Uncertainties

Writing yesterday's post about my on-going reading prompted me to pick up the Moody biog and get on with Part Two. I'd broken off a few days back at the point when EP was about to meet Il Duce in 1933 thinking that made for a reasonable point to pause and get on with other reading and that it would be easy when the time came to pick it up again to read of this fascinating encounter. And it was. Moody is very good on explaining why Mussolini in 1933 wasn't quite the Mussolini we think of today. I don't know enough about the period to be sure Moody gets it quite right (despite doing European history of the period for 'O' level), and I wonder sometimes whether Moody has enough of a soft spot for old Ez to indulge in a degree of special pleading, but his picture of the Italian dictator as someone who could be respected for getting things done with the benefit of his countrymen in mind at this point in time rings true.

Indeed, reading of the uncertainties of the period, political and economic, was a useful reminder of just how uncertain anyone in the world at that point in history must necessarily have been regarding what directions countries should go in and what the future might hold. Sounds suspiciously like the times in which we live, eh?

Must say, though, EP comes across as more than just a little bit crazy in his certainties - warning signs of what was to come, I'd say, though Moody holds back on such easy judgements. Probably rightly. I'm good at getting things wrong.