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Tag: entente cordiale

  • The Bayeux Tapestry: The Year of Entente Cordiale?

    On Thursday the 3rd September 2026, BBC Radio 4 had Norman Day to mark (or celebrate the return of) the Bayeux Tapestry to England, to the British Museum. The British Museum is free general entry to the zillions of tourists and visitors each year after Tony Blair generosity in 2001 to permanent collections in the ‘UK’, but costs £33 for a standard adult ticket to see the Tapestry.

    The gathering at the British Museum on Wednesday 2nd September of King Charles and Queen Camilla, Prime Minister Andy Burnham and his wife Marie-France, and President Macron and his wife Brigitte, BM Director Nicholas Cullinan, and Chair of the Trustees George Osborne was described in press and Radio 4 as an Entente Cordiale. As this blog understood it, such a term was a sort of non legal entity, required a high level gathering, and referred to something constitutional past or present. And that the agreement was Cordiale signifies that beneath the smiles and bonhomie it is quite a complicated thing altogether.

    For interest, this blog looked up Entente Cordiale and from Britannica this is cut and pasted (this blog does not believe in plagiarism in any shape or form) https://www.britannica.com/event/Entente-Cordiale

    Entente Cordiale, (April 8, 1904), Anglo-French agreement that, by settling a number of controversial matters, ended antagonisms between Great Britain and France and paved the way for their diplomatic cooperation against German pressures in the decade preceding World War I (1914–18). The agreement in no sense created an alliance and did not entangle Great Britain with a French commitment to Russia (1894).

    The Entente Cordiale was the culmination of the policy of Théophile Delcassé, France’s foreign minister from 1898, who believed that a Franco-British understanding would give France some security against any German system of alliances in western Europe. Credit for the success of the negotiation belongs chiefly to Paul Cambon, France’s ambassador in London, and to the British foreign secretary Lord Lansdowne; but the pro-French inclination of the British sovereign, Edward VII, was a contributory factor.

    The most important feature of the agreement was that it granted freedom of action to Great Britain in Egypt and to France in Morocco (with the proviso that France’s eventual dispositions for Morocco include reasonable allowance for Spain’s interests there). At the same time, Great Britain ceded the Los Islands (off French Guinea) to France, defined the frontier of Nigeria in France’s favour, and agreed to French control of the upper Gambia valley, while France renounced its exclusive right to certain fisheries off Newfoundland. Furthermore, French and British zones of influence in Siam (Thailand) were outlined, with the eastern territories, adjacent to French Indochina, becoming a French zone, and the western, adjacent to Burmese Tenasserim, a British zone; arrangements were also made to allay the rivalry between British and French colonists in the New Hebrides.

    By the Entente Cordiale both powers reduced the virtual isolation into which they had withdrawn—France involuntarily, Great Britain complacently—while they had eyed each other over African affairs: Great Britain had had no ally but Japan (1902), useless if war should break out in European waters; France had had none but Russia, soon to be discredited in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. The agreement was consequently upsetting to Germany, whose policy had long been to rely on Franco-British antagonism. A German attempt to check the French in Morocco in 1905 (the Tangier Incident, or First Moroccan Crisis), and thus upset the Entente, served only to strengthen it. Military discussions between the French and the British general staffs were soon initiated. Franco-British solidarity was confirmed at the Algeciras Conference (1906) and reconfirmed in the Second Moroccan Crisis (1911). (End of cut and paste from Britannica)

    That’s quite a complicated twentieth century CE in western Europe and Mediterranean Arab lands and the west of Africa, and Newfoundland, Thailand, Burma, French Indochina, and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu, but either way a long way from the Hebridean Islands off west Scotland).

    In 2026, the high level gathering this side of the Channel was in the British Museum, which did not exist in 1066. Neither did the ‘UK’ and neither did France as such. Philip I was King of the Franks, and his kingdom was really only territory around Paris, with the powerful dukes and counts as lords, rulers, in their own right on the domains from the Channel to the Med. And William was Duke of Normandy. France holds a more unity than the ‘UK’, with Clovis I holding a unity of Frankish tribes (tribes, the ancient grouping of humans and which this blog takes a great interest) way back c.500 CE, but in 1066 there was no France as we know it today either. In 1066 there was no Westminster Parliament.

    The tapestry did exist somewhere in the decades after 1066 ‘and All That’, and 1066 and All That is an actual book of 1930 by Julian Yeatman and Walter Sellar, two students at Oxford 1916-1919. And Prime Minister Andy Burnham at the Entente Cordiale of the BM 2026 joked of the new leader from the north coming south for the crown. Meanwhile even larger boats crossed the Channel carrying illegal migrants into England. Who exactly rules or governs Britain? Where do historical lines draw today? Is it time for a sensible discussion about 1066 and All That?

  • The 3 Realms of Existence: Space above, the earthling realm, & History

    Life on Earth in this last week in Britain is very strange for the humans. Within the parameter of normality, as defined by what goes out on national airwaves or printed in newspapers, NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman telescope away from this spinning mass of rock, held in place by Sol in a galaxy vast itself, and which will chart the further reaches of the universe and map 2 billion stars (if all goes to plan), on the surface of Earth the politics of earthlings is very complicated in northern Europe and America, while around the mass of rock volcanoes erupt, Central Asia is already forgotten by the news in the catastrophic floods, and its supply chains from global ports are becoming shaky, and on Thursday 3rd September BBC Radio 4 had Norman Day, to celebrate the Bayeux Tapestry in London.

    The question is, where is the reality? This is not a philosophical question. Nor is it a metaphysical or New Age nebulous experiential search for the higher vibrations of existence not apparent to us mere earthlings. It is a question on continuum, and that is physical, because all life on Earth is contained within the physical realm. And reality does mean continuity of a certain length of time, and to exist for a certain length of time must mean the pre-requisites for that to happen. What does that mean? Well, as this is not a metaphysical, New Age, mystical, nebulous blog but a logical, factual, scientifically proven blog, continuity means extendable on the horizontal span of life.

    Now, the Norman Day on BBC Radio 4 did speak much history, and did interview some school children seeing the Bayeux Tapestry for the first time. Never however, did the present day get equated with the eleventh century CE. Was it real? Yes, logically it was, not only because the Tapestry was created, but much evidence besides does still exist to show that human society existed in northern Europe and Britain and Norse lands about 1,000 years ago. Nothing however was equated of today to then, only a modern interpretation of entente cordiale between the French President, the ‘UK’ government, and the King (that was not the intention of the weavers back then), the usual stuff about how unfair it was to not have women in the Tapestry (evidence of the Patriarchy), and the past behaviour of humans in ransacking and pillaging and crushing the peaceful natives. The clear inference is that all is fine today, more than fine in fact. And nothing is said about the reality of space travel, that the bubble of knowledge, billions of stars and extraordinary detail on far flung space dust has no physical relevance to life for the mere earthling. Nobody could live out there, no society could maintain itself, and if the batteries went flat, the spaceship with the telescope would be going nowhere.

    So where is reality in 2026 in Britain? Does it form a continuum of historical reality, or has that been truncated by the mutation of post war politics? Does it await the higher vibrations of freedom from mortal life, into the range and realm of ever increasing scientific data?