23rd April

The Man of the Millennium died today (no, not Churchill - that was a piece of propaganda put about by the Conservative Party) when the 'upstart crow' aka the 'swan of Avon', William Shakespeare went to that great theatre in the sky in 1616. Brilliant though his plays and poetry still are, the jury is still out on whether he actually wrote anything other than bills and petty-minded litigation. How, his critics ask, could he have written about -

• Italy, when he'd never been there,
• War, when he'd never been a soldier,
• Shylock, when he'd never even seen a Jew
• Etc
• Etc

People in his native Stratford seemed to regard him as a burgess (his dad made gloves and was involved in local politics) and a fairly stupid one at that; certainly not as a great playwright.

I think he did write the plays but I also think his real genius was in pinching ideas, lines, even whole scenes, from anybody careless enough to leave their own work lying around. Hence his immortal line in Romeo and Juliet - 'A plagiarism on both your houses.'

In other news ...
Well, more of the same, really. In 1879 (and on the very same day Shakespeare died - what a coincidence!) the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre opened in Stratford. The building burned down in the 1920s to be replaced by the monstrosity that still stands.

Will must have been turning in his grave (which is down the road, by the way, in Holy Trinity Church - and it'll only cost you £67.83 to have a look at it [last year's prices - who knows how much it will cost in the season of 2012])

Oh - by the way. It's St George's Day today.

12th April

President Harry S Truman got it right today in 1958 when he said 'A politician is a man who understands government ... A statesman is a politician who's been dead for ten or fifteen years.'

Spot on, S.

In other news ...

This was the day, legend says, when the Union Jack became the official flag of Britain. the only problem is when? Some accounts say 1606, three years after England and Scotland were first ruled by the same king (James VI or I depending on your grasp of Latin maths and country of origin).
Others say 1707 when the Act of Union formally united England and Scotland. Ireland didn't join (much against its better judgement) until 1801. So who knows? It didn't help of course that the flag only reflects England and Scotland in the crosses of St George and St Andrew, their respective patron saints. st David (Wales) and St Patrick (Ireland) didn't have heraldic crosses and I suspect the English and Scots were pretty miffed that the dragon and the shamrock made much more interesting heraldic designs, so the Union Jack ignores them completely.