A wonderful profile of writer and columnist Mark Helprin in the latest Harvard Magazine. To say he's an unusual fellow with a rather amazing tale to tell is, ahem, a slight understatement. This should whet your appetite:

Helprin is a classicist. He believes in history, tradition, and eternal verities. He values aesthetic symmetries and the literary forms the centuries have passed down to us. To Helprin, the principles of modernism are fatal to art, and he has no truck with the avant-garde. “The avant-garde are frauds,” he bluntly declares. “Modern literature is all cool and detached, even though a lot of modern writers are passionate about their politics. To me, passion should be for literature, and reason and detachment for politics.

“A lot of people hate heroes,” he continues. “I was criticized for portraying people who are brave, honest, loving, intelligent. That was called weak and sentimental. People who dismiss all real emotion as sentimentality are cowards. They’re afraid to commit themselves, and so they remain ‘cool’ for the rest of their lives, until they’re dead—then they’re really cool.”

And Shelby Foote, the great narrative historian of the Civil War, died this week at age 88. I first encountered Foote's multi-volume history of the late unpleasantness while in high school. Those days, after school was completed for the day and waiting for my ride, I would wander around the library stacks looking for a book, usually history or politics, to pass the time. Foote was a revelation, and although many academics scoffed at him for being too novelistic rather than source and footnote-bound, how I wish all historians could write with such grandeur and love of their subject.

The BBC skimps on its coverage of the anniversary of Trafalgar. Next they'll be running bits suggesting the Brits issue an official apology for sinking so many Spanish and French ships. "Blair issues apology for 19th Century Naval Hegemony," perhaps, or "Brits Nix Nelson; Sorry for Oceanic Oppression, says PM." (Thanks for Englishman's Castle for the tip)