Whitehall and the Iraq War: the UK's four Intelligence Enquiries

The UK intelligence community has recently undergone a ‘season of enquiry’ relating to the Iraq War and the ‘War on Terrorism’. This essay discusses each of the four enquiries in turn and argues that while the debate has been intense, much has been missed. The enquiries have largely focused on specific administrative issues, while the media have focused on blame–casting. Although the enquiries have been useful in underlining the extent of genuine ‘intelligence failure’, wider reflections about the nature and direction of UK intelligence have been conspicuously absent. None of the enquiries has dealt with the difficult issue of how intelligence analysis might interface with modern styles of policy–making. More broadly, it is argued that there is a growing mismatch between what intelligence can reasonably achieve and the improbable expectations of politicians and policy-makers

Comital Ireland, 1333–1534

The history of late-medieval Ireland is not exactly littered with dates that command general recognition, so it is surely suggestive that two which have achieved a degree of notoriety concern the fortunes, or rather misfortunes, of Ireland’s earls and earldoms: the murder of William Burgh, the ‘brown’ earl of Ulster, in 1333; and the rebellion in 1534 of Thomas Fitzgerald (‘Silken Thomas’), soon-to-be tenth earl of Kildare. These are dates of demarcation. In the broadest terms, 1333 has been understood to mark the end of the expansion of royal power under the Plantagenets, 1534 the start of its vigorous reassertion under the Tudors. What occurred between these chronological bookends? For Goddard Orpen (d. 1932), writing in 1920 when the Anglo-Irish tradition he cherished seemed imperilled by the prospect of Irish secession from the United Kingdom, the murder of the earl of Ulster in 1333 was a moment of dark, almost metonymic, significance: ‘the door was now closed on a century and a half of remarkable progress, vigour, and comparative order, and two centuries of retrogression, stagnation, and comparative anarchy were about to be ushered in’

Learning from Jesus’ Wife: What Does Forgery Have to Do with the Digital Humanities?

McGrath’s chapter on the so-called Gospel of Jesus’ Wife sets aside as settled the question of the papyrus’ authenticity, and explores instead what we can learn about the Digital Humanities and scholarly interaction in a digital era from the way the discussions and investigations of that work unfolded, and how issues that arose were handled. As news of purported new finds can spread around the globe instantaneously facilitated by current technology and social media, how can academics utilize similar technology to evaluate authenticity, but even more importantly, inform the broader public about the importance of provenance, and the need for skepticism towards finds that appear via the antiquities market

The Heart of the Matter: Forgiveness as an Aesthetic Process

This paper assesses the aesthetic components of the experience of forgiveness to develop a procedural model of the phenomenological process that negotiates cognitive judgments and understanding with emotional affective states. By bringing the Greek concepts of kalokagathia and eudaimonia into conversation with Ricoeur’s “solicitude,” I suggest that the impetus for engaging in the process of forgiveness is best understood narratively as the pursuit of a life well lived (in terms of beauty). Consequently, forgiveness is revealed as a technique for developing both an optimal personal and public character (in both moral and aesthetic terms)

Cultural Interactions and Religious Iconography in 16th Century Kerala: the Mural Paintings of St. Mary’s Church in Angamaly

St. Mary\u27s Jacobite Syrian Church is an ancient church in Angamaly (Kerala). One account has Syrian Christians arriving in Angamaly in 384 CE and the church being established in 409 CE. Syrian Christians are the earliest Christian community of India, and they attribute their origin to the evangelical efforts of the apostle Saint Thomas who is believed to have travelled through the Malabar country in 52 CE evangelizing and building churches. It was when he moved east that he is supposed to have met his death and (martyrdom) at Mylapore near Madras

Elegy to an Oz Republic: First Steps in a Ceremony of Invocation towards Reconciliation

In 2012 the author completed a series of drawings that, while figurative in form, were structurally based on and derived their inspiration from Robert Motherwell’s abstract series, Elegies to the Spanish Republic (1963-1975). This wholesale 'borrowing', 'quotation' and 'citation' raises the questions addressed in this article. What does it mean to engage in acts of appropriation now? And, more importantly, can such acts of appropriation draw on the spirit of the 'original' work to make a (political) difference? 

‘Off With Their Heads’: British Prime Ministers and the Power to Dismiss

The British prime minister’s power to appoint and dismiss ministers is probably his most important single power. This article explores how prime ministers from Macmillan to Blair have used that power. The article considers the criteria that prime ministers use when choosing to appoint or dismiss individuals from office before examining the calculations and miscalculations that prime ministers have made in practice. Finally, the article analyses the way that prime ministers have exercised, in particular, their power to dismiss and finds that Thatcher was far more likely than others to sack cabinet colleagues on ideological or policy grounds. The article emphasizes that prime ministers’ relationships with especially powerful ministers – ‘big beasts of the jungle’ – are crucial to an understanding of British government at the top.</jats:p

La Marseillaise\u27 and French Nationalism

Paul R. Hanson\u27s entry for July 30 in the Book of Days 1987