Adam Nicolson

Adam Nicolson, FSA, FSA Scot, FRSL (born 12 September 1957) is an English author who has written about history, landscape, great literature and the sea. He is also the 5th Baron Carnock, but does not use the title. Quotes thumb|Fatherhood is fatherland, and blood and heart are home. thumb|The most delicious thing they can imagine is a world of unrelenting violence. It is true that they occasionally refer to the places they come from, but the psychological weight in those references is not to buildings or cities. The Greeks look back with longing and sense of loss to their families, their distant fathers and their fathers' fathers, their wives and children, the brotherhood of their clans, the hearths which are defined by the people who gather around them, not to any palaces. They love their land, which gives them food and sustenance, its wheat-bearing fields and lovely orchards, but not the kind of deeply instituted fixity and built wealth they have come to get their hands on at Troy. What they miss, in a phrase that is repeated again and again, is "the loved earth of their fathers." But in Greek there is no distinction between "fatherhood" and "fatherland." The word for them both is patra, and it can apply in Homer to a shared descent, a cousinage, a sense of family or clan. Fatherhood is fatherland, and blood and heart are home.Even the loved earth of the fathers is trumped by something else in the Greek mind. When the great owl-eyed goddess Athene, terrifying in her power, carrying her magic aegis, or breastplate, moves through the Greek army, putting a deep hunger for violence in their hearts, allowing them to fight without rest, home itself drops into insignificance.And now sweeter to them than any returnIn their hollow ships to the loved earth of their fathersWas battle.The word Homer uses for the deliciousness of that violence in battle is glukus, "sugary," even "sickly," used of nectar and sweet wine, of the people you love. Battle, in many ways, is the Greek home. As the agents of severance, they are themselves severed from home. The most delicious thing they can imagine is a world of unrelenting violence. Why Homer Matters (New York: Henry Holt, 2014), p. 181 External links Category:1957 births Category:Living people Category:Non-fiction authors from England Category:Journalists from England Category:University of Cambridge alumni Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Category:People from Hampshire