The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Khaled al–Asaad “In spite of my advanced age,” wrote the French historian Paul Veyne in 2015, “it is my duty as a former professor and as a human being to voice my stupefaction before this incomprehensible destruction, and to sketch a portrait of the past splendour of...
Plutarch observed that the “many virtues” of the Roman general and triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus “were obscured by one vice, avarice.” Peter Stothard’s life of Crassus is the story of that vice. The book opens by laying bare the contradiction at the heart of the...
One of the delusions of civilisation is that boundaries, barriers and walls offer protection against collapse. It’s not surprising, then, that Tom Holland’s masterful and engaging history of the Pax Romana, covering the Golden Age of Rome from the end of the reign of...
History Today with Peter Hughes | RSS.com
Statue Wars - Peter Hughes on Love & Hate in Statues | RSS.com
In 1936, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra embarked on a controversial tour of Germany. On the morning of 10 November, the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham and members of the orchestra arrived at the Leipzig Gewandhaus to lay a wreath at the base of a statue of the...
Why is it so easy to hate and difficult to love? When societies fracture into warring tribes, we demonise those who oppose us. We tear down our statues, forgetting that what begins with the destruction of statues, often leads to the killing of people. The world is in...
Peter Hughes, your specialisation in the madness of crowds seems to be the motivating factor in your writing this book – is that right? While the specific issues that stir the madness of crowds, from statues and gender identity to ‘stolen’ elections, may vary, there...
A History of Love & Hate in 21 Statues The furore over statues from both sides of the political spectrum can be alienating. There are often legitimate reasons as to why a statue is problematic. Edward Colston’s had gone through a long-running process of...
Peter Hughes, what first attracted you to statue debate? I was drawn into writing the book on the history of statue destruction out of a preoccupation with the present and the future rather than the past. As a philosopher and a psychologist, I’m interested in...
