Friday in Hawaii

Being at the centre of time, even on British Summer Time, can be useful for anniversaries.  Somewhere in the world it is still Friday 11^th (just).  There has been big commemorations such as the 200^th birthday of Charles Dickens and the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic.  But as to the assassination of Spencer Perceval, the only British Prime Minister to suffer that fate, two centuries ago, barely a squeak.  One Telegraph blogger did a little rumination and that was it.  I added a couple of lines for an In Memoriam on the Telegraph Announcements (gratis, of course) to at least register something to note it.  There is an air of the ridiculous, that the inquest into his death was held in the Cat and Bagpipes pub at the corner of Downing Street that is so British but that should not distract from his uniqueness.

In 2013, it will be the fiftieth year since John F Kennedy was killed and exactly half a thousand days later, it will be 150 years since Abraham Lincoln bit the bullet.  Given the propensity of Americans to try to murder their presidents, you would think coverage would be limited but I think there will be a cultural explosion, a veritable welter of articles, novels, biographies, etc.  Leaving aside the assassination attempts, the other two chief executives to fall victim to blood lust aren’t so well known - James Garfield and William McKinley (though the latter presaged the glorious era of Teddy Roosevelt).  In the deluge of feverish media activity in the wake of the September 11^th East Coast air attacks, poor old McKinley’s fatal centenary was forgotten altogether.  But Lincoln and Kennedy are big beasts – one oversaw victory in the American Civil War, the other faced down the Russians successfully without starting World War Three in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Yet Spencer Perceval led the only superpower of its day (French overseas possessions being largely liquidated by 1812) and in one of its darkest hours, comparable to 1588, 1805 and 1940.  Bogged down in the Peninsular War, tensions rising with the young USA that would culminate in conflict, Luddite industrial unrest spreading across the country and Napoleon Bonaparte’s Continental System blockade wreaking such damage on British finances, public and private, that the noted economists David Ricardo begged the government to sue for peace with France.  And, in the midst of all this, the prime minister is struck down.  It must have seemed like very dire times, fully justifying the saying that the night is at its blackest before the dawn.

Well, Perceval, King’s Council, here is one person who has not forgotten you and would have done this log a lot earlier had I not had a stonking headache yesterday.   Will you get your due on 300 years?