After Darkness

We watched a not-wonderful film about the English civil war, made 20 years ago (Benedict Cumberbatch as third spear-carrier, or something like that). Rather one dimentiomal characters that made Cromewll into an obsessional monster, Thomas Fairfax into a  romantic hero with too much conscience and Charles I into a charismatic martyr. I read a review about it that was quite sympathetic and made the valid point that, despite the dramatic events of the period (the script did actually include 'the world turned upside down'), there are relatively few films films about it, compared with, say, the Tudors or the post-Restoration years

You can see why. There were few heroes and few villains. We might instinctively side with the overthrow of a monarch ruling by divine right, but the outcome, after 6 years of bloodshed, was a bloody, imperialist tyrant who failed to estabish a stable country, resulting in a return to the status quo, to popular acclaim. As always, as now, it was ordinary people who suffered. Winning a war (in fact, in practice, two different wars, in both of which the king was defeated) was not enough to guarantee the success of the cause. Perhaps it never is

We will soon be setting off on another autumn/winter sojourn away from home. I have spent the day ticking off must-be-done-before-we-go tasks. Who knows if there will be another sunset before we go, so I'll grab it while it's there, as a farewell and see you soon. We have not had the torrents that other parts of the country have suffered, but after a grey day of mist, mizzle, gloom and damp, a bright half-hour before sunset was very welcome