The attack on Shakespeare by a Trust set up to commemorate a great writer is yet another unwelcome essay in loathing our history, culture and traditions.
Many of us wish to be proud of our country, to remember its best days, its finest hours, its greatest people and its best achievements.
William Shakespeare is admired, read and enacted all round the world. He is generally acclaimed as a great writer, able to capture eternal truths about human nature and the human condition. His words, characters and plots cross the centuries and national boundaries all round the world.
I will write occasional pieces about our history and the great causes and achievements our country has recorded. Today I begin with a brief comment on the great figures I particularly revere.
I rate Elizabeth I as a great politician who survived threats to her life whilst her Catholic sister was Queen to emerge as England’s greatest monarch.
I regard William Shakespeare as the world’s greatest dramatist.
J Turner was a great artist. His Fighting Temeraire captures the passing of the age of sail to steam, as Rain, Steam and Speed records the arrival of the railway.
Josiah Wedgwood was a great entrepreneur who changed the face of ceramics, developed marketing, built an advanced factory and pioneered better treatment of employees.
Nelson was the greatest military captain, containing and defeating the imperial forces of Napoleon.
March 18, 2025
Good morning.
This is it, we have so many Great Britain’s you can easily leave more out than you can list. The world owes this country much and we have nothing to be ashamed of. I am certainly not.
All this self-hate and loathing reminds me of Mao and the CCP. They too where very much into this rewriting of history. All better to control and re-program the people. It must be resisted.
March 18, 2025
Last year it was the story of an Indian restaurant illegally built too close to Ann Hathaway’s cottage.
March 18, 2025
What a wonderful first post. This is going to be a justifiably long series. Even so, I doubt you will be able to do justice to the fascinating geniuses thrown out so regularly, by the British.
The thing that is astonishing is their versatility. Many nations gave a great strength – the African race are great athletes for example. But the British have world beating people across the spectrum.
We ordinary people need to try to be worthy, at least not to besmirch the well earned reputation that they have won for us across time and the world.
March 18, 2025
In a fierce tirade against an opponent, Bob Hoskins in the film The Long Good Friday, compared US culture to that of Britain. He ranted citing Britain’s finest contributions to the world, ending in a stark statement something like:
‘….. and what did you invent? The ******* hot dog!’
March 18, 2025
Well of course one of our achievements was establishing the USA. Remember it was the genetic British rabble Army that beat German George’s troops in red jackets.
We won the War of Independence!
March 18, 2025
The strategy is working well. Import the third world, destroy our culture and defame our heroes. It’s all part of he great reset.
Fortunately there is a disruptor on the other side of the Atlantic who is laying waste to all this white privilege nonesense. I so believe we only have one shot at reversing this nonesense and it isn’t with the bunch of clowns presently in Westminster.
It’d time it stopped
March 18, 2025
Those who would wish us ill first destroy the history and culture of a great nation, while diluting the whole with an influx of alien population. It is difficult to dicern the main purpose of this flight from reality other than destruction for destructions sake. They offer no obvious path to greatness other than the end of nationhood.
March 18, 2025
Lots of plays and operas are routinely updated and set in modern times. This can resemble a stark 1960s car park. Any soldiers are transformed into the brutal troops of a despot.
I suppose the directors get bored of the same production. The audiences are frequently unhappy and these directors are often booed when they appear on stage after the production.
A genuinely historic production at The Globe would allow for the groundlings to heckle and throw things at the stage.
March 18, 2025
“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people,her morals,her class struggle,her failing trade,her bureaucratic despotism,her stifling taxes,her consuming wars.”
Will Durant,Caesar and Christ,1944.
March 18, 2025
The reason British culture is under attack by the radical left is that they have chips on their shoulders.
They look on with envy at British inventions, solutions, discoveries, wealth and its honour. They hate the fact that we discovered and owned a vast Empire which invested GBP trillions in today’s monetary values and brought wealth, health, infrastructure, economics, legality, civilisation and a future to countries that were centuries behind their peers and would still be so today without Britain.
In fact when we just walked away from the colonies many degenerated terribly and are still in an inexcusable condition today.
They hate Britain because they can’t compete with our history (not even close) so they attack, corrupt and brainwash people instead. The radical left are not only an embarrassment because their history is pathetic it is also that the Woke-Marxists amongst them are so proud of their dismal and failing ideology.
March 18, 2025
Can’t resist being picky. Nelson was an Admiral. Very different job, commanding an entire fleet, not just one ship, nor a small squadron.
That said, all those you mention are rightly revered. But the Woke Left socialists reserve a particular hatred of Shakespeare precisely because he dealt in eternal truths and they want to change human nature by rule, suppression of dissent and, now, even surgery.
Reply Yes of course he was an admiral. I was using the generic captain, not the rank.
March 18, 2025
I want to be picky too – Nelson was a Vice Admiral.
March 18, 2025
Perhaps the Shakespeare Trust, like Wedgewood, are good at marketing.
They are not the first to put out a press release knowing there will be a large negative reaction and improved their profile as a result.
Yes, the press release was very silly but perhaps it was meant to be.
March 18, 2025
Marketing ploy? One would like to think so but I very much doubt it. The first exhibit in my argument being the National Trust. We have allowed a Marxist Elite to infiltrate our national institutions…
(Although ‘Marxist Elite’ does sound like an oxymoron of course)
March 18, 2025
The reason I think it may be a marketing ploy is that I cannot see them actually following through with what they are saying otherwise it would be a weird and self-destructive thing to do.
No-one can be that stupid, so I assume they are being clever.
March 18, 2025
“No one can be that Stupid” Well, I needed a chuckle Kenneth! Thank you
March 18, 2025
The lefty Globalists and the Cultural Marxists have deliberately targeted the most admired British heroes.
It’s part of a deliberate strategy to weaken English/British patriotism and to trash our history and culture so that a multi-cultural, no borders, one-world-government can be imposed.
They won’t be satisfied until our entire history has been corrupted and every individual who has made a significant contribution to our success has been erased.
March 18, 2025
Patriotism is a Judaeo-Christian (and Graeco-Roman) virtue.
Just as loving oneself is a virtue to (in non-narcissistic sense – in the sense of ‘love thy neighbour’ – in the sense we can’t love others if we don’t first love ourselves) and loving one’s family – and then country,
Patriotism is a beautiful thing. Like a treasure (really).
March 18, 2025
I beg to differ. Patriotism is irrational. What is the rationale behind loving your ‘country’. Where does one country end and another begin? Where someone decides there is a border. It makes no sense.
March 18, 2025
That’s a GREAT question!
One could write books or speak for hours on this topic!
March 18, 2025
Indeed. If you watch the BBC you might well come to the conclusion that nearly all famous engineers, physicists, war heroes, scientists, construction experts, inventors, computer programmers… were women or diverse in other ways. It is still over 90% men at the higher levels. Only about 20% of further maths, physics and computer studies A levels sitters are female even now. Women are however more than 50% of medical students they seem to prefer engineering on humans (and animals) to engineering on cars, jets, bridges, rockets, computers, electronics…
Though rather more women go to university than men. They tend to mainly read languages, history, law, politics, social sciences and biology, medicine & geography if scientific at all.
March 18, 2025
Indeed nearly 60% of undergraduates now are female 1.5 women for each man. So in the more female subjects like languages, art, social sciences, nursing it is often 4 to 1 or even higher. More men seem to have worked out that so many degrees are not worth the three years loss of earning and 30k plus of fees and costs.
March 18, 2025
BRITAIN’S drive to Net Zero by 2050 is an impossible fantasy which will bankrupt the country or drive down living standards says Kemi Badenoch.
Obviously true but the silly lass (duff A levels and no physics) still moronically supports the drive for net zero just with a touch on the brakes. Same as the moronic Sunak agenda – before he buried the party.
Where does Kemi stand on the net harm Covid Vaccines and lockdowns and Covid origins is she deluded like Sunak on these too?
March 18, 2025
Kemi voted for all this net zero lunacy and it seems she still supports it. Nigel Farage on talk radio just now “it is a mistake to have conflicted family GPs signing them off for benefits” it most certainly is and it has been like this for very many years.
March 18, 2025
In the Q&A’s it now appears she was questioning the NZ policy from near the introduction! But her vote was supportive of it, on every occasion, because of ‘collective responsibility’. She’s never changed her mind….. And she wonders why nobody will trust the Tories for a very long time.
Interesting that Sir J. doesn’t mention any of our genius scientists…Newton, Darwin…or engineers I K Brunel… These are the people who really change the World.
March 18, 2025
Maybe it was because we were still in the EU?
https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/climate-strategies-targets/2050-long-term-strategy_en
“The EU aims to be climate-neutral by 2050 – an economy with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. This objective is at the heart of the European Green Deal, and is a legally binding target thanks to the European Climate Law.”
But then:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2019/1056/pdfs/uksiem_20191056_en.pdf
“8.1 This instrument does not relate to withdrawal from the European Union / trigger the statement requirements under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act.”
so maybe it was not required by the EU in 2019, but everybody still wanted it.
March 18, 2025
Indeed john in heaven when one deluded sinner repents but it is only by circa 10%. So who would trust her she is still 90% wrong and she voted for the net zero insanity and still rather clearly supports it!
March 18, 2025
You talk a lot of sense here.
But I still think there is a real need for GOOD arts (not bad arts) in our culture / civilisation too.
For good arts are related to good architecture (think of the beautiful medieval towns and cities and cathedrals here in our country). GOOD arts leads to the existence of people such as Shakespeare, Mozart, Bach to craftsmen who build beautiful ceramics – and today we need creative people in design (Steve Jobs of Apple was essential a designer) as well as all the beautifully designed British iconic cars over the decades. And so on. As well as creativity in general which is closely associated with being an entrepreneur.
So the arts are important – to our economy and culture. And also very masculine. But real arts. Not doing Mickey Mouse media degrees at university which are a waste of time and money.
Btw, the great thinkers of the Renaissance saw it as a crime to separate the arts from science. Look at Leonardo da Vinci. He was right. Man needs beauty as much as he needs comfort.
Best.
March 18, 2025
Dear Sir John – if you mention Admiral nelson, then there’s no reason not to mention the 1st Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley. I find it astonishing and worthy of inquiry how and why it is that wellington has so totally vanished from the national memory …
Reply A great soldier and politician. I was at a dinner last night in the London Guildhall . Wall statues to commemorate both Wellington and Nelson. Same in the Royal Gallery at Westminster.
March 18, 2025
@Vivian – Outside Parliament is a fine statue of Cromwell, who trashed it, but not one of General George Monck, who restored it and saved our ancient constitution. Truly we have odd ideas about national heroes.
March 18, 2025
And if mention of Nelson and Wellington is made, so (amongst many others) should be Hugh Dowding, chief of RAF Fighter Command for much of WW2 and the only man in history to have won a defensive air war.
March 18, 2025
The amusing part of this rewriting of history against current fashionable beliefs is that those doing are condemned to being judged by the future. Trans? Paying people not to work? Health waiting lists? Taxes?
The past is a different country, they did things differently there.
March 18, 2025
An encapsulating thought. Those who would destroy our history, culture, and humour are intent on turning us into refugees in our own country.
March 18, 2025
They seem to be succeding AG
March 18, 2025
The whole point of re-writing our history and culture is all about creating ‘our Island story’ where the originators are side lined in order to make DEI the full and only history/culture.
With a history, culture and customs so rich and spreading back so far, with people deeply rooted and connected it is impossible to have a natural story of our Island where the millions that have come in can find their history and roots.
So, knocking down the sturdy structure that has served so well, time and time again and rebuilding the new in the image of DEI is what it is all about.
The problem is there is no strong foundation, they are building on sand.
The talk of conscription has, in my opinion proved this.
For every one that has allegedly cited ‘racism’ as being a reason for not feeling duty bound to serve, I’m very confident that there are more who feel and know that their root/history/culture here is being destroyed, and they have no intention of fighting for those people who it seems on the face of it despise them.
March 18, 2025
What is odd is that these people who think Shakespeare is nothing special are actually running a trust entirely based on the premise that he was. Why did they take the job in the first place ?
March 18, 2025
Its a monthly pay cheque.
March 18, 2025
Those who attack the fine qualities of our national figures and history have tendencies tantamount to enmity.
March 18, 2025
Sir John
It is suggested that history is written by its victors. We should accept the interpretations of the time and not try and re-invent them to suit ‘personal’, very personal desires to manipulate society in a modern take on what a few individuals want as todays image.
We as a society for the most part is all the better for our 57 varieties of difference. It all goes down the drain when a minority want their minority view to be the prime view for all – they want to create discrimination. They don’t accept individuals or difference, they are the ‘Me’ Culture.
The reason so many clear free thinkers are against Woke, DEI and even ‘(Kier Starmer taking the Knee) Black Lives Matter’ agendas is because they start out doing the very thing they suggest they are against they are trying to nurture full on ‘discrimination’. Discrimination of the worst kind had not really entered the norm (the majority) of the UKs Society until those at the top for their own political agendas shoved a ‘them-and-us’ position down our throats. It is those that push these agendas that are a plague on society, they are trying to destroy not build.
Also out there and out of kilter is the so-called human rights interpretations being created, and they are being created, by those that practice Law in the UK. The human rights of the victims and society itself is sidelined just to prove some egotistical money earning point of the Courts and the Legal profession. The return to ‘English Law’ would solve many of the UK’s current two-tier legal system, it would put democracy and our accountable legislators back in control.
March 18, 2025
Pride in our past is not the only reason to commemorate the heroes of the past – They tell us who we are now and how we came to where we are.
There is nothing to trust about the attitude of the thugs that would destroy our reference points to history. They are an aberration. Basically it is a part of the socialist mind-set to destroy whatever made our society great, from the Church to those that moved us on to a better place.
Let’s stop giving any justification to these idiots and treat those that deface and damage historic monuments and statues as the vandals they are, and punish accordingly.
March 18, 2025
I watched the first in a series of programmes entitled “The Emerald Isles”, looking at islands around Ireland.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001zpjr
On Rathlin It was discovered that the mainstream modern indigenous Irish are not descended from Celts but from a preceding Bronze Age population, while on Arranmore they had sent an open letter around the world inviting back just the descendants of people who had left without realising that this was undiluted racism.
I well remember my father talking about our “kith and kin” in the colonies, including Southern Rhodesia, who had stood by us against the Germans, which even then was not a fashionable attitude and is now heresy. And that leads on to another thought, that this government plans to remove the wrong members of the Lords …
March 18, 2025
‘ On Rathlin It was discovered that the mainstream modern indigenous Irish are not descended from Celts..’
I think you will find that many are descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages.
Mostly Celts and, because it was an island in the west, not too much mixing with other European nations. As white as you could get until very recently too.
March 18, 2025
The archeology says otherwise. From 6 minutes in here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001zpjt/the-emerald-isles-series-1-episode-1
“Modern DNA analysis of the bones gave an unexpected result.”
Because it matched the modern indigenous Irish population.
The Celts arrived a thousand years later than this bloke was alive and propagating.
March 18, 2025
This is a superb article. I am very proud of the UK and our history. On 21st October 1805, Admiral Lord Nelson defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets off Cape Trafalgar. In a daring and revolutionary manoeuvre, Nelson commanded the English fleet to sail through the enemy’s lines instead of going alongside them, as was the traditional way of warships fighting at that time.
It cost Nelson his life, but what a fantastic career he had. Post the Second World War, we used to celebrate Trafalgar Day. What a pity we don’t do so today!
March 18, 2025
Not only was Nelson a good tactician, but he was personally brave exposing himself (medals and all) on his quarterdeck to the French sharpshooters who ultimately killed him, an exemplar for the British officer class to lead from the front.
March 18, 2025
The attack on Western Civilization is coordinated in order to destroy our collective will to defend institutions. It is working. Ironically, it may deter people from studying humanities in the first place and kill off arts faculties. I have cut Oxford out of my will.
March 18, 2025
Begging them to allow us to keep some heroes fails to understand what this is all about , you don’t beg someone whose agenda is to destroy you, for this is what they are about. They want to destroy us, particularly us English people , and it is not new, for this is straight from the Marxist’s play book , its what they attempted to do in Maoist China , or Year Zero with Pol Pot , we even have the ‘struggle sessions’ , where people whose thinking doesn’t align with theirs get destroyed , or as they are doing here, destroy people’s lives and careers.
It is frustrating watching the political right fail to understand the war the left have declared on us, one part of the war is the way the left manipulate language there by setting the terms of the war, and the right let them e.g ‘decolonisation’ , it’s NOT decolonisation, it’s COLONISATION , and that is what this Trust is doing here . The problem we have is that no one is prepared to stand up for us English, so they left get to exercise their Anglophobic racism with out any challenge.
March 18, 2025
Dear Mr. Redwood,
Having spent decades in their quest to destroy everything that once made our country a great place to live, the woke, liberal left finds it has almost achieved what it set out to do.
I wonder what the Prime Minister will do in order to face up to the threat from Russia and other hostile states? There is talk of increased defence spending and even conscription. It is said young people are already suffering a mental health crisis; their fragile state of mind is hardly likely to be helped by the thought of being drafted into the Army.
If I was a young man again, I would think twice about serving in the forces for what has become of our Nation. The loathing of our history, culture and traditions. The desecration of national monuments and statues. The traducing of our great military heroes and historical figures. The transformation of our schools, colleges and universities into bastions of wokery where children and students are taught how awful and racist it is and ever was to be British. The replacement of national identity with a multi-faith, multi-cultural mish-mash. The destruction of our country continues apace.
Our leading politicians are fond of saying that the best days of our country still lie ahead. Nothing they do suggests this might be the case.
March 18, 2025
The “attack on Shakespeare” is by the fifth column Communists employing the Maoist Cultural Revolution tactic of destroying our civilisation, history, culture and social cohesion to advance their own ends. Just as they are employing the false CAGW narrative and its “solution”, Net Zero, to destroy our economy and prosperity. Whilst our arts graduate elites may understand and realise the attack on our culture they lack the necessary knowledge to understand the attack on our economy and prosperity believing the biggest lie ever told. If you tell a big enough lie often enough people will believe it.
March 18, 2025
I wonder if Badenoch will be remembered for being the first politician to admit “Net Zero by 2050” will wreck the country – thereby saving the country from a ‘confirmation biased’ consensus?
March 18, 2025
The Chinese invented ceramics but our engineers invented the age of steam leading to an industrial revolution based upon dispatchable energy.
March 18, 2025
Off topic, my comment on the Daily Telegraph article about Kemi Badenoch’s speech:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/03/18/politics-latest-news-kemi-badenoch-speech-tory-net-zero/
“I’m glad she points out that “We are not growing like we should” because since 2008 the average rate of GDP growth has been only 1.1% a year compared to 2,7% a year in the sixty years before 2008, and while many commentators blame enduring effects of the global financial crisis it seems more likely that it is because the government is giving a higher priority to saving the planet than to improving our economy.”
Hence my whimsical idea that as Rachel Reeves does not have enough tax money coming in for her to be able to increase welfare payments as she might like she should ask Ed Milliiband to top them up with carbon credits.
March 18, 2025
As a historian John, why do you think we are being taught not to be proud of English history and historical figures? The Irish got bigger celebrations in London, with Royalty attending, why are we to be erased?
Were the likes of Elizabeth Fry, Cabury’s, Rowntree, poo pooed by Bevan because they were derided as a patchwork of local paternalisms. Titus Salt, William Lever, did they keep ownership of the homes they built, was that the problem for the socialists? Or was it the restrictions some of those business owners put to control the workers like the prohibition of alcohol and curfews. Isn’t this what we read the state wants to reintroduce with their 15-minute cities restricting individual freedom? People like Maia Brenton worried that the takeover by the Social State would remove volunteerism and that it would wither away. So what withers away further if we continue with this governments aim of taking wealth, starting at such a high level most people will ignore it, until it is reduced and reduced as these things always are.
What about General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army.
March 18, 2025
‘The Irish got bigger celebrations in London, with Royalty attending, why are we to be erased?’
The Irish got Sadiq Khan’s (trade marked) St Patrick celebration in Trafalgar Square. Not something I would wish for.
Coupled with diversity, feminism and other not traditionally Irish themes.
A big crowd. Some wearing soppy Guinness hats. All purpose paddywhackery with little true merit.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr52lmevndno
March 18, 2025
Also John Wesley, who not only was the founder of the Methodist Church (sadly not what it was) but also founded schools and has a reputation among some for having saved this country from a French-style revolution.
March 18, 2025
“Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”.
And women like Elizabeth I whom you mention, Ada Lovelace (computer scientist), Florence Nightingale (creative statistician as well as nurse) and many others …
March 18, 2025
Why would an accident of birth – the fact that you happened to be born in the same country as Shakespeare- connect you with him. If you were born in, say, Germany or Thailand, you presumably could still appreciate the man’s plays. Why are you proud of the history of the place you happened to be born? I’m happy to respect and admire any of the many geniuses that have lived, regardless of where they were born.
March 18, 2025
https://www.irishphilosophy.com/2018/08/06/oconnell-wellington/
“The most famous thing O’Connell said…and Wellington didn’t”
“The following passage in reference to the Duke of Wellington was received with great laughter: “The poor old duke what shall I say of him. To be sure he was born in Ireland, but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse.””
March 18, 2025
Well if you go back and do the maths for 16 generations if english you prob. have circa a 1/16 chance of being directly related to him and a very high chance of being indirectly related to him or his extended family. It seems he had two children who reached adulthood , but may well have had several others on the side.
March 18, 2025
I notice that the BBC no longer mentions Captain James Cook when they visit Whiby.
March 18, 2025
Absolutely right! How pathetic to try to politicise Shakespeare half a century after his death.
March 18, 2025
Shakespeare is just the Mozart of literature! (As great as Mozart)
When Shakespeare played around with a monster and a sprite in The Tempest, he conjured up possibly the greatest words ever written in any language. Like when Mozart just playing around with the simpletons Papagena and Papageno in the Magic Fute, he conjured up some of his greatest music ever.
‘Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not’ – Caliban
‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I, In a cowslip’s bell I lie, There I couch when owls do cry, On the bat’s back I do fly, After summer merrily, Merrily, merrily shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough’ – Ariel
March 18, 2025
Ed M
Beautifully put.
You are so right.
I have loved the Tempest all my life.
I’ve seen it numerous times.
The Bard’s last play and a wonderful play.