Revival Gold Announces AGM Results and Transition in Exploration Leadership“Talk to me before you believe anything!”, Thomas Cromwell (played by Mark Rylance) tells his monarch and master Henry VIII (played by Damien Lewis) in a pivotal scene in the penultimate episode of the BBC adaptation of The Mirror and the Light, the 900-page third act in Hilary Mantel’s acclaimed Tudor drama. It is the last of their candid exchanges before the criticism from his enemies becomes deafening and Cromwell is seized, stripped of his offices of state and taken into custody. For nearly a decade, Cromwell, has strived to speak the truth to his all-mighty monarch. It has set him apart from all those packed into the palace antechambers and pitching for a seat on the king’s council: aristocrats who were there by hereditary right, churchmen because of their office and favourites whose rise invariably was as fast as their fall. Shrewd realpolitik was why Cromwell’s assent to the top seemed unstoppable and the reason Henry grew to like him. “By St Loy, this man has stomach, this man has gall!,” the now-ailing king recalls, in Peter Straughan’s script, of his first impression. Establishing the facts of the matter, however uncomfortable for whichever party, remained this self-taught lawyer’s stock-in-trade. But by 1540 Henry lacked the bodily strength and mental self-assurance to accept them anymore. “I have changed, Thomas. You, not so much.” Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here . “To retrieve history,” Mantel argued in her 2017 Reith lecture , “we need rigour, unsparing devotion and an impulse to scepticism.” Stomach and gall. Enough, Mantel urged, to unsettle the stereotypes, even to “de-centre” the “grand narrative”. The determination Mantel found in Cromwell’s letters, to “decipher the bottom of their heart ... if by any wisdom it may be drawn out” to politician Sir Thomas Wyatt in 1537 suggested that he could be a fresh guide to this period of Tudor history, long distorted by caricature and cliché. As sharp as the dagger secreted in his doublet and an outsider on the inside, through Cromwell’s eyes it might be refocused. Mantel believed the novelist could best evoke an alternative point-of-view. “The records do ... throw up some facts but they are not the whole truth.” Lived experience, she argued, lies in the “gaps, the erasures and silences” of the documented past, speeches unrecorded, thoughts unspoken. Fiction breathes them back into life, lifting the veil from the “vital”, “interior” view of lives long past. Mantel’s conviction was so strong that she was inclined to criticise readers for clinging to “the first history they learn” and for their “unreasonable” refusal to commit to the novelist’s telling of it until they can be sure of its reliability. “I report the outer world faithfully,” she explained “but my chief concern is the interior drama of my characters’ lives.” In their adaptation Straughan and director Peter Kosminsky have followed Mantel’s manifesto to the letter. They present the “outer world” with precision. Unlike any of his predecessors, Kosminky has taken immense pains to locate the action in landscapes and environments which the historical figures would have recognised. His choices are clever, including Gloucester Cathedral, surely the most complete and unaltered Benedictine cloister in Britain, standing in for the lost abbey of Shaftesbury and Horton Court in Gloucestershire for Cromwell’s city of London chambers at the Austin Friary, which, in spite of its religious status, is known to have looked like a cluster of town houses. Casting director Robert Sterne has peopled the scene with performers uncannily close in age and aspect to the figures they play. Thomas Brodie Sangster (Rafe Sadler) and Harry Melling (Thomas Wriothesley), both in their 30s, capture their subjects perfectly. Damien Lewis still seems to walk in Henry’s now halting footsteps, although the hiatus since the 2015 series means he is three years the king’s senior. Only Timothy Spall (Thomas Howard) is jarring. He is 67, as Howard was in 1540, but squat, jowly and with a one-note anger, which makes him less like a noble duke and more like Alice through the Looking Glass’s Queen. But in spite, or perhaps because, of the studied skill of this practised team, this visualisation does expose the tensions – in fact, downright contradictions – in Mantel’s treatment of the past. In her Reith Lectures she declared: “Don’t lie, don’t go against known facts. Historical truth cuts against the storyteller’s instinct. Your characters are never how or where you’d like them to be.” Yet Straughan’s adept précis of the 900-page book shows how often she shrugged off her own counsel. The visible, vocal presence of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (Jonathan Pryce), dead a full six years before the events of episode one unfolded, is conspicuously clumsy, muddling any viewer confronting the subject for the first time. Of course, it is a device, but if the “outer world” seems unstable how can they make sense of the “interior drama”? In Cromwell’s marriage proposal to the cardinal’s cast-off daughter, Dorothy Clancy (episode two) Mantel places her characters where she would like them to be and to say what she would like them to say. Her “going against known facts” is less troubling than her narrow line-of-sight, which the clipped script and slick camerawork set in sharp relief. The historical dramas of Cromwell’s last years in power were armed rebellion (the Pilgrimage of Grace) and the greatest displacement of people and livelihoods since the Norman Conquest (the dissolution of the monasteries), a stop-start process which de-stabilised the Tudor regime as much as its subjects. In Mantel’s story, they are little more than noises out of frame. The climate in court and country became so febrile in the face of these episodes because positions on them in every part of society were uncertain even, perhaps especially, in the mind of the king himself. Thomas Cromwell knew this better than any other contemporary witness. Mantel, whatever she claimed to the contrary, maintained the “grand narrative” of Catholic versus Protestant, traditional aristocrat versus modernising commoner. Like King Henry, she did not keep listening to her subject for long enough. James Clark receives funding for historical research from the Arts & Humanities Research Council and consults on and collaborates in research and visitor engagement for the National Trust. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
The Benue State Governor, Hyacinth Alia, has approved the appointment of Mr. Donald Aorkwagh Akule as the Managing Director of the Benue State Agricultural Development Company (ADC). He also appointed Dr. Aondoakaa Asambe as Principal Special Assistant on Livestock Development and Animal Transboundary Disease Control. The Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Sir Tersoo Kula, disclosed these in a statement on Friday in Makurdi. He said Governor Alia equally appointed Mr. Abraham Agogo as Senior Special Assistant (SSA) on Community Mobilisation. The appointments take immediate effect. Opinions Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs. As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake. If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause. Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development. Donate Now
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December 23, 2024 This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlightedthe following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: fact-checked peer-reviewed publication trusted source proofread by Tokyo Metropolitan University Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered that around 15 days of dry weather can trigger the flowering of durian. Observations of 110 durian plants revealed that flowering occurred around 50 days after an approximately 15-day dry spell, independent of whether the plant was grafted or grown from a seed. The team's work, which is published in the International Journal of Biometeorology , might not only impact the production of a valuable agricultural asset but deepen our understanding of tropical ecosystems. Known in many countries as the "king of fruits," the durian is known for its distinctive strong odor, large size, and thorny rind. Though its odor splits opinions, its widespread culinary use in Asia makes it an exceptionally valuable crop, accounting for the largest share of fruit in Malaysia by production, area planted, and quantity produced. Yet, there is much that is unknown about its cultivation, including how its flowering is triggered. To uncover the secrets of durian flowering, a team of researchers led by Professor Shinya Numata and Aoi Eguchi from Tokyo Metropolitan University undertook an extensive survey of durian, observing 110 plants in the orchard of the University of Technology Malaysia with local collaborators. Their study covered both seed-grown and grafted plants, focusing on the timing at which individual plants flowered, measured against an extensive survey of weather conditions. The team found that durian plants flowered approximately 50 days after a prolonged period of dry weather. These dry spells needed to be long enough to show up in moving average traces, specifically periods where rainfall averaged over 15-day windows was less than 1 millimeter. Previous work had hinted at some correlation between either dryness or low temperature. This is the first time that the exact conditions had been pinned down with such accuracy, though they found no correlation with maximum or minimum temperature. Their work was found to apply to durian plants irrespective of their varieties, as flowering seemed to occur at the same time for both. The same was also found for both seed-grown and grafted plant types. Flowering events of both grafted and seed-grown durian. Both types of durian flowered at the same time. (a) shows survey dates, (b) and (c) the flowering events. (d) and (e) show daily rainfall and minimum temperature respectively. Credit: Tokyo Metropolitan University Flowering events follow prolonged droughts. The appearance of durian flowers peaked around 50 days after an extended dry spell. Credit: Tokyo Metropolitan University The team had proposed that there was some relationship between the flowering of durian and the more general burst of flowering seen in the tropics following long dry spells. However, such general flowering events require a longer dry spell of around 30 days to occur. This explains why durian tend to flower multiple times a year, while synchronized flowering across species occurs once every few years. Given its commercial value, insights like these will inform effective agricultural practices to predict flowering and manage harvests. The team hope that their findings will also deepen our understanding of the southeast Asian tropical ecosystem. More information: Aoi Eguchi et al, Dry spells trigger durian flowering in aseasonal tropics, International Journal of Biometeorology (2024). DOI: 10.1007/s00484-024-02819-x Journal information: International Journal of Biometeorology Provided by Tokyo Metropolitan University
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LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J. (AP) — Cavan Reilly's 18 points helped Delaware defeat Rider 72-66 on Saturday. Reilly went 6 of 12 from the field (4 for 10 from 3-point range) for the Fightin' Blue Hens (4-3). Izaiah Pasha added 15 points while finishing 7 of 10 from the floor and also had six rebounds. Erik Timko shot 5 for 9, including 3 for 7 from beyond the arc to finish with 15 points. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.Prayagraj: A 44-member delegation from Andhra Pradesh was accorded a warm welcome by the Indian Institute of Information Technology , Allahabad, at its Jhalwa campus on Wednesday. The delegation is on a visit to the institute as a part of Yuva Sangam Phase V , a flagship programme of the ministry of education (MoE), govt of India under ‘Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat.' Notably, IIIT-A, Prayagraj and its pairing institute, SPA Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, have been nominated as the nodal institutes for the programme in 2024. The delegation, comprising 40 students, and four faculty coordinators from SPA Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh visited the IIIT-A on Nov 25 and will be here till Dec 2, while the IIIT-A, Prayagraj delegation will visit SPA Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, from Dec 16 to Dec 24. Nodal officer Sanjay Singh said that around 5,000 applications across Uttar Pradesh of which 44 will be selected for the delegation to visit Andhra Pradesh. During the visit, the youth will have a multi-dimensional exposure under five broad areas: Paryatan (tourism), Parampara (traditions), Pragati (developments), Paraspar Sampark (people-to-people connect), and Prodyogiki (technology). In a function organised at IIIT-A, acting director, IIIT-A, Prof O P Vyas, welcomed the delegation and said that Yuva Sangam aims to provide an immersive experience of numerous facets of life, development landmarks, recent achievements, and a youth connect in the host state. This Sangam focuses on conducting exposure tours for the youth, consisting mainly of students studying in higher educational institutions and some off-campus youngsters from across the nation in various states of India. Prof Shekhar Verma, dean, Prof Pawan Chakarborty, programme coordinator, and Prof Mandar Subhash Karyakarte, registrar, IIIT-A, shared their views on the exchange programme. From the AP delegation, Dheeraj, Pushpendra Kumar, Naina Gupta, and A Sharifunnisa (all from SPA Vijayawada) spoke on the occasion. The delegation will visit Prayagraj, Varanasi, and Ayodhya during their stay in UP.