Peace conference

Cornwall is home to more minerals than any other part of the UK and its mining history goes back 3,500 years. That's just about all I know about it and I really wanted to get to Truro Museum’s renovated mineral gallery and see some of the 12,000 mineral samples in its collection this morning. I got to the museum before it opened, identified my nearest onward bus stop, bought myself a coffee next door, then discovered that it is the only museum I've ever encountered without somewhere to leave bags. If I'd known in advance I might have found a workaround, but as it was I got to Falmouth much earlier than I'd planned.

Apart from getting a feel for the town and docks, I wanted to see Pendennis (the Cornish 'Penn Dinas' means 'headland fortification') Castle, built by Henry VIII around 1540 to protect against invasion from France. At the end of the 16th century the circular keep and gun platform was expanded in the face of an increasing threat of a Spanish attack. It was upgraded in the 1730s, again during the 1790s, again during the 1880s, and was rearmed during the First World War. I walked through the defensive tunnels built during the Second World War (extra 1).

While I was there I watched a Royal Navy warship make its way slowly into harbour.

Was there any chance of spending my two hours there not thinking about war? At every pace I was reminded of having to live alert to the possibility of attack (like walking alone, but on an international scale).

Protecting England from attack by France or Spain now seems absurd. War against Germany is also unthinkable now but was real enough for my parents' generation. Overt respect for sovereign states has been the rhetoric around how democracies work for all my lifetime (covering up some covert evil by the USA and its 'special relationship'), but now? Now that the rulebook has gone? What does it feel like to live in a country bordering Russia? Would the USA really invade Canada? Greenland? Denmark? What if Trump decided he wanted Cornish minerals?


Other extras from the harbour and docks.