marcos:
Strange world... this "Winter in the Great White North" thread... on the first day of spring...
Your link to Newbolt leads to Clifton College, the school for the upper classes of Bristol, England from the 17th century on (I presume - I'm not sure of the date that Clifton was founded).
And what was the wealth of the few Bristol families that had the money to send their children to Clifton College based on?
Well, slavery from Africa was one ingredient. Other sources of wealth included the vertical integration of key commodity production and importing businesses over a period of 200 to 300 years (sugar, cotton, rubber, etc.) Meanwhile, most of the people of Bristol lived in abject poverty -- as was the case of my own home town, which had a life expectancy of about 28 years in 1850.
So out of great injustice (torture, kidnapping, murder, theft, rape, genocide, piracy), beautiful (?) poetry, music and art were born! The world has changed little in the last 300 years... It's no wonder that John Cleese (as an old boy of Clifton) turned out so weird!
Best regards,
Howy |
