Martin Meenagh blog

A Lincoln Film, for No Good Reason At All

I have fond memories of statues of Lincoln, whether I met them peering out from the Lincoln Memorial that I jaywalked through traffic from when going to Arlington, or in London, watching me walk with women I loved across the road from Parliament. Some of my most intense memories of Oxford are bound up with my intellectual discovery of the old 'slavery, emancipation and the crisis of the Union' paper, and of them men who taught it.

Many of my memories of my grandfather are mixed with my reading of American histories in his cold upstairs room, and of the sound of Ashokan Farewell when I played it for him. My reverses have been comforted by the image of Lincoln sitting in the mud, noting 'a slip not a fall', and my understanding of political cynicism and the folly of otherwise clever men reading too much into politicians has been enhanced by his humour. I like what I know of Abraham Lincoln; so here is a video of the same, for no good reason at all.

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