Post by Coates / Redsky

Three historical anniversaries today! Firstly, this from 119 years ago, via @yesterdaysprint.bsky.social on the old place:

A tweet from Yesterday’s Print: The Minneapolis Journal, Minnesota, July 15, 1906. Then an image of a headline and subhead which read “Noisy, hungry frogs sadden farmer’s life – they scare his cattle and they also eat his flannel shirt”

jul 15, 2025, 7:59 am • 73 15

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An... interesting 1937 diary entry from novelist, MP and possessor of a colourful private life Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon

Photo of part of a page in a book of diary entries: “Exhausted socially and mentally I slept for two hours this afternoon in the Library of the House of Commons! A deep House of Commons sleep. There is no sleep to compare with it rich, deep, and guilty.” ‘Chips’ Channon

jul 15, 2025, 8:01 am • 15 1 • view

I’m clearly going to have to get his diaries, not least because Wikipedia says the editor of the original expurgated edition “said he saw well-connected people go white when they heard that Channon had kept a journal” – and they’re now uncensored

jul 15, 2025, 8:01 am • 15 0 • view

But perhaps most importantly, it’s the 108th anniversary of the birth of Robert Conquest: esteemed historian; author of ‘The Great Terror’, one of the first works to expose the extent of Stalin’s tyranny; and the composer of many, many silly, filthy limericks

There was a young fellow called Shit, A name he disliked quite a bit, So he changed it to Shite, A step in the right Direction, one has to admit

jul 15, 2025, 8:03 am • 31 5 • view

There will, I’m afraid, be no prizes for guessing which aspect if his life I’m going to focus on. The Great Terror didn’t make him popular with the useful idiots in the West who defended Soviet Russia (you can still find them around today, not least on this website) but he had an answer to that:

There was a great Marxist named Lenin Who did two or three million men in. That’s a lot to have done in But where he did one in That grand Marxist Stalin did ten in

jul 15, 2025, 8:04 am • 17 0 • view

(When the Soviet archives were opened, his publisher wanted a new edition, and The Great Terror: A Reassessment duly came out in 1990. His friend Kingsley Amis suggested it be called I Told You So, You Fucking Fools)

jul 15, 2025, 8:05 am • 16 1 • view

There’s more about his limericks (and more examples) in this fond remembrance by Blake Morrison

jul 15, 2025, 8:05 am • 6 0 • view

...and in this blog

jul 15, 2025, 8:06 am • 3 1 • view

...including:

There was plenty of good-natured chaff When I popped in to fuck the giraffe, And the PRZS Could hardly suppress A dry professorial laugh. (PRZS might stand for Puerto Rico Zoological Society. It’s the only likely explanation of the acronym I could find)

jul 15, 2025, 8:07 am • 4 0 • view

It’s little wonder he once said “Limericks are not very gentlemanly – or it’s a special kind of gentleman”

jul 15, 2025, 8:08 am • 2 0 • view

But perhaps his finest moment was summarising all of Shakespeare’s famous ‘seven ages of man’ speech...

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms; And then the whining school-boy... creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lin’d, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; ... Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

jul 15, 2025, 8:09 am • 4 0 • view

I’m obsessed with RUssian history so I know Conquest but didn’t know the limerick aspect of him. Very humanizing.

jul 15, 2025, 3:25 pm • 0 0 • view

Yes, he sounds like he’d have been fun to know

jul 15, 2025, 4:05 pm • 1 0 • view

To rhyme "have done in" and "did one in" is just amazing.

jul 15, 2025, 8:07 am • 2 0 • view

That's magnificent.

jul 15, 2025, 9:31 am • 1 0 • view

jul 15, 2025, 9:36 am • 5 0 • view

Almost a haiku... Noisy, hungry frogs Nomming on his flannel shirt Sadden farmer's life

jul 15, 2025, 10:01 pm • 1 0 • view

I love this headline. It also undersells the 'eat flannel shirt' bit, as apparently, the monster frogs went through "at least a half dozen" of his flannel shirts.

jul 15, 2025, 8:16 am • 5 0 • view

Oh, I didn't know that! Excellent

jul 15, 2025, 8:17 am • 1 0 • view