Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Friday, 14 February 2025

Dresden eighty years on


I recently posted a link through an online article about the rebuilding of Potsdam and how moving a story it is. On the eightieth anniversary of the bombing raids on Dresden it seems appropriate to say something, not least about the ongoing resurrection of the historic city centre of the “Florence of the Elbe”

Wikipedia has what is clearly intended to be a balanced account of the raids of February 13th-15th 1945 and the subsequent smaller raids. It looks at the events and the interpretations offered over the subsequent decades and can be read at Bombing of Dresden

The Duke of Kent, patron of the Dresden Trust, and representing The King, was present in the city for the anniversary and spoke of the work of reconciliation, something to which he has long given his support.

The Daily Telegraph has an article to mark the anniversary and which outlines the delights of the rebuilt city and its surroundings such as the royal palace at Moritzburg Castle


I have a slight reservation about one point it makes: just because the Germans did terrible things to other historic and beautiful cities such as Warsaw does not to my mind, excuse us from doing the same to similar cities such as Dresden and the difference in the scale of destruction makes the bombing of Coventry - terrible as that was - a rather shallow and overworked parallel to invoke.

Ed West has two really excellent articles about the Dresden that was lost and indeed the threats to it had it survived, and about the rebuilding of the city in recent years. They are very well worth reading and can be seen at  The beautiful rebirth of Dresden (1)

Quite a few years ago now I visited a small exhibition in the historic University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford about the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche and the British gift of the new orb and cross to crown the dome as a sign of reconciliation. Viewing the photographs of the church before and since 1945 I found myself virtually in tears, tears that people could destroy such beauty, and tears that it was being re-born.


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