King Boris

Well, he's gone. But I fear not forever.

His last speech was comparatively ungracious for him, and that little reference to Cincinnatus was slightly perturbing. Cincinnatus was fiercely against the rights of the plebians to have any written law, or any form of real redress against the patricians. When he returned to Rome, he became a dictator. He was lauded for giving up absolute power when asked, but that's the point at which I would expect any parallels to fail.

Not that BJ could not be a benign dictator; the 'world king' has been generous to his friends and supporters. But a PM isn't a king. A Prime Minister is meant to be a public servant. This handing out of monies and favours to chums, this dismissal of accountability has a sense of medieval monarch to it. Quite which one is a great question. He's play acted Henry VIII to a small comical extent, and now he's doing a sort of strange Richard II/Edward II combo, sans hot pokers, though he at least had his Gaveston for a while.

Funnily enough it's the right who deserted him,not just for his multiple lies or for standing by the too aptly named Chris Pincher, but because he keeps chucking money around. He acts as though he doesn't want to and then puts his finger to the wind. He never was run by the ERG, he was run by public opinion as it was presented to the country. It could be argued that he and Sunak were closer to socialist principles by wanting to raise taxes; but say Liz Truss caps energy prices now, which she surely must, if she also cuts taxes as she has promised to the delight of her party, who pays? Energy companies won't run their heads into a noose for her. Such doubts will not sing to Conservative party members who want to believe tax cuts and the loss of worker protection will stimulate the economy. Perhaps it will, or perhaps they are only a couple of centuries ahead of BJ's medieval mirth. And when the tough stuff is done, and Truss is discarded, back comes our hopeful Cincinnatus, with a few more children and mistresses behind him. And maybe then we'll be so grateful we'll wink at the gifts he gives his supporters out of our pockets, calling it a cheap price to pay for being told things we want to hear.

The Rings of Power and The Last Kingdom

Apparently only racists and mysogynists are allowed to hate this, and all criticism is anti-woke or something.

I respect those who like it. I found it difficult going because

) Stage'Oirish' accents among the Harfoots. Going to do an accent, do the accent well; a Cork accent is not the same as a Dublin accent, and none of them are tubbeeshur tubbeeshur. The irony is that Lenny Henry, barely trying at all, rescued this tribe/family from terminal whimsy, and he didn't have an ounce of begorrah about him. The guy can act, that's all.

2) That bloody ice-troll. In The Fellowship of the Ring, the cave troll attack is a well depicted fight in a small seeming space, the complete mess of everyone dashing around almost tripping up under the thing. So, given a much taller and narrower space, plus the almost cat-like agility of elves, why are they all emulating Marvel corridor fights, where one henchman after another dashes up and gets twatted? Why aren't they doing a Legolas, swiftly climbing above it and peppering the thing with arrows? Answer; so Galadriel can get her freak on, pose, vanquish,pose once more.Jeez.

I guess my problem was that we saw this almost adjacent to The Last Kingdom, last episode first season, and the whole thing was just more chunky without being as clunky. The major fight was also subject to unlikely tactics, but somehow it felt believable because everyone was covered in muck and blood, or maybe because we are not tuning into the mystic wafts of Valinor. I have real problems not cracking up at the idea of Galadriel leaping out of the ship and starting to swim back to Middle-Earth. In my head, she keeps swimming for the rest of the season, occasionally cut back to between scenes.

But maybe the problem is that disenchantment follows any close-up of a mystery. The Galadriel of The Silmarilion cannot be the Galadriel of LoTR any more than Prince Hal can be Henry V. They are serving different functions in different stories, and the development from one kind of person into another can be fascinating, or it can bring too much attention to the Deus Ex Machina. Small wonder writers often just let it be and hope no-one notices.

Ah, but Alfred, Alfred! I can see why The Last Kingdom might lose a light when he's gone. He's the one I watch. Uttred is utterly gorgeous to look at, but as a person, he would irritate me. It's Alfred, with those heavy lidded eyes, that occasionally dispensible piety and necessary though delicately applied ruthlessness, who makes me believe. He'd run rings around Galadriel in any battle, because he thinks. I don't mind my heroes stupid if they make me laugh, but oh, how I love them smart!