Collings and me met up at Paddington to get the train to Cardiff. For the second time in less than a week I felt like we were travelling salesmen, which I suppose, in a sense, we are. But we quietly got on with our work - him writing a magazine article, whilst I tried to work my way through the first of my two enormous books about Rasputin for Mastermind. I am actually enjoying the reading, if still somewhat overwhelmed by the learning. It's quite cool to be forced to be a student again and perhaps if my Finals had been televised I might have worked a bit harder for them. The possibility of public humiliation is quite a good study aid. Schools and colleges should use this. Pre-revolutionary Russia is a fascinating period and much as I am against autocracy and the ludicrous privilege of the Russian Royal family compared to the ludicrous poverty of their subjects, I can't help but feel sorry for Nicholas and Alexandra, a pair of bumbling, mainly well meaning idiots on course for disaster and unable to do anything to save themselves or their family. Don't get me wrong, both of them were probably horrible twats, but evenso I wish that the 1905 revolution had been more successful and they had been humble enough to become figurehead rulers and then maybe the world would have been a better place for everyone, especially the people of Russia. But, of course, maybe it would have been worse.
But history was going to catch up with the Romanovs and they couldn't survive. Even with a magic, bearded monk to save them.
It's interesting that it was a world where the wealthy were out of touch and slightly insane (hence Rasputin's success), but also where they were being blown up fairly regularly by terrorists and suicide bombers, which might feel like a new thing, but has been around for more than a century. Some kind of historical parallel? Oh let's not think about it and keep tweeting and watching X Factor. It's not like a hundreds of years old political system can just vanish overnight is it?
Collings and me are in Cardiff to record 4 more podcasts for a go faster stripe CD and then in the evening to do a live podcast (and Andrew is doing the last ever secret dancing). There are still some tickets. Buy them
HERE.
