2011 is proving to be an interesting year: the so-called Arab Spring has witnessed hundreds of thousands of people on the march for freedom. There is a smell of revolution in the air, and discontent with the political class is not confined to north Africa and the Arab Peninsular.
It was similar in 1911. The trade unions were challenging the power of the government with mass strikes; there was a constitutional crisis over the right of the aristocracy to rule in the House of Lords; and the Suffragette movement was at the height of its, at times, violent campaign to gain the vote for women; and Ireland was descending into civil war.
The weather was sublime: week after week that summer the country baked in record temperatures. This glorious Easter has made me think that perhaps one hundred years on there may be several parallels worth examining
I will read again 'The Perfect Summer: Dancing into Shadow in 1911' by Juliet Nicolson. It is a marvellous month by month account of that pre war summer that many were later to describe as 'golden'. Nicolson makes us realise that it was anything but 'golden'.
Then, as today, people were struggling for basic political freedoms.
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