Putin’s Russia continues to move smartly in the wrong direction. Interesting article in the Guardian here:
Russia’s ruling political party is gathering academics to draw up a uniform textbook presenting a party-approved version of Russian history and seeking to downplay the horrors of the Soviet era.
“We understand that the school is a unique social institution that forms all citizens,” Irina Yarovaya, the deputy head of the Duma’s constitutional law committee, told a meeting of 20 party members and academics today.
“We need a united society. We need a united textbook.”
The move comes amid a mass ideological project, promoted by the United Russia party, seeking to build a national identity on the glories of its second world war victory, turning a blind eye to some of the crimes committed in the Soviet Union
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/17/united-russia-uniform-history-textbook
That is of course the Great Patriotic War that only started in 1941. It is already the case that the Stalin/Hitler pact and invasion of Poland in 1939 are not taught in Russian schools.
Just to cheer you all up.
Remember this film?
Thing go round in circles. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_qgVn-Op7Q
The Cold War’s activities during the 1970s and 80s can be read about in John Barron’s “KGB: the hidden hand”. My favourite story in this second volume by Barron about the KGB is that of Stanislav Levchenko. I would also recommend the fictional works of Frederick Forsyth “The Fourth Protocol” and “The Deceiver” as most enjoyable, though I couldn’t say how realistic they are.
I think I have a pre-copy template of that book, in an English language version too! Some Russian academics gifted it to me. One reads it cautiously for fear of mind washing.
Western history books ones do it far more sneakily.
You know that story about some Russian feeling sorry for people in the West Re: their journalism….
“We (behind the iron curtain) know what we read is propaganda – we read in between the lines. You [westerners] however simply accept it as truth”
And Craig, School history books DO whitewash ALL British crimes against humanity vis-a-vis the empire. British history books are imperialist porn. Winder if they inspired Fahrenheit 451?
BBC:
http://coto2.wordpress.com/2010/06/19/bbc-sabotaging-press-tv-broadcasts/
lwtc247: Here’s something you might find interesting. An American comic book history “This godless Communism”. It was published in a Catholic magazine, as you might guess. You can read or download it free here:
http://www.archive.org/details/ThisGodlessCommunism
“And Craig, School history books DO whitewash ALL British crimes against humanity vis-a-vis the empire. British history books are imperialist porn.”
Are you sure you aren’t confusing them for the Flashman novels.
No idea Ruth but George as usual has come up with the best links. I do like your inquiring mind.
@ Angry,
You do not disagree that the 20m did die. I make no excuses of the second limb, that Stalin did himself cause a masssive loss of human life, in the context to which you refer.
So be it.
Excuse me – but worth interrupting.
FCO response to the Flotilla massacre:
(1) Promise to make a public call for an immediate return of the missing passports ‘within days’.
(2) Undertake to call privately for Israel to return all possessions belonging to activists.
(3) The British government is willing to accept an enquiry by Israel into the attack on the Flotilla and will not call for an independent international enquiry.
Epilogue:
Despite the grave and serious nature of Israel’s attack on the Flotilla, Mr Burt refused to facilitate a meeting between the activists and the Foreign Secretary William Hague MP.
The West’s policy – in other words, the policy of the Anglo-Americans, as the European Union does not have a policy worth citing – toward the Middle East has long been formulated by Bernard Lewis. The British-born Lewis started his career as an intelligence officer and has remained in bed with British intelligence ever since. Avowedly anti-Russia and pro-Israel, Lewis reaped a rich harvest among US academia and policymakers. He brought president Jimmy Carter’s virulently anti-Russian National Security Council chief, Zbigniew Brzezinski, into his fold in the 1980s, and made the US neo-conservatives, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, dance to his tune on the Middle East in 2001. In between, he penned dozens of books and was taken seriously by people as a historian. But, in fact, Lewis is what he always was: a British intelligence officer. . . .
The recent developments in Uzbekistan have all the hallmarks of the same process. This time the objective is to weaken China, Russia, and possibly India, using the HT to unleash the dogs of war in Central Asia. It is not difficult for those on the ground to see what is happening. The leader of the Islamic Party of Tajikistan, Deputy Prime Minister Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda, has identified HT as a Western-sponsored bogeyman for “remaking Central Asia”. . . .
@ Roderick,
You say: “British people themselves who through taxes and blood paid the cost of defending an Empire without seeing much of a return.”
I think that you are missing the central points about the nature of colonialism. The Empire did benefit:-
i) Financially.
ii) The infrastructure that was developed in Britain, from the Atlantic slave trade right through the period of the Empire, represents a huge stock of contributed wealth that inures to this day to the benefit of the British people.
iii) If you consider the structure of colonial arrangements for the purchase of say Ghanaian cocoa, or Jamaican coffee, you find that the base farmer was paid a pittance, and via a “Coffee Industry Board” or a ” Cocoa Industry Board” the value added was at the British end. It was deliberately structured that way to Britain’s financial advantage.
iv) If you want to trace the slave history of the development of Liverpool or Bristol, it makes extremely interesting reading how these cities grew and prospered out of that trade.
v) Many of the big name financial families have their origins in the period at iv) above.
The end game is that a lot of British infrastructure, raw material sources, profits from land ( consider the Kenyan situation of the theft of Kenyan land and the marginalization of the indigenous population), and financial accumulation did derive from the Empire.
I could go on, but the simple point is that while you make the point that the ordinary British people did not benefit, I seriously doubt that the national wealth, the infrastructure, the conferred overseas benefits of being afforded special privileges in coloured countries can all be discounted, as being insignificant . Free Black labour did build British wealth. The Irish and Scots had their role to play in this grand enterprise as it unfolded from the 1600s onwards in Caribbean.
One example ?” Jamaican sugar, exported as brown sugar, to be processed in London factories, to be resold as high priced refined white sugar. The benefit there was not only jobs provided in an English factory, but a higher priced inferior product ( i.e. brown sugar has the nutrients in it ?” not the processed white sugar) ?” all for the benefit of Britain.
I think that you are absolutely incorrect on the point you made, and there is a point about the collective benefit to the British treasury, that impacted the living standards, educational opportunities, and general wealth of Britain and by extension all those living in Britain.
I wonder what rightist Texans would do if they realized that they were behaving in the same way as a Russian dictator.
Bernard Lewis, like the grumpy old man has reached a point on his journey where historical reality has opened his mind to the bright light of truth shining through the devious attempts at mutating, distorting and deforming the history of Islam for Western gains.
In a widely acclaimed publication he has revealed the West’s attempt at carving an image of Muslims as barbarians, as that of a, “Saracen riding out of the desert on horseback with a sword in one hand and a Koran in the other offering their victims a choice between the two.”
Lewis has weaved the correct path between murdering Islamic suicide bombers and Islam as a religion of love and peace, “like the Quakers but without their aggressiveness.”
The wild conspiracies have been put to rest and Lewis has cemented the starting blocks for the expansion of Islam devoid of the terrorist organizations that represent a deformation of Islam in the same way as “Nazism is a deformation of German patriotism and Bolshevism is a deformation of the aspiration for social betterment.”
“We have observed such things in our lifetime now, and as with the Germans and the Russians, the Muslims themselves are the first and worst victims of this.”
@ Mark,
What really has Bernard Lewis said about the Middle East that is incisive, original or of significant academic worth.
When a writer says: “Due to the lack of reliable public opinion polls, authoritarian rule and media outlets that are trained what to say, it’s not surprising that the assessments of the man on the street are so incomprehensible and based merely on impressions and gut feelings.” – then is it suprising that his work and writings serve merely to re-enforce the prejudices that he has imbibed.
You guessed it – I have little regard for Lewis, and if he knew me – no doubt – sentiments would be mutually shared.
‘I’m less afraid of Russian nationalist tyrants with nukes than I am American Christian Dominionists with nukes. Nationalists want their nation to survive. Dominionists believe that they must enslave the entire planet or die trying to make Jesus return.’
super390
“This confrontation [between the forces of the Apocalypse and Israel]is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”.
U.S. President George W. Bush (in a 2003 conversation with French President Jacques Chirac)
Courtenay, your analysis of empire is spot-on. Basically, as I suggested, the empire was built by looting black and brown people. The destruction of industries in India (eg. cotton in Kashmir in favour of Lancashire) and the stifling at birth of any attempt to industrialise (eg. Egypt in the early-to-mid-C19th) were cases in point, as were the excellent examples you gave.
there is also no question that the colonies were the places were ordinary Britons could feel bigger than they were, and was where the money was to be made.
However, it may be instructive to recall that at the very height of the British Empire, in the mid-C19th (the British Empire began to decline from around 1890, in spite of having just captured large portions of Africa, and by the mid-C20th, in spite of appearances, it was finished), the vast majority of the population of the UK lived in absolute squalor and mortality rates were no better than anywhere else.
Indeed, it could be argued – though it would not be evidence of causality – that the improvements in Britian’s ‘vital statistics’ (infant mortality, literacy, etc.) began to be implemented through improved sewage systems, nutrition and vaccination as empire began to decline.
So the argument that the ‘wealth of Britain’ trickled down is not the whole picture, by any means. It didn;t seem to trickle down very far – just read Dickens! The only reason the ruling classes in the UK allowed ordinary people to access a better overall standard of living was:
1) Because they needed efficient fighters and workers to help them rule their empire (post-Boer war, which had illustrated how poorly-fed and ill most British soldiers were); and
2) Because of continuous, bloody struggle; and
3) To stave off a full-blown revolution.
Most of the advances we now take for granted in the UK were won during and after the C19th. Most of the really concrete advances which affected people’s lives were won in the C20th, very gradually, from the Campbell-Bannerman govt. (took office in 1902)onwards.
Suhayl – “Indeed, it could be argued – though it would not be evidence of causality – that the improvements in Britian’s ‘vital statistics’ (infant mortality, literacy, etc.) began to be implemented through improved sewage systems, nutrition and vaccination as empire began to decline.”
I think the big one (prior to penicillin) was the understanding of cholera – separate the drinking water from the sewage systems. I’m not sure it had much to do with “empire” at all, just a penny dropping, could have happened whenever the times allowed it (vaccination, also great stuff and very helpful, and I’m not sure where/if empire came into it).
Which is not to dispute that “we” did well out of it. There are still a lot of “Georgian” buildings here in Lancaster, where I live. The 18C Atlantic Trade was the town’s great days.
Suhayl,
I am not at total variance with you. You have given a more nuanced analysis.
Your focal point and mine do not in conflict.
My points can be made as follows:-
Mid 1800s, British start the dope running into China and make vast sums off the addicted Chinese popularion. Britain forces payment of compensation for the lost opium market, and claim Hong Kong as that compensation. All this activity constituted wealth accumulation.
The Atlantic African Slave Trade, and the colonial exploits around the world also constituted wealth accumulation.
There is then the bed of affluence upon which the nation floated, and so now – make all your points – and – I accept them as perfectly valid, placed in this context.
Nothing really Courtenay – I have only seen in this man a realisation that the prophet Mohammad, much like the Jewish prophet Jesus Christ, was so concerned with man’s ability to deceive in his quest for wealth and power at the expense of all others, he collected, through teaching a band of growing followers that through strength of character and determination were able to resist attempts to destroy them in conflict.
Such was this inner strength the defeated were neither murdered or tortured and set free, in the same way today as witnessed by the British sailors, free to go with the gifts of leniency.
Today we again witness the struggle with a now certain strike on the centre of Islam. The devious ‘war on terror’ has failed to produce the results intended; fast global communication has rapidly spread a realisation that torture and illegals wars have undermined our very existence. There is now panic to shut down the Internet channels and prepare for another war.
A war that will decide our future.
Suhayl,
huyl,
Here is a brief extract from http://www.new-diaspora.com/Slave%20Trade/2.%20How%20Britain%20benefited.html
Making the point, but I have shortened, as the list is fairly long:-
“Slave Trade – 2. How Britain benefited
Spin-offs: 1. Industrial revolution
Slavery contributed vastly to Britain’s rise as an industrial powerhouse. Many slave-traders invested in manufacturing – canals, railways, new ships and new production technology. Inventions like James Watt’s steam engine of the 1760s were hardly thinkable without slave and colonial profits. The Boulton & Watt firm that made steam engines depended for a period on slave profits. Slavers needed ships, crews needed provisions; traders needed goods to barter for slaves -fetters, chains, padlocks, guns, pots, … Plantations needed machinery; rum making needed bottles. Cotton picked in America was turned into cloth in Lancashire and sold to the colonial market, mostly Africa.
2. Financial services
Investors loaned money to slavers, banking grew to invest the profits and insurance to insure ships and cargoes.
The Barclay brothers – Alexander and David – were among Quakers involved in the slave trade from 1756. they went to found Barclays Bank.
In 1773, the Heywood Brothers founded a bank in Liverpool to fund slave expeditions and deposit their profits. Today that firm is part of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Lloyds coffee house in London was the centre for slave merchants and financiers. It rose to be a global insurance house.”
That’s my point.
@Mark,
There is indeed a quest for resource domination and hegemony.
However, the old model won’t work – it is already broken and can’t be repaired.
We as a species have to weigh that the manner in which we historically exploited resources and people is not not sustainable. Additionally, with one example, if the US wants to try again in Iran the fuck up they have accomplised in Iraq – then brace for the start of World War 111.
We need decent and humane people running the world.
“Such was this inner strength the defeated were neither murdered or tortured and set free, in the same way today as witnessed by the British sailors, free to go with the gifts of leniency.”
It was a propaganda coup you starry-eyed moron. What about those who demonstrated against the election results and ended up raped and tortured in the flowery Islamic Republic’s dungeons?
Suhayl’ analysis of the British Empire is so inaccurate as to be essentially bollocks.
For example,
“Basically, … the empire was built by looting black and brown people. The destruction of industries in India (eg. cotton in Kashmir in favour of Lancashire)”
Actually, the Indian empire was built on trade. It was created by the British East India company. Initially, the company’s main business was the import to Britain of Indian-made cotton goods (calicos), which did much damage to the British textile industry.
Later, as Britain industrialized, the direction of trade in textiles began to flow the other way. But by the end of the nineteenth century, in the first great age of globalization, Britain again began to import manufactured goods from India, including textiles, where labor was vastly cheaper than in Britain.
“… there is also no question that the colonies were the places were ordinary Britons could feel bigger than they were”
A bit of gratuitous hate speech?
As for the colonies being “where the money was to be made” Read Winston Churchill’s “My African Journey.” In his view, there was little money to be made in most of the African colonies, which were actually run at a loss by the British Treasury. And what money was made in the East African colonies was mostly by Indian immigrants, people like Mohandas Gandhi, who, in Africa, maybe felt “bigger than he was.” In any case, in South Africa, Gandhi never objected to the way the British treated the Africans, but he was deeply angered that he and other Indian immigrants were not treated like white people!
“However, it may be instructive to recall that at the very height of the British Empire, in the mid-C19th (the British Empire began to decline from around 1890, in spite of having just captured large portions of Africa, and by the mid-C20th, in spite of appearances, it was finished), the vast majority of the population of the UK lived in absolute squalor and mortality rates were no better than anywhere else.”
This is nonsense. During the late 19th century Britain had the world’s largest economy, which accounted for about 10% of world GDP, but only 2.5% of the World’s population. Furthermore, industrial wages in Britain were higher than anywhere in Europe.
And the Empire was not “finished in 1890,” or even in 1939. At the beginning of the twentieth century the British Navy was twice as large as that of any two other countries combined. During WW1 Britain mobilized an army of millions and with France fought Germany, by then Europe’s largest industrial economy, to a standstill. Even in 1939, Britain had more and better military aircraft and tanks than Germany and a larger navy.
As for mortality rates, they were 46 and 50 for men and women, respectively: which was slightly better than in the US, which by then had the highest per capita income in the world.
Even today, many independent countries in Africa and Asia have lower life expectancies than Britain in 1900, before the discovery of antibiotics, which eliminated mass killers such as TB, and the use of mass innoculation against infectious diseases.
“Indeed, it could be argued – though it would not be evidence of causality – that the improvements in Britian’s ‘vital statistics’ (infant mortality, literacy, etc.) began to be implemented through improved sewage systems, nutrition and vaccination as empire began to decline.”
It could be argued! Don’t be daft, it’s a fact. The cholera bacillus was not discovered until 1876.
“The only reason the ruling classes in the UK allowed ordinary people to access a better overall standard of living was…”
Yeah, well, whatever the reason, the British working class had the highest standard of living in Europe. That is one reason that British navvies built canals and later railroads all over the world, because they were healthier and stronger than the workers in most, if not all other countries.
“Most of the advances we now take for granted in the UK were won during and after the C19th. …”
Obviously, the twentieth century was the age of technological revolutions. When many blades of grass were made to grow where only one grew before. Hence the five-fold increase in world population.
And as for British exploitation of the colonies, here’s what a Niall Ferguson has to say:
“if you want to look at the difference between Britain and her former colonies in economic terms, it’s worth asking yourself just how much independence achieved.
I did a simple calculation to show the ratio of British per capita income to Indian per capita income over the very long run. It reached its maximum extent in 1979. And in the case of more or less all of Britain’s African colonies, income and equality between Britain and the African countries has vastly increased since independence. You could conclude that if the British had really wanted to impoverish people in developing countries, they would have given them their independence long before, because nothing has impoverished people in sub-Saharan Africa quite like political independence.
The question of “in whose interests is the empire” is in some ways not quite the right question. Empire was in the interests of both rulers and ruled in that it channeled investment capital to poor countries at relatively low interest rates.
Courtenay,
Re: Slavery
Try to be a little even handed.
Remember that slavery is probably as old as mankind. That it was practiced in Africa my Moslems and others long before the British arrived and that it was British reformers who agitated to end the slave trade and it was the British government that outlawed slavery world-wide and employed the British Navy to enforce that law.
1) Alfred, are you denyng that Britain destroyed pre-existing industries in India in order to allow British (and/ or British-controlled) industry to achieve a monopoly?
2) “A bit of gratuitous hate speech?”
It’s not hate speech to suggest that people who would be despised within the class system in Britain could go out to India or Africa and be the ‘sahib’ or whatever. Have servants, etc. be treated with relative deference. I was not suggesting it in a malicious way but simply as a social fact.
3) So many Scots, for example, made their fortune in the empire. In the end it may have been unsustainable macroeconomically as I suggested, but for individuals, it was often what you did if you weren’t going to inherit everything back home. Imperial (Indian) elites imported into Africa also made loads of money. My arguments are not based on race, Alfred. Gandhi was definitely not the saint he is painted as by the Western media. Racism is still massive among many people in/ of South Asia. The caste system in India was reinforced by the British and it influenced the Victorian class system. Mutually ‘benificial’ to running both societies.
4) You contradict yourself, Alfred. Germany had indeed overtaken Britain by around 1890. The BE began – note the word, ‘begun’ – to decline in the 1890s; the decline had become terminal by the 1930s. Your arguments about the armed forces remind me of the current situtaion of the USA.
5) “As for mortality rates, they were 46 and 50 for men and women, respectively: which was slightly better than in the US, which by then had the highest per capita income in the world.”
For most people, the key was to attain the age of five. Many did not. My point, Alfred, was simply that wealth distribution in Britain during the C19th century was not to the benefit of most people. That the BE made massive amounts of money which largely went into a relatively few pockets. “Educate our masters” was a maxim, and also they needed people who could read and write to run such a vast empire. There was also a huge struggle on the part of organised labour – you seem to discount this altogether, as well as the multiple revolutions on the continent of Europe which was the backdrop to reform in the UK.
6) “It could be argued! Don’t be daft, it’s a fact. The cholera bacillus was not discovered until 1876.”
So, even when you agree with me, you can’t even say so.
7) “Yeah, well, whatever the reason, the British working class had the highest standard of living in Europe. That is one reason that British navvies built canals and later railroads all over the world, because they were healthier and stronger than the workers in most, if not all other countries.”
Likewise, Alfred.
8)”Obviously, the twentieth century was the age of technological revolutions. When many blades of grass were made to grow where only one grew before. Hence the five-fold increase in world population.”
Likewise, Alfred.
9) “And as for British exploitation of the colonies, here’s what a Niall Ferguson has to say…”
Niall Ferguson is a courtier of imperialism. He makes imperialists feel good about what they did then and about what they are doing now. He selects some information and ignores other information. I think it was clear from my various posts that I am not saying that everything about the BE was bad or that everything before or since was good. Clearly, that would be absurd. So why are you basing your rather emotional response on the premise that I did? I was addresing points made by Courtney Barnett and Roderick Russell. Are we not allowed nowadays even to evince modulated criticism of imperialism?
10)”The question of “in whose interests is the empire” is in some ways not quite the right question. Empire was in the interests of both rulers and ruled in that it channeled investment capital to poor countries at relatively low interest rates.”
No, Alfred, empire was not a philanthropic exercise, it was a bloody, 300 year-long economic adventure, run in the interests of the ruling classes of Britain and the colonial elites which they created/ co-opted in the colonies, whether white, yellow, brown or (less often) black. The people who had the wealth in Britain n then still have it now.
Courtney at 2:16am, yes, I agree with your point.
Oh, and Alfred, the First World War is an excellent illustration of exactly the value which the rulers of the British Empire put on its own people. Millions of guys from working and middle-class backgrounds slaughtered (this applies to all the empires participating) in order to prevent Germany from attaining the mantle of top economic dog. You seem somewhat proud of this? Shouldn’t you be angry, instead? All those white-stone graves, every village cross… this was the true legacy of empire. Indeed, socio-politically, and for good reason, WW1 sounded the death-knell of the ancien regime.
Ah, Empire, empire, summed-up, was this:
“We’ll teach you how to read and write and how to fire a gun, how to build a bridge and how to drive across that bridge. And we’ll teach you how to kill and die, smiling!”
Alfred, you’re still smiling. Time to stop.
http://www.almanar.com.lb/…
19/06/2010 Eleven American battleships and an Israeli one crossed the Suez Canal Friday en route to the Red Sea, the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper reported.
According to the report, traffic in the canal was halted for several hours in order to allow US Navy vessels, which included an aircraft carrier and carried infantry troops, armored vehicles and ammunition, to pass from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.
It was further reported that eyewitnesses detected an Israeli warship among the vessels. No confirmation has been received from Egyptian authorities.
The report also noted that fishing activities in the area were stopped during the ships’ passage as well as traffic on the bridges above the canal.
Retired Egyptian General Amin Radi, chairman of the national security affairs committee, told the paper that “the decision to declare war on Iran is not easy, and Israel, due to its wild nature, may start a war just to remain the sole nuclear power in the region.”
Alfred:
“Actually, the Indian empire was built on trade.”
Yeah it was simply built on benign trade. There was no gunboat diplomacy and the British East India Company never plotted to overthrow existing rulers (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey#Company_policy). People are so stupid to think the situation in India was exploitative.
“A bit of gratuitous hate speech?”
I know it’s crazy right. Those poor colonial powers, carrying The White Man’s Burden, and people only criticise them.
“people like Mohandas Gandhi, who, in Africa, maybe felt “bigger than he was.”
Yeah I hate that Gandhi guy, nothing but a half-naked fakir. Just a wimp who’s only contribution to the world was Satyagraha (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha). It’s not like he invented something useful like a nuclear bomb or landmines.
“Even today, many independent countries in Africa and Asia have lower life expectancies than Britain in 1900”
I won’t comment on Africa, I’m ashamed how little I know about it. You’re absolutely right about Asia though. Malaysia is 70.8, Vietnam is 69.3, China 71.4, India 62.5 is India asian? =P Even Cambodia gets 56.5 and Myanmar 54.9 (geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa042000b.htm). All these are clearly lower than Britain’s 46 and 50.
Stupid liberals.
“Niall Ferguson is a courtier of imperialism. He makes imperialists feel good about what they did then and about what they are doing now. He selects some information and ignores other information.”
Well it is most certainly true that Ferguson selects some information and ignores other information (or at least that he leaves it out of his narrative). This, unfortunately, is a necessity of writing history. All historians have to leave out information or his books would be too bloody big to carry around in one’s bag and would be excruciatingly boring when it comes to the retelling of what Queen Victoria had for breakfast on January 21st 1901.
But surely the issue is WHAT he leaves out and whether he leaves out certain facts BECAUSE they contradict his argument about Empire. Manipulating the facts or ignoring them is generally considered to be a dereliction of duty for a historian (this is a charge frequently made about, say, David Irving’s work in that he uses his sources to create a false narrative).
What specifically does Ferguson distort or leave out that makes his work dishonest?
as – “retelling of what Queen Victoria had for breakfast on January 21st 1901”
Ah, but, now you mention it … enquiring minds, and all that. I don’t think you picked the date at random, either; it was a Sekrit Poison, right ?