Hilary Mantel On Beheading

“Beheading, believe it or not, was a privilege reserved usually for the aristocracy, for gentlemen and gentlewomen. Now, I don’t want you to get the idea that these were weekly events in Henry’s England; it’s because beheadings were rare that they made such a terrible impact on the imagination of the close circle around Henry.”

Trend: Local TV News Becoming Less “Local”

“The striking thing about this news wasn’t so much that at least a dozen stations in cities large and small all carried the same lightweight story about restaurants cooking up candidate-inspired drinks and dishes (hence, “salty”). It was that at least a dozen stations carried the identical script, with a dozen anchormen and women rendering the same words.”

Did Minnesota Orchestra Management Actually Cook The Books?

Robert Levine: “There are really only two possibilities. One is that the board essentially covered up the ‘internal reality of deficits in 2009 and 2010’ in order to make its financial condition look better to the state than it actually was. The other is that the deficits of 2011 and 2012 were equally phony in order to bolster the board’s case ‘to reset the business model’ … But either possibility means the board misled the public, the state, its donors, and its employees.”

Historians Should Cut Steven Spielberg Some Slack Over Lincoln

Kevin M. Levin: “After so much research, we historians look for complexity and a certain attention to detail that reflects a careful consideration of the past. I certainly did this while watching Lincoln, but at the same time, we would do well to remember that when we watch films about other subjects, we’re able to set aside that kind of analysis and respect the filmmaker’s creative decisions.”