Stuart Sorensen

Ancient wisdom doesn’t always translate well to the modern world. Sometimes it can be instructive and helpful. At other times it’s just misguided mumbo jumbo.

People who believe in old stuff just because it’s old tend to be gullible, easily led and vulnerable to the vagaries of any Tom Dick or Harry who knows how to spin a yarn. There’s nothing new in that though – confidence tricks have been…

Civilisation: Hereward the Wake (11th century)

Hereward the Wake was a minor Saxon noble of Danish ancestry who became an English hero because of his post-conquest struggle against the Normans (many of his exploits ended up attributed to the semi mythical ‘Robin Hood’). He most probably hailed from the Lincolnshire village of Bourne and may have been the son of Leofric, the local Earl and his wife Godiva (yes – THAT Lady Godiva). Whoever he…

If you hate fascism and the rise of neoNazism in UK then follow these guys and share this graphic. They’re definitely the ‘good guys’.

Civilisation part 6 – Introducing the Crusades PDF

The sixth ‘Civilisation’ PDF is out now. It’s the reason why some of the more recent posts have departed from my usual chronological approach. There were so many elements to cover in this (very basic) introduction to The Crusades that it made sense to arrange them consecutively within the  Civilisation ‘running order’ .

As usual I’d appreciate any feedback. I fully anticipate making mistakes in…

Civilisation: Peter Bartholomew and the Holy lance of Antioch

In 1097 the First Crusade besieged Antioch. In December of that year a poor pilgrim and mystic called Peter Bartholomew reported that he was having visions, reputedly from St. Andrew who assured him that the Crusaders would be victorious if only they would retrieve from Antioch the Holy lance. This is the lance that allegedly pierced Christ’s side at the time of his crucifixion. Apparently, the…

Civilisation: The (1st) Barons’ crusade

As we know Pope Urban II called for a ‘pilgrimage’ at arms to support the Byzantine Christians at the end of the Synod of Clermont in November 1095. In earlier posts we’ve seen how the idea of a few thousand knights lending their military skills to the Byzantine Emperor, Alexius Comnenus quickly got out of hand with a vicious pogrom against Europe’s Jewish communitiesas a rabble of peasants took…

Civilisation: The Peoples’ Crusade #3 1096 – 1099

Impetuous as ever the Western peasants eventually made it to Constantinople where they ignored the advice to wait for the main Crusader army and insisted that Emperor Alexius I Comnenus ferry them across the Bosporus straight away. It was clear to all the Byzantines that this rag-tag bunch of amateurs would be no match for the Turks. Unfortunately for them, recent evidence notwithstanding, the…

Civilisation: The Peoples’ Crusade (1096 – 1099) Part 2

The battle cry of the First crusade was ‘Deus vult’ (God’s will) or sometimes ‘Deus le Vult’ (God wills it) and it soon becomes obvious that God actually must have willed quite a lot of very surprising things. We’ve already seen how the peoples’ crusade ‘cut its teeth’ on the bloody slaughter of peaceful European Jews, presumably at God’s request and now we’ll learn that this impetuous horde…

Civilisation: The Peoples’ Crusade 1096-1099 #1

When Urban II made his politically-motivated call for knights to help defend the Byzantine empire from the Seljic Turks he couldn’t have known how popular the enterprise would become. That’s the problem with declarations of war – it’s impossible to predict the ramifications. What should have been a relatively small-scale expedition consisting of a few thousand European knights became a mass…

Welcome to the ‘Civilisation’ blog series. This is my attempt to categorise some of history’s most famous (and infamous) names. Sometimes it’s serious and sometimes it’s silly. I hope you like it.

February 8th 1692

323 years ago today the first suggestions of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts were made. These suggestions eventually led to the trial, conviction and execution of a number of…

Civilisation: Pope Urban II (1035/42 – 1099)

Welcome to the ‘Civilisation’ blog series. This is my attempt to categorise some of history’s most famous (and infamous) names. Sometimes it’s serious and sometimes it’s silly. I hope you like it.

Urban II was always going to be an achiever. Born into a wealthy, aristocratic family sometime between 1035 and 1042 he became the most powerful religious figure in Western Christendom, beat his rival,…

Welcome to the ‘Civilisation’ blog series. This is my attempt to categorise some of history’s most famous (and infamous) names. Sometimes it’s serious and sometimes it’s silly. I hope you like it.

Peter the Hermit was a French monk who lived from around 1050 to 1131. One of the original (but unofficial) ‘Crusade preachers’, Peter was responsible for recruiting and then leading close to 100,000…

Welcome to the ‘Civilisation’ blog series. This is my attempt to categorise some of history’s most famous (and infamous) names. Sometimes it’s serious and sometimes it’s silly. I hope you like it.

The ‘First Crusade’ is actually a bit of a misnomer. In truth it comprised of 2 distinct and discrete waves known as

1 The peoples’ Crusade

An unprepared but massive exodus of peasant pilgrims, armed…

Labelling & prejudice starts early

This video really got to me. Not because little kids can be prejudiced – we all know that children tend to have some very fixed, black and white opinions. That’s the only way that their little heads can make any sort of sense of the nuanced world around them. They make snap decisions based upon very limited information because they have to. We evolved to do that as adults but even more so as kids.

Welcome to the ‘Civilisation’ blog series. This is my attempt to categorise some of history’s most famous (and infamous) names. Sometimes it’s serious and sometimes it’s silly. I hope you like it.

Although officially dated to 1054 (the year of mutual excommunication), the Great schism between the Eastern (Greek orthodox) and Western (Latin) churches began very much earlier. To make sense of this…

LibDems’ hands are dirty already

This evening I had the misfortune of watching a Party Political Broadcast by the Liberal Democrat Party. That’s three minutes of my life that I won’t get back. Don’t worry if you missed it – you haven’t exactly lost out.

The bulk of the presentation was taken up with local LibDem councillors wittering on about how nice and dedicated local councillors are, explaining futile, late night attempts to…

Don’t stand by

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. There’s a reason why the anniversary of the mass slaughter of 6 million Jews along with countless communists, gypsies, blacks and dissidents is held on January 27th. This is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Beginning in 1939 Hitler’s Nazis systematically persecuted and eventually murdered all those that their megalomaniacal leader blamed for…