johnson, director of jazz studies at Parkside. This upcoming performance will feature the combined choirs of Parkside in collaboration with the school's jazz ensemble.

Abdullah ibn Masood (ra) Session 6 Ibn Ummi Abd - The Son of The Mother of The Servant The Jurist of This Ummah 'I was given a vision of your abode in exile, a place of date palm between 2 tracts of black stones.' The false rumours in Makka caused 3 distict groups 1) Those who stayed in Makka, 2) athose who migrated to Al Mediana & 3) Those who returned to Abyssinia. Abu Musa (ra), the ship and his unintentional journey to Abyssinian. The value of 2 migrations and Asma's (ra) exchange with Umar (ra). The Salam is no longer returned during Salah (Surah 2 v238).

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about the origins of the people of Israel and who are the "real" descendants of the tribes of Israel. In this episode, we look at a responsum from the 1500s that indirectly addresses questions about how we "know" who is a Jew or Israelite. The question of how we know things is crucial for understanding the history of Halakhah, but also for understanding the world we inhabit and the beliefs if the people who are shaping it. This responsum from 500 years ago therefore has a great deal of contemporary importance, on many levels. Here's a link to the responsum we studied, with my English translation: https://www.sefaria.org/Teshuvot_HaRadbaz_Volume_4.1290.1?lang=bi Here's a link to Radbaz's related responsum: https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%A9%D7%95%22%D7%AA_%D7%A8%D7%93%D7%91%22%D7%96/%D7%97%D7%9C%D7%A7_%D7%96/%D7%94 The letter of Eldad HaDani: http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/history/tkufot/eldad1-2.htm Menasheh ben Israel on American tribes as lost Israelite tribes, early 1600s: https://archive.org/details/menassehbenisrae00manauoft/page/16/mode/2up?view=theater

Things you'll learn in this episode of Our Prophet:- How Wahshi killed and desecrated Hamza ibn Abdul Muttalib- Why was Hind unable to eat Hamza's liver?- Prophet's words for his uncle Hamza- Abu Sufyan being admonished by an Abyssinian slave-leader- Why did Al-Laithi assume he had killed the Prophet?- Reaction of Muslims as the news of the Prophet's death spread- Umar and Talha's flight from the battlefield- Anas ibn Nadr's heroic fight and martyrdomTo watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/6X6lmyINfZcHelp us create the most comprehensive biography of the Prophet of Islam. Dedicate episodes in the memory of your loved ones by visiting https://thaqlain.org/ourprophetSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/our-prophet/donations

What if The Abyss exists? It does. Dear Listener/Listener Dear: A debonair cloud turgid with rain, corrections, The Abyssinian debacle, why Mrs. Browns Boys is to blame for Covid-19, How Dominic Raab is/is not the next James Bond, The Frankfurt School, Martin Jol came too soon, donkey dust, Blue Jam, Sean Hughes RIP. Shall we start again?  Or finish.

From mixing product formulas manually in her kitchen, to the My Abby Range™ becoming an international, award-winning holistic beauty product using Abyssinian oil for hair, skin and nails beauty range - Jaco chats to Robyn Kramer. They explore her journey of 18 years in the wellness industry, and seven years developing her passion for a natural organic solution to finding a holy grail for simple and pure beauty products. Robyn's journey to develop her own brand started with the humble beginnings of retail, repping, sales and hard work... to formulating a winning beauty range with gorgeous branding and packaging, and plans to add baby products soon. Catalytic

From mixing product formulas manually in her kitchen, to the My Abby Range™ becoming an international, award-winning holistic beauty product using Abyssinian oil for hair, skin and nails beauty range - Jaco chats to Robyn Kramer. They explore her journey of 18 years in the wellness industry, and seven years developing her passion for a natural organic solution to finding a holy grail for simple and pure beauty products. Robyn's journey to develop her own brand started with the humble beginnings of retail, repping, sales and hard work... to formulating a winning beauty range with gorgeous branding and packaging, and plans to add baby products soon. Catalytic

For the past 33 years Kathy and her husband Simon have created a simply amazing Manor House Garden in Stevington, just north of Bedford. It's a garden full of inspiration, buoyed by Kathy's keen use of colour and structure as well as plenty of great plants. In this episode of Dig it, Peter Brown and Chris Day discover more about how the garden evolved, advice on growing plants in containers using recipe-style plantings, the crocking debate, tales of a donkey, opening a garden to the public and using edible flowers in baking.Plants mentioned: Beech hedging, Eucalyptus, Pine trees, avenues of Betula jacquemontii, Metasequoia glyptostroboides and Ginkgo biloba. Wisteria, Weeping Cedrus, xeriscape plants such as succulents. Perennials Agapanthus, Alliums, Japanese anemones, Gladiolus callianthus 'Murielae' (Abyssinian gladiolus, RHS AGM), Sedum, Hellebore Gold Collection (outward facing blooms perfect in pots) Helleborus ‘Frosty' is a good one, Verbena bonariensis, ornamental grasses including Calamagrostis ‘Overdam', Echinaceas. Hyacinths, Dwarf and species Tulips, Tulip clusiana 'Lady Jane' and Dwarf Narcissi like ‘January Gold' (early) and ‘Pipit' (later flowering). Good flavours to use with cake bakes include scented rose petals as these provide the most flavour as well as lavender.Kathy's desert island plant: English lavender – wonderfully versatile, you can cook with it and use it in a wide variety of ways as well as producing a wonderful tea to enjoy.Products mentioned: White Himalayan birch plantings at Anglesey Abbey. National Garden Scheme (NGS). Solardome ® greenhouse. Beth Chatto's dry garden – a converted car park to a gravel garden. Piet Oudolf, a Dutch garden designer, plant nursery man and author who practices a more naturalistic approach to gardening. Composts: Dalefoot Wool Compost and Jack's Magic All Purpose Improved Compost (reduced peat) and New Horizon Peat-Free Compost. Broadleaf p4, using John Innes Compost as an additive. Kathy likes to use Evergreen Compost , who offer peat-free, peat-reduced and a traditional compost containing sphagnum moss peat. Water retaining granules such as Broadleaf P4 and Swelgel, which can be added to compost and soil to help retain moisture around the plant's roots. Garden photographer Clive Nichols and the early morning photo shoot.Kathy Brown's Books The Edible Flower Garden, Container Gardening, Kathy Brown's Recipes For Easy Container Gardening and A Bulb for all SeasonsTo find out more about Kathy's Garden, opening details, Kathy's lectures and how to book a visit click hereOur thanks to Chiltern Music Therapy for providing the music. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when one partner doesn't believe? What happens when the foundation of your relationship is no longer the foundation? Sherrie D'Souza will share her experiences and insights gained from navigating different faiths in a marriage relationship. And - spoiler alert! - returning co-host Sacha D'Souza will be joining the conversation to share his perspective, as well. Sherrie D'Souza was born and raised in Sydney Australia as a Jehovah's Witness, devoting much of her youth to full-time volunteering for the religion. After learning of the gross cover-up of child sexual abuse in the religion, she left the religion in 2016 (following her husband Sacha, who had patiently waited for his wife to wake up from the cult). Sherrie is passionate about supporting others and in April 2020 started the first RfR Support Group in Sydney. With a secular background in healthcare administration, Sherrie now works from home and enjoys the flexibility this gives her to do more in establishing RfR in Australia. When she isn't banging away at her keyboard, you will find her playing with her Abyssinian cats, Abernathy & Sidney, indulging in her hobbies of cross stitching and diamond painting or just chilling watching Sci-Fi with Sacha. This episode was recorded on 7-18-2022. For RfRx comments, inquiries & topical questions, email us at RfRx@recoveringfromreligion.org. Any time you are struggling with religious doubts or fears you can connect with a trained RfR Helpline agent 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To chat online go to http://www.recoveringfromreligion.org. To talk over the phone, dial: (844) 368-2848 in the US & Canada If you are in need of professional help, we can offer the Secular Therapy Project to provide options to connect with a professional therapist. All therapists have been thoroughly vetted by our organization and offer only evidence-based and non-religious treatment. Connect with them at http://www.seculartherapy.org. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tiktok. Volunteer: http://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/volunteer Donate: https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/donate --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/recovering-from-religion/message

Ayanna Witter-Johnson is a singer, songwriter, pianist and cellist crossing the boundaries of classical, jazz, reggae and R&B music. Ayanna has been commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, the Kronos Quartett and The Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company. Live in the Front Row studio Ayanna reworks a song by The Abyssinian and, with Stephen Upshaw, viola player with the Solem Quartet, part of her Island Suite. During the height of pandemic lockdowns streaming of plays from theatres became popular – making them more accessible for all, regardless of disability, location, price, time, or care commitments. However new research by Dr Richard Misek and investigations by Front Row have indicated a continuing post-lockdown drop in digital theatre. Dr Misek joins Front Row exclusively to reveal his findings: the scale of the fall, how hurdles such as financing are standing in the way, and why digital streaming is vital to accessibility. Mustapha Matura's play Playboy of the West Indies, based on JM Synge's Playboy of the Western World, has been turned into a musical with a score composed by Dominique Le Gendre and Clement Ishmael. Clement tells Samira about turning Matura's rich Trinidadian patois into song. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May Photo: Nick Howe

Of Ethiopia—mostly of modern Ethiopia, a fascinating country. But what role is it likely to play in the future? The written version of this review can be found here. We strongly encourage, in these days of censorship and deplatforming, all readers to bookmark our main site (https://www.theworthyhouse.com). You can also subscribe for email notifications. The Worthy House does not solicit donations or other support, or have ads. 

Abdur Rahman Ibn Awf (ra) Session 17. 'Islam came with hardships, we found that the best of things came with what which was unpleasant.' The Eminent Rank of the Badri's, 3 reports which highlight their superiority. Shukraan (ra), the Abyssinian, a Badri and Ahlul Bayt.

Free Air is a 1919 novel written by Sinclair Lewis. It follows the story of Claire Boltwood as she travels by automobile from New York City to the Pacific Northwest. The GSMC Audiobook Series presents some of the greatest classic novels, audiobooks, and theatrical presentations from a bygone era. Let Golden State Media Concepts take you on a ride through classic audiobooks read by some of the top audiobook performers of all time. This compiled collection of classic audiobooks contains a wide variety of classic Novels. ***PLEASE NOTE*** GSMC Podcast Network presents these shows and audiobooks as historical content and have brought them to you unedited. Remember that times have changed, and some Audiobooks might not reflect the standards of today's politically correct society. The shows do not necessarily reflect the views, standards, or beliefs of Golden State Media Concepts or the GSMC Podcast Network. Our goal is to entertain, educate, and give you a glimpse into the past.

Dusty Rainbolt, Author of ‘Ghost Cats!”( & many others)joins Deborah Wolfe to talk about cat breeds ;smart cats, dumb cats, social cats, noisy cats, cats who are good with kids and the elderly and cats who are not! Dusty and Deb go through many pedigreed breeds and what you can expect for behavioural traits with each one. Persians, Himalayans, Abyssinian, Turkish Van, Ragdoll, Manx, Rex, Siamese and others are contrasted and compared. Besides the pedigreed breed or combination of breeds you may be dealing with, the nature of that particular animal and the way humans nurtured it as a very young kitten always play a role so please make sure you consider the individual kitten or puppy and its parents when selecting and raise it well for a cat or dog that will be its best and most happy. Deborah reports on a study done by the Veterinarians about worst and best cat patients. The Vets did not categorize by breed but instead used coat color as the trait providing for some interesting discussion about colour and attitude and sometimes eye colour can indicate a deaf ear or blind eye in a pup or kitten.EPISODE NOTES: Smart Cats, Dumb Cats, Social Cats, Noisy Cats, Cats Who Are Good With Kids And Cats Who Are Not! Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/animal-party-dog-cat-news-animal-facts--6666735/support.

Dusty Rainbolt, Author of ‘Ghost Cats!”( & many others)joins Deborah Wolfe to talk about cat breeds ;smart cats, dumb cats, social cats, noisy cats, cats who are good with kids and the elderly and cats who are not! Dusty and Deb go through many pedigreed breeds and what you can expect for behavioural traits with each one. Persians, Himalayans, Abyssinian, Turkish Van, Ragdoll, Manx, Rex, Siamese and others are contrasted and compared. Besides the pedigreed breed or combination of breeds you may be dealing with, the nature of that particular animal and the way humans nurtured it as a very young kitten always play a role so please make sure you consider the individual kitten or puppy and its parents when selecting and raise it well for a cat or dog that will be its best and most happy. Deborah reports on a study done by the Veterinarians about worst and best cat patients. The Vets did not categorize by breed but instead used coat color as the trait providing for some interesting discussion about colour and attitude and sometimes eye colour can indicate a deaf ear or blind eye in a pup or kitten. EPISODE NOTES: Smart Cats, Dumb Cats, Social Cats, Noisy Cats, Cats Who Are Good With Kids And Cats Who Are Not!

Photo:  Abyssinian soldiers, 1936.The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a colonial war that started in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war was fought between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy and the armed forces of the Ethiopian Empire (also known at the time as Abyssinia). The war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia. #Ethiopia: War Pause.  Gregory Copley @Gregory_Copley, Defense & Foreign Affairs https://zehabesha.com/abiy-has-said-there-will-be-negotiations-between-his-government-and-tplf-terrorists-forces/ Gregory R Copley, @Gregory_Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs.  

Rasûlullah was ummî, that is, he hadn't read books; he was not schooled in writing, nor had he received lessons from anyone. Born and raised in Mecca, brought up among certain people, and despite having never travelled, he conveyed information about facts and events in the Tawrât (Hadrat Mûsâ's heavenly book), in the Injîl, and in the books written during the Grecian and Roman centuries. In order to teach Islam, he sent letters to Muslims. In the sixth year of the Hegira, he sent letters to Byzantine, Iranian, and Abyssinian rulers and to other Arabic emperors. The Iranian ruler (shâh) Husraw Pervîz tore his letter to pieces, and martyred the Sahâbî who had delivered him the letter. Shortly after that, he was slain by his son named Shîrûya. More than sixty foreign ambassadors came to his service. It is wâjib for everybody who has heard of Rasûlullah's ‘sall-Allâhu 'alaihi wa sallam' prophethood to believe him, the Qur'ân, which he brought, and Islam. He who, after having heard, dies without having îmân will go into Hell and will be eternally tormented there. Endless Bliss First Fasicle | Page 243

Lucy's People: An Ethiopian Memoir (Yerada Lij,2021) is the inspiring story of a country and a life. Young engineer Mesfin grows up under Emperor Haile Selassie I in Ethiopia. She is mother to all her people. Under her sun and moon, women walk tall. Many are warriors, including his mother and grandmother. The boy comprehends the burden placed upon ethical military such as his colonel father. He defends Ethiopian borders and the socially marginalised. Like him, Mesfin defies those who thrive on brutality and treachery. With the 1974 communist revolution, how do the humane thrive? At the warfront, the conscripted teenager must never compromise his love for motherland and the children of Lucy. The humanoid fossil has survived almost intact for 3.2 million years in the Rift Valley. At what cost to her people does Ethiopia endure? In and out of prison, Mesfin nevertheless qualifies as a construction and civil engineer. An ancient Abyssinian role model is Saba (Queen Sheba), the engineering queen of Lake Tana. Her people pioneered agricultural water use. He specialises in water development and works all over the country. Fresh disaster comes in 1991. Youth must choose: stay or flee? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Today we are talking about three cats, the Abyssinian, Chantilly-Tiffany, and Australian Mist cats!! We are pleased to announce that this is the last episode of 2021 and season two! (we also have a co-host, my BROTHER!!  his name is Cole. -Quinn)  If you have a cat story to share, please send it to us at: topbreedcats@gmail.com. Have a great holiday season and rest of 2021 and we will see you back here in January 2022.Thanks for listening!Abyssinian: https://www.google.com/search?q=abyssinian+cat&rlz=1CAJCUZ_enUS971&sxsrf=AOaemvIYtJmRGlxliEXtbvIRhVEj7yuziA:1638578117433&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwiy74CV88j0AhVEQ_EDHcncBDcQ_AUoAXoECAIQAw&biw=1366&bih=649&dpr=1#imgrc=-quEBZ8aivJqRMChantilly-Tiffany: https://www.google.com/search?q=Chantilly-Tiffany&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiL_dWW88j0AhV1IjQIHSmmAbcQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=Chantilly-Tiffany&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQ6BwgjEO8DECc6BAgAEEM6CggjEO8DEOoCECdQjwVYohRgwhdoAXAAeAGAAZACiAHIDJIBBjEwLjQuMZgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1nsAEKwAEB&sclient=img&ei=yLeqYYv5N_XE0PEPqcyGuAs&bih=649&biw=1366&rlz=1CAJCUZ_enUS971#imgrc=IzH-ZB0_DRHMeMAustralian Mist: https://www.google.com/search?q=Australian+Mist&rlz=1CAJCUZ_enUS971&sxsrf=AOaemvIFjCHCwlSKLQ2fFsuKX62PRj16HQ:1638578210975&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi7l87B88j0AhWECTQIHVy3AakQ_AUoAXoECBcQAw&biw=1366&bih=649&dpr=1#imgrc=aDClSduB6gb9_M

Dusty Rainbolt, Author of ‘Cat Wrangling Made Easy' (& many others) joins Deborah Wolfe to discuss strange and wonderful cat breeds. Have you wondered about the exotic breeds of cats or maybe you think a Serval cat is right for you ? Deborah explains why a Serval cat is a nightmare for most people. Did you know their poops are triple the size of normal cats, and they need a gigantic litter box which they may not use! And there is more. …listen to the show to find out just how primitive these Serval cats are and how ill suited as pets. Today's show tells the truth about the different breeds; which cats are known to be quiet, which are needy, and which need a lot of care. Persians, Turkish Vans, Main Coon, Bengals, and Abyssinian cats are discussed in comparison to other pedigreed cats including the common domestic shorthaired tabby. EPISODE NOTES: Strange And Wonderful Cat BreedsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/animal-party-dog-cat-news-animal-facts--6666735/support.

How the late 1800s crated Ethiopian mythology is a counter-ideological resistance to the Haitian RevolutionHaitian Revolution from 1791-1804 vs Abyssinia Adwa in 1896The Haitian revolution put  fear & nightmare in European colonial powers not Abyssinia Ask yourself why was Haiti penalize after its revolution & trapped into debts to the French for decades while Abysinnia after Battle of Adwa got support in nation building from European powers?I always said the Haitian revolution should have been the only symbol of black resistance from the 1800s for the Black diaspora & Africa not AbyssiniaHaiti is a narrative of slaves revoltingAbysinnia is a feudal monarch who enrich themselves from slavery in 1800s Ethiopia is a creation of European colonialism & Battle of Adwa was a proxy war between France & Britain Hati was the real deal not Abyssinia Truly a black nation & an African resistance realizedHaiti narrative is not centered  compared to the promotion of Ethiopia and there is a reason for it The Haitian Revolution has often been described as the largest and most successful slave rebellion in the Western Hemisphere. Slaves initiated the rebellion in 1791 and by 1803 they had succeeded in ending not just slavery but French control over the colony.Haiti had a history of slave rebellions;there were slave rebellions before 1791. poisoning of masters.Before the fighting ended 100,000 of the 500,000 Africans and 24,000 of the 40,000 whites were killed.former slaves managed to stave off both the French forces and the British who arrived in 1793 to conquer the colony, and who withdrew in 1798 after a series of defeats by l'Overture's forces.By 1801 Hait abolished slavery Haitian Revolution had outlasted the French Revolution which ….Napoleon Bonaparte, dispatched 43,000 French troops to capture restore both French rule and slavery. on November 18, 1803the French forces were defeated. On January 1, 1804, Dessalines declared the nation independent and renamed it Haiti. France became the first nation to recognize its independence. Haiti thus emerged as the first black republic in the world, and the second nation in the western hemisphere (after the United States) to win its independence from a European power.The war on Haiti never ended after 1804 but continued in various forms via intervention, coup attempts and continues the management of the Haitian state by disregarding the people demands--compared that with Ethiopia in which from the beggin Europe help create Ethiopia and turn into the first African neo-colonial state with Abyssian as their local administrators and mangaers..Below is the counter narrrative that challanges the mytoolgy around Battle of Adwa being the symbol of restianceMekuria Bulcha, PhD, ProfessorThe circumstances, under which the peoples of the south, such as the Oromo, who were conquered in the 1880s, and the Walaita, who were conquered by Menelik two years before the battle of Adwa, were made to march north and participate in the Battle of Adwa must be notedIt was after Adwa that Menelik imposed the notorious gabbar system on the conquered south. Slavery and the slave trade became even more rampant thereafter with the conquest of the rest of the south and southwest which became hunting grounds for captives and ivory.[29] Ironically, it was the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1936 which brought the outrageous institution and evil trade in human beings to an end. “The united country called Ethiopia, which according to Larebo and Borago existed centuries before Adwa, is a myth. The fact is that when he turned north to meet the Italians at Adwa, Menelik was in the midst of the conquest of the south. The entire Macha region – the Gibe and Leeqa states – was annexed only in 1886. Arsi was conquered in 1886 and Hararge in 1887. As indicated above, Walaita was conquered in 1894. The sores inflicted by the atrocities committed against the Oromo at Anole and Calanqoo in 1886 and 1887 by the conquering Abyssinian forces were still bleeding. Even Wallo's conquest in the north was completed in 1878 after years of fierce battles between Menelik (then King of Shawa) and Emperor Yohannes IV on one side and the Wallo Oromo on the other. ““. While the Abyssinians were defending their freedom, the Oromo had no freedom to defend against the Italians. They had lost it to the Abyssinians during the preceding decade.  Their land was an Abyssinian colony. The “contribution” they were forced to make to the war effort saved the Abyssinians from European colonialism, but it did not help them to regain their own independence.”“ the Oromo did not fight at Adwa as ethnic Abyssinians or citizens of Abyssinia as Borago and other commentators try to suggest. They fought for their colonizers. They were not the first people to fight a war for their enemies.”In his Ethiopia: The Last Frontiers, John Markakis writes that Abyssinia “competed successfully in the imperialist partition of the region [Horn of Africa]. Not a victim but a participant in the ‘scramble', Ethiopia doubled its territory and population in a burst of expansionist energy, and thereafter proudly styled itself the ‘Ethiopian Empire'. He notes that “the title [‘Empire'] is not a misnomer, since Ethiopia's rulers governed their new possessions more or less the same way and for similar ends as other imperial powers were doing. The people who took the pride in calling themselves Ethiopians were known also as Abyssinians (Habesha).” Conflict researcher Christian Scherrer notes that “European and Abyssinian colonialism occurred simultaneously, pursued similar interests, albeit from differing socio-economic bases, and this was reinforced by comparable colonial ideologies of the idea of empire and notion of ‘civilizing mission' and the exploitation of the subjugated peoples.” Menelik's colonial conquests, Gebru Tareke, a historian from the north, has also stated that the Abyssinian ruling elite acted like the white colonial rulers in the rest of Africa. The language they used when describing their colonial subjects did not differ from the language the European colonialists were using. It was a language which was infused with stereotypes, prejudices and paternalism. He adds, “They [the Abyssinian elite] tried much like the European colonisers of their time, to justify the exploitability, and moral validity of occupation.” They “looked upon and treated the indigenous people as backward.”[17] One can add here that stereotypes and ethnic slurs about the Oromo, popular in Habesha discourse are the product of this colonial ideology.Margery Perham notes “The speed with which this great extension of the empire was made ….is explained by the …firearms which the emperor [Menelik] was obtaining from France... This same superiority was carrying the European powers at the same speed at the same time from the coast into the heart of Africa.”[18] The Swedish historian Norberg also says that “using the same military technology as the European powers”,[19] Menelik managed not only to conquer the neighbouring African territories, but was also able to garrison them with large forces called naftanya who controlled and lived on the conquered populations. As suggested by Richard Caulk, “the system of near serfdom imposed on wide areas of the south by the end of the nineteenth century could have not been maintained had the newcomers not been so differently armed.[20] The historian Darkwah notes that “Menelik succeeded in keeping the arms out of the reach of the [Oromo] enemy. He did this by imposing a strict control over the movement of firearms into his tributary territories and the lands beyond his frontiers.”[21]Darkwah notes that “in 1877 a Frenchman named Pottier was employed in training a group of Shewan youths in European military techniques. Another Frenchman, Pino, was a regular officer in the army which was commanded by Ras Gobana. Swiss engineers, Alfred Ilg and Zemmerman were employed on, among other things, building bridges across the Awash and other rivers to facilitate movement.”[24]According to Chris Prouty, Colonel Artamonov together with other Europeans was attached to the forces commanded by Ras Tasamma Nadew in Ilu Abbabor. He adds that even Count Nicholas Leontiev, a colonel in the Russian army, was a commander of a force which was sent to conquer the southwest in the 1890s. Another Russian officer, Baron Chedeuvre was Leontiev's second-in-command during the expedition. Several French and Russian medical officers were also attached to the Abyssinian forces, particularly those which were led by Menelik and European commanders. The Russian Cossack Captain Alexander Bulatovich wrote that with him, there were Lieutenants Davydov, Kokhovskiy and Arnoldi along with a command of Cossacks who had finished their term of service” and who were received in audience by Menelik and took leave from him and returned to Russia in June 1898.Genocide was committed not only on the Kaficho. It was also the fate of many of the indigenous peoples in the Omo River Valley, Lake Rudolf region and of the south-western lowlands who were conquered by the Abyssinians in the aftermath of the Adwa victory. Bulatovich, who followed Ras Wolde Giyorgis during his conquest of the territories south of Kafa, writes in his diary-based With the Armies of Menelik II that “By order of the emperor, a fifteen-thousand-man corps, set out on a campaign to annex to the realm of Ethiopia vast lands which lie to the south of it, which no one before this had explored, and which were completely unknown.”although the actual conquest was completed in 1900, the atrocities against the conquered populations did not cease; by and large, slavery and the slave trade continued until the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1936. As an Ethiopian historian has stated, Menelik's extension of Ethiopia's frontiers and the incorporation of new areas accentuated “the predatory tendencies of the ruling class and the soldiery. South-western Ethiopia became a hunting-ground for humans as well as animals. Ivory and slaves became the two precious commodities with which traders and adventurers returned from the region.” He wrote that “Members of upper nobility came to have thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of slaves at their disposal.”[9] Giving examples of some of the largest slave owners, the celebrated historian Pankhurst notes that Menelik and Taytu owned 70,000 slaves and Ras Wolde Giyorgis owned 20,000 slaves at the beginning of the twentieth centuryIn 1936, forty years after the Battle of Adwa, the British journalist and author wrote that the “peoples of the south and west were treated with wanton brutality unequalled even in the Belgian Congo. Some areas were depopulated by slavers.”[12] Comparing the harms inflicted by Belgian colonialists in Congo and Abyssinian colonialists in the south, he argued that “The significance of the Congo atrocities is not so much that they were committed as that they were exposed and suppressed.”Haiti is there to remind us the danger of western intervention & management Haiti is there to remind us the danger of NGO-AID intervention & management over the state Haiti is there to reminds us the power of the massesHaiti is truly the symbol of African resistance nowSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/horn-of-africa-leftists/donations

For this episode, we will discuss the latest development in Ethiopia and Tigray region by giving historical context and political background as there is a serious social media campaign being waged with a lot of emotions and strong narrative which can be confusing and alarming if you don't have proper analysis--before we start on the historical background on the conflict I want to make the following pointsAs I mentioned on the BAR interview Eritrea is being set up, TPLF is an agent of imperialism and Washington wants Ethiopia back to being a compliant client state despite Abiy being a willing client of Washington--The latest development is an ideological test for leftist and how discipline people are too strong emotional propaganda online as we have seen casualties of it already from the Bobi Wine situation in failure to recognize imperialism co-optations in which Bobi Bobi and the campaign around him as an opposition and power struggle----Just like Museveni and Bobi Wine --this is Abiy vs TPLF saying that its important to highlight that Abiy Ahmed no saint as he has pro-neoliberal beliefs and is an Abisyaini-zed Oromo which is hostile to non-Abyssinian nationalism in the south also the Eritrean revolution plus the Ethiopian Defense Force does not have a clean track record in other regions and just like Museveni he is a willing client leader but certain quarters in Washington have sympathy for the opposition in this current power struggleSecond, when examining western media coverage ..it's important to point to the issue of how the attention in the north vs the south why western media outlets amplify only the north and not the south actual history of genocide in which there were serious genocide in various regions the last 28 years under TPLF --what's happening in Tigray is serious and the people are caught in a situation of internal power struggle and the interests of Washington which certain circles in the white house have a personal relationship with the TPLF leadership coreAs a materialist, we must examine and emphasize the role of history through the economic lense and the role of the ruling class-- ---what is the role of colonialism and imperialism on the latest development and the past..--Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/horn-of-africa-leftists/donations

Chapter 63In October 1935, Mussolini's Grand Army crossed the border into Abyssinia. This land had been independent since the days of King Solomon. It was the only African country to successfully resist European invasion in the nineteenth century.The Italians had modern aeroplanes, tanks and flame-throwers. The Abyssinians had war-drums, camels and twelve obsolete biplanes. The Italians used poison gas and bombed Red Cross hospitals. The League of Nations applied some sanctions, but not enough to stop the war. The British let oil and coal sail through the British-controlled Suez canal. The French sold oil to the Italians. The League forbade arms sales to either side.The Abyssinians were slaughtered.Cuthbert was outraged.It was the first time any of his employees had seen him anything other than bored and distemperate. It made them all panic. Each of them ran around, feeling the weight of the Abyssinian crisis as he had been directly responsible for it. Cuthbert acted as if he had been against the League of Nations from the start, but had been overruled by his underlings – and now had the full magisterial right of a man who had given good but unheeded advice.The truth was that the FO was in quite a bind, and Cuthbert felt it most keenly. Throughout his career, he had been in the position of unequalled expert. His detailed knowledge was consulted, deferred to, sought after and never questioned. His position was a kind of weapon; his heavy, bludgeoning personality saw that it never went unused.But now, things were crawling out into the open. The British public – largely due to propaganda coming out of the FO – were almost fetishistically enamoured of the League of Nations. The League of Nations served Cuthbert perfectly, because he could blame the other members if a British initiative failed, and take personal credit if something succeeded. The greatest engine of the mortal world is the drive to avoid responsibility and fuel vanity. The League of Nations was popular with the people because it served the vanities of the leaders.Cuthbert was in a very privileged position, and this position was directly threatened by Mussolini. He was the chief civil servant under Samuel Hoare, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Cuthbert had seen quite a few ministers stumble through the FO – it did not tend to attract the best and brightest – and had loved them all. They had the microphones and interviews, but spoke little but what Cuthbert wanted them to say. The word ‘democracy' always made him smile. Ministers who went against the policy of the civil service – surely a more permanent and skilled layer – found unpleasant information leaked to the newspapers, or were given poor advice which got them kicked out. In the palaces of power, the civil service were neither king, queen or courtier, but oxygen. An invisible, unfelt substance on which all pomp and power depended.Being a great civil servant required two things, according to Cuthbert. One had to be very certain, and very patient. “The great virtue of the civil service,” he would say, “is that we are not subject to the vagaries of public opinion. We are the ballast of the ship of state.”He was not a great fan of democracy, except insofar as the illusion of participation created the moral requirement of obedience. “They vote in the figureheads,” he smiled, “and we tell them what to do. If they succeed, they preen. If not, they leave. But we remain. We always remain.”

In this episode of The Niqabi Diaries I talk with Khadooj a revert sister from Ethiopia, foster carer and self employed hijama therapist about her journey to Islam, caring for the community and her fear of blood. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, LIKE AND SHARE for weekly uploads Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_niqabi_diaries/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheNiqabiDiaries/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiqabiThe YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/TheNiqabiDiaries

Sama touches briefly on the magic of Mahmoud Ahmed, the King of Abyssinian Soul. --Patreon Supporters:Official Vinyl Examiners - Bryan Seybold and Yan WangExecutive Producers - Ben Lack (Brass Animals), Austel Grey (Zerosystem), and Jeannine CuevasJoin our Patreon group and get awesome awards: www.patreon.com/thevinylexamInstagram/twitter: @TheVinylExam facebook.com/thevinylexam