Posts tagged “mo moulton”

  1. Mo Moulton's previous work for The Toast can be found here.

    "Peter, what did you mean when you said that anybody could have harmony if they would leave us the counterpoint?’" 

    "Why,’" he said, shaking his head, ‘that I like my music polyphonic. If you think I meant anything else, you know what I meant.’"

    This conversation between Lord

    101 comments
  2. Previous installments can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road]. Downton Abbey has become a show about fundamentally nice people. The villains were never all that villainous, it’s true; but O’Brien is a distant memory (fired in India?) and even Thomas, cleansed, apparently, by Baxter’s generosity, is now fighting on the side of the angels.

    16 comments
  3. Previous installments can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road]. The beloved dog Isis, a yellow Labrador whose tail graced the opening sequence of every episode, has died. Last week, Cora and Robert let her sleep in bed between them on her last night; this week, we saw Lord Grantham ordering a headstone for her. Although it’s not depicted,…

    11 comments
  4. Previous installments can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road]. Lady Rose, blonde, pink, and charming, is the embodiment of the "English rose" ideal. In Sybil’s absence, she’s also become Downton’s main force of multiculturalism. Last season, she enjoyed a flirtation with Jack Ross, the black American jazz singer. But that relationship was a leap too far, apparently. This…

    38 comments
  5. Previous installments can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road]. My heart constricts whenever Thomas Barrow comes onscreen. He’s manipulative, scheming, and consistently creepy, but he’s the only recurring gay character. I wouldn’t like him if I knew him in person, but I have to root for him; that’s what limited representation means. And I hate the show a…

    29 comments
  6. Previous installments can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road]. Lord Grantham, I think, is a closet Liberal. Underneath the huffing and puffing, the dress uniforms, the autocrat-of-the-dinner-table antics, and the decision to deal with Simon Bricker by taking a swing at him, there beats the heart of a moderate progressive interested in development economics. I write this as…

    16 comments
  7. Previous installments can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road]. Edith and Percy Thompson were lower-middle-class residents of a London suburb, entirely ordinary until the day in 1922 when Edith’s younger lover, the sailor Freddy Bywaters, arrived unexpectedly at their home and stabbed Percy to death. Despite the total lack of evidence that Mrs. Thompson knew anything about the…

    9 comments
  8. Previous installments can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road]. In 1914, a lance-sergeant from the King’s Royal Rifle Corps deserted the army after a battle and sought refuge in a nearby French village. He was arrested in March 1915; although he had difficulty answering simple questions and eventually explained that he had had a nervous breakdown, he was…

    4 comments
  9. Previous installments can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road]. A spectre is haunting Downton Abbey. It is the spectre of the Russian Revolution. In last week’s episode, Tom Branson described the Russian Revolution of 1917 as the only worthwhile thing to come out of World War I. This week, we learn that Rose is planning to become involved…

    22 comments
  10. Previous installments can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road]. “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” --Matthew 20:16 Is there a new revolutionary at Downton Abbey? Sarah Bunting, the local leftist schoolteacher, featured prominently in the first episode of the new season. “Here she comes, the Boudica of the North Riding,” Lord Grantham…

    13 comments
  11. Previous installments in this series can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road.] Cousin Violet was full of pithy advice in this week’s episode. She deprecates the examined life upon hearing of Lord Gillingham’s period of self-reflection in Scotland (to be fair, it doesn’t seem to have done him any good); then later, at the church bazaar, she tells…

    9 comments
  12. Previous installments in this series can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road.] I’ve been thinking all season about how the state, in Downton Abbey, looms just off-screen. Lord Grantham and his fellow aristocrats are obviously part of a ruling elite, but the modern state itself is generally nearly invisible, just poking its head around for brief and usually…

    22 comments
  13. Previous installments in this series can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road.] Not long after the end of season three of Downton Abbey, rumors began about a black character who would be introduced in the new season (producing one of the funniest satires on Downton, “Downton Diddy”.  So far, the plotline involving Jack Ross, the black American…

    33 comments
  14. Previous installments in this series can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road.] What use was aristocracy in twentieth century Britain? And what, specifically, was the use of a landed aristocracy in a rural, agricultural setting? These questions animate Downton Abbey at the most fundamental level. This week brought them into even sharper relief, as issues of taxes and estate…

    51 comments
  15. Previous installments in this series can be found here. There will be spoilers. “An historian” is a perfectly acceptable Commonwealth convention, haters to the left [side of the road.] Marie Stopes (1880-1958) was a remarkable person. The daughter of progressive intellectuals, she earned a science degree (botany and geology) from University College, London, in 1902 before becoming the first woman to take a PhD in botany from the Botanical Institute in Munich and the first woman…

    19 comments