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Can you view this trailer?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ01tJ4EWeg
Looking forward to this one. My Grandad, Bert was there, that day.
- corra
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I can see it. It looks incredible. The connection with your grandfather is really special.
- corra
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I still really love this scene:
- Dill Carver
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Oh yes... the poignancy of 'Atonement.' The novel, the movie... truly, modern classics.
There are so many messages within that stroll along the beach.
- Dill Carver
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corra wrote:
I can see it. It looks incredible. The connection with your grandfather is really special.
Dunkirk, the London Blitz, that era, that war... it forged our family. Generations on, it is responsible for where we live, how we were born. What we feel.
As formative, I should imagine, as the American Civil War was to you and yours. We are all born of history.
- corra
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I mentioned to a friend here that I hope to see Antietam in the spring. He says I give myself away as a Yankee by calling it "Antietam." In the South, they call it "Sharpsburg."
He added, "That's how they caught spies, you know. If this was 1863, you'd have been shot for that slip."
Oh!
- Dill Carver
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Divided by a common language. You should insist that the battle of Sharpsburg is always to be referred to as Antietam. After all, the victors get to write the history. Don't you empowered yankees get to be authoritative over your vanquished foes?
Sharpsburg. The bloodiest day in American history. 22,000 plus casualties. Incredible when you consider that this war was fought mainly with muzzle-loading rifles and percussion cap side-arms; blades and slow to load (muzzle) artillery. That's a lot of work. Imagine how more efficient the killing would be with automatic firearms, breech loading artillery, amoured vehicles and air-support? Would the killing simply be over more quickly, or would there be more of it? I guess that McClellan could have killed thousands more of the retreating Confederates, annihilating them in the manner that Lincoln demanded.
- corra
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You should insist that the battle of Sharpsburg is always to be referred to as Antietam.
I can't! My ancestors fought at Sharpsburg! They'd come haunt me!
I told him that you'd made the suggestion, and he grinned, however. Then he started to say tell me why the battles have different names, referring to the war as "The Civil War," and I interrupted him to ask, "Which civil war? The one in 1600s England?" to which he responded, "Well, when I talk about it here in America, I assume everyone knows what I'm talking about, but good point. Down here, though, it's either 'The War of Northern Aggression' or 'The War of Southern Independence.'" #themoreyouknow 
Incredible when you consider that this war was fought mainly with muzzle-loading rifles and percussion cap side-arms; blades and slow to load (muzzle) artillery.
I've taken a couple ACW classes. One in the North, one in the South, actually. I held a (very heavy) gun from the war (the kind that takes a Minié ball), and the professor demonstrated how long it would take to reload. Incredible is right.
- Dill Carver
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corra wrote:
You should insist that the battle of Sharpsburg is always to be referred to as Antietam.
I can't! My ancestors fought at Sharpsburg! They'd come haunt me!
I know... that's why I was teasing you.
I've developed a deep interest in the American Civil War over the years and am constantly surprised at the savagery of the fight; the degree of animosity, the sheer scale of the violence (in terms of casualties) that these countrymen inflicted upon each other.
- corra
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I know... that's why I was teasing you.
Ah! 
I've developed a deep interest in the American Civil War over the years and am constantly surprised at the savagery of the fight; the degree of animosity, the sheer scale of the violence (in terms of casualties) that these countrymen inflicted upon each other.
Me too. I find it amazing that a country could turn inward on itself like that. I think that's why I'm becoming interested in 1600s London as well. So much happening! The fire, the Interregnum, the plague. I just read Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe, by the way. (Well, several weeks ago.) I don't see how people lived through that.
- Dill Carver
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One to check out.. A 'shocking' novel by all accounts (yes, a pun)
Naomi Alderman has won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction for her feminist sci-fi novel The Power.
- Dill Carver
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Apparently (I haven't read it), the very opposite of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale which depicts a future United States governed by a totalitarian theocracy, where women have no rights.
- Dill Carver
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New money. A change of banknote and coin in England...
Celebrating Jane Austen in her bicentennial year.
The Austen £10 note (in polymer plastic)...
and the Austen £2 coin....
- Dill Carver
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I think it's nice that they've honoured her. Two hundred years on... it marks that she left something behind.
- corra
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Dill Carver wrote:
I think it's nice that they've honoured her.
Me too.
- corra
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I just got DNA proof that Captain Robert Messer is definitely my grandfather. I find this MOST exciting. Actual DNA evidence that his cells are a part of mine!
He participated in the Battle of Alamance in North Carolina in 1771. "Some historians in the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries considered the battle to be the opening salvo of the American Revolution, and locals agreed with this assessment. Yet, this has been questioned by present-day historians arguing that the Regulators (though viewed in the eyes of the royal governor and his allies as being in rebellion against King, country, and law) were not intending a complete overthrow of His Majesty's Government in North Carolina. They were only standing up against those certain local officials who had become corrupt and unworthy tools of the King, and they only turned to riot and armed rebellion as a last resort when all other peaceful means through petitions, elections to the Assembly, etc. had failed to redress their grievances..."
"Gentlemen and Regulators: Those of you who are not too far committed should desist and quietly return to your homes, those of you who have laid yourselves liable should submit without resistance. I and others promise to obtain for you the best possible terms. The Governor will grant you nothing. You are unprepared for war! You have no cannon! You have no military training! You have no commanding officers to lead you in battle. You have no ammunition. You will be defeated!" - Royal Governor William Tryon
Six men were found guilty of treason and were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, although in practice, they were only hanged:
Benjamin Merrill
Robert Matear (Matter)
James Pugh
Captain Robert Messer
Peter Craven
One unknown man
Plaque from battleground monument. Reads: "Of the twelve regulators condemned at Hillsboro, the following six were executed by the British Governor: James Pugh, Robert Matear, Benjamin Merrill, Captain Messer, and two others whose names are now unknown. 'Our blood will be as good seed in good ground, that will soon produce one hundred fold.' - James Pugh, under the gallows at Hillsboro, N.C., June 19th, 1771."
I'm descended through Robert's son Solomon, who was six at the time of the battle & hanging. Solomon's older brother Christian, who was eleven, asked that he be hanged in his father's place. What courage.
Apparently Robert was hanged because he refused to swear loyalty to the Crown. Several other Regulators were pardoned.
I love reading about real people of that era. Especially when they are my grandfather! I'll have to visit the battle site.
- corra
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Apparently President Jimmy Carter wrote a novel about the origins of the American Revolution in the South, & it features the Regulators of the Carolinas! I just held it at the library! 
- Dill Carver
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Digesting the above and the Battle of Alamance. Wow!
Everywhere you look in history there are such great stories; all the better when there is vested interest. This sparked the revolution.
Why am I not surprised that the revolution was your fault?
- corra
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I know! History is so rich with story!!
Why am I not surprised that the revolution was your fault?
Why indeed? Now I can claim William Wallace (not dna-confirmed yet) and Captain Robert Messer as predecessors. It's no wonder I spoil the threads with compounding joy! I come from a long line of disruptive people! 
xx
- corra
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Speaking of true history!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malinda_Blalock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Sampson
- Dill Carver
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Malinda Blalock, a story to behold! Fought on both sides in the Civil war. What a life. That's a great new reference for my ACW research files and material.
Deborah Sampson would have no problem posing as a man. According to that picture she'd have more trouble passing herself off as a woman. Again, what a life! It is good to read that she finally gained her military back-pay and a pension.
These people should be immortalised within book or film. They certainly earned it. Much more so than Ant-Man.
- corra
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Dill Carver wrote:
According to that picture she'd have more trouble passing herself off as a woman.
Ha!
Dill Carver wrote:
These people should be immortalised within book or film. They certainly earned it. Much more so than Ant-Man.
Absolutely!!
