Analysis & Investigation

Many people have a dream of leaving the rat race of London behind to start a new life free from the crime, congestion, noise, and pollution of a large city. These people believe they will find contentment, freedom, peace, and quality of life - in a village or small town in a rural location such as the West Country, Lake District or on a remote Scottish island. However one needs to be aware that the rural idyll is not always as it first appears, as rural life can be boring, expensive, inconvenient, narrow, restrictive and occasionally dangerous.

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William Beckford (1760-1844) was the heir of a Jamaican sugar plantation dynasty, whose wealth had been built on the exploitation of slave labour. In his own lifetime Beckford became an infamous social outcast, for a homosexual affair he had with William Courtenay. Beckford gained a mythical reputation not only for his fabulous wealth and a sex scandal, but also for the building of Fonthill Abbey on his estate in Wiltshire. The Abbey was a gothic palace constructed over a number of years, which included a tower that reached almost 300 feet into the sky. Its construction became Beckford’s own Tower of Babel, almost bringing him to financial ruin. He sold his Fonthill estate in 1822 in order to repay his debts. Beckford was lucky in this, as three years later the tower which had been poorly constructed collapsed. Brian Fothergill in ‘Beckford of Fonthill’ takes the reader beyond the myth of Beckford, to those influences that manifested themselves at Fonthill Abbey.

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Today war criminals are more likely to face trial than they were in 1919. Although Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serbian leader may have been allowed to boycot the first day of his own trial on 26th October 2009, he is being held in custody and if found guilty and convicted for war crimes, will be punished for those crimes. However, in 1919 German suspected war criminals such as Kaiser Wilhelm II and General Eric von Ludendorff managed to escape justice.

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The Treaty of Versailles - the peace treaty that Germany had to sign on 28th June 1919 - had been greatly influenced by President Wilson’s 14 points. The idea of the League of Nations was specified in the 14th point: “A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike”

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The debate among historians over whether the Treaty of Versailles caused the Second World War, often focuses on the Treaty as something that brought about the war, rather than something that failed to prevent the war. There were many features of the Treaty of Versailles, that had the potential for success in keeping the peace and preventing future conflict. In many respects the Treaty of Versailles failed to keep world peace, because the Treaty was incomplete and unenforced.

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This year has been the 90th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, but its significance has been ignored by much of the mainstream media. The Treaty of Versailles was the peace treaty which the Allies and Associated Powers - Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States - made Germany sign after the First World War. The Treaty, signed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles on 28th June 1919, was resented by the Germans, because they felt its terms and conditions were too harsh. The subject often debated among historians, is whether or not its clauses were the cause of Hitler’s rise to power and the outbreak of the Second World War?

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On 3rd September 2009 Jolyon's Review published a comment article entitled ‘A database for cheap labour’, about a website called 2old.co.uk which claimed: “Local employers, particularly small and start-up businesses would be more willing to employ mature job seekers if they were willing to work for less”.

Funding for 2old.co.uk was provided by UnLtd - the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, which is a charitable organisation. Why was UnLtd - a trustee of the Millenium Awards Trust - funding a website that appeared to be promoting the exploitation of older members of the workforce in the United Kingdom?

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An advertisement for a website called 2old.co.uk appeared in the September 2009 edition of The Frome Valley & Isle of Purbeck Gazette. The advertisement was published in the form of an article entitled: ‘Bringing Maturity To The Workplace’. The article claims that “2old.co.uk brings together the local employer and the mature job seeker”. It goes on to make the extraordinary claim that mature job seekers are willing to work for less.

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The study of a work of art can be used as a method of understanding the historical period in which it was created. Not only can a painting be appreciated for its beauty or its message, but if we know the date of its creation, for whom it was created and why it was created, then we learn something about the politics and society behind its inception. For example we can learn much about the court of King Henry VIII of England by studying the paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger.

Goshka Macuga turns this process completely around, where a piece of artwork on display is actually formed by items associated with a historical period. For example a museum display cabinet containing items from the 1930’s is in itself a piece of artwork in an exhibition. The separate items in the cabinet are equivalent to the different colours and tones in a painting.

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A painting of Barack Obama on his presidential campaign will catch your eye, if you walk past The Air Gallery at 32 Dover Street, London at the moment. One of the jobs of art has always been to make a comment on current affairs and politics, which this painting does well. The painting is optimistic and draws a line between now and the previous eight years of world history.

The painting of Barack Obama is by the artist Peter Goodfellow and is part of an exhibition of his work, which runs until 16th May 2009. Other paintings in the exhibition concentrate on the themes of ‘3 Passions: Bull Fighting, Landscapes, Football’. Peter Goodfellow has come down from Scotland personally, to organize this exhibion and welcome visitors to it.

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