Rhyming History – David Griffiths

June 2, 2025June 5, 2025

The Art of the Kowtow – From Beijing to Washington

Browsing through photos of a 2007 visit to the vast “Forbidden City” in Beijing got me thinking about how, in imperial China, even the most distinguished foreign visitors to the Emperor were expected to prostrate themselves to acknowledge his supremacy. Imperial officials would ensure that this was done, after which the Emperor would condescend to accept tribute and grant gifts. That got me reflecting on an unrelated event in the US capital a few months ago.

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January 6, 2025June 5, 2025

Saladin’s Legacy – Damascus, 2001

The leader of Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel movement certainly had history at his back in December when he appeared in the ancient Umayyad Mosque in Damascus to announce the fall of the odious Assad regime. The site had begun as an Aramean temple to the god Hadad, then to Zeus of the Greeks and Jupiter of the Romans, becoming a Christian basilica in the 4th Century and finally, in the 8th, a Muslim mosque. But impressive though it is, my favourite memory of the place is a modest mausoleum tucked outside the northern wall ‒ the tomb of Saladin.

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May 2, 2022June 5, 2025

Rhyming Conflicts II – South Atlantic to Black Sea

When Russia’s flagship, Moskva, went to the bottom of the Black Sea on 14 April, it became the first major naval combattant sunk in war since a British submarine fired torpedoes into Argentina’s General Belgrano in the battle for the Falkland Islands, exactly forty years ago today. For me, though, the more pertinent memory of the South Atlantic war is the sinking of the British destroyer Coventry a little over three weeks later (pictured above). Someone I knew was among the dead, and some of the lessons still resonate.

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April 10, 2022June 5, 2025

Rhyming Conflicts – Yugoslavia / Ukraine

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.
(attributed to Mark Twain)

The Croatian “special police” crowding into the hotel bar were singing songs of the notorious Second World War pro-Nazi Ustaše (Ustasha). All were sporting the “skinhead” look, which may be benign now but was once the fashion choice of neo-Nazis. It was late. I was bone-weary. Over the past few days I’d been responding to Croatian “ethnic cleansing” and cease-fire violations. I’d allegedly been shot at by Serbs, although I was pretty certain that it was just some Croat trying to inject a touch of drama into a front-line visit. As the child of parents whose lives had been upended by a Nazi regime, my feelings on returning to the familiar comfort of our hotel to find it full of neo-fascists would be difficult to put into words. But my job was to monitor, so I settled down to nurse a beer and watch.

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