If you could live in another time and place ...
Number24
NorwayPosts: 22,331MI6 Agent
... where would you go and when? I came up with this question because I'm a history nerd 
I think it would have been very interesting to live in Rome around the fall of the republic and the first emperors.
Where would you go and where?
I think it would have been very interesting to live in Rome around the fall of the republic and the first emperors.
Where would you go and where?
Comments
America in the 50s always seemed like an attractive time to be living in.
or London/Europe in the 70s.
Fantastic aircraft and flying free as a bird
Cheers :007)
I'd like to live in the 60's, I love the clothes, the cars there were good manners no reality TV and I'd get to see Sean connerys new Bond films in the cinema.
I like the navigators astronomers and cartographers from that era, and Descartes showing us all how to reason from first principals
human knowledge really moved forward in much vaster paradigm shattering leaps in those days
our advances today seem so incremental in comparison
course there were religious wars and inquisitions alongside that, have to try and avoid those while sticking close to the scientists
Cheers :007)
to have lived back then. I agreed if we were the Rich family in the big house but
more than likely she'd be the scullery maid and I'd be the lad who looks after the
Pigs !
I probably would but it would've been hard.
Except of course, if I had never heard or seen the internet and had a wiped clean memory.
The 1920's would be good with money
I also wouldn't live in the 40s due to WW.
I don't know, I find the 60s to be an overcomplicated decade.
It seems crazier yet saner than the world we live in today.
Movies are also a huge factor for me loving the decade.
A hard question to answer indeed.
Romanticized for sure. You'd be going through hell, wondering if your next breath is your last, and seeing all your close friends die around you. That being said, I do believe that people from that time truly deserve the title of the greatest generation and as terrible as the experience could be I'd be honored to serve my country during this time.
Medieval times are my favorite era in history. The thing is that someone would have to erase my mind of modern hygiene. You can think something is great but then you have to live it.
Ancient Rome if I was a Roman traveling the world deserves a huge shoutout as well. Imagine the experience of visiting *cough* conquering *cough* foreign lands. All this before the time of globalization and where every new country is a different world.
Realistically though, being spoiled by modernity, my grandparents or my parents generation would be great. My grandfathers would be in Connery's generation. Too young to fight in the war but had their prime years in the 50s/60s. My parents generation is great as well. They had their prime in the 80s/90s. I'd still be in sync with modern technology while enjoying much of my life before the huge explosion of globalization and technology. I'd still get smart phones/computers today and have the joy of enjoying my youth the old fashioned way.
No radio, no TV, no movies, no recorded music.Everything real. Just lots of stuff to read on pieces of paper (no digits) and theatre and concerts for evenings entertainments.
If not that, then definitely the mid 1950s to early 1960s, say 1955-1965. A final attempt at renewal post WW2.
You can read that decade in Flemings novels, particularly the material written up to and including Thunderball. It is also described in Thrilling Cities. A world about to vanish under the pressures of the cultural transformations about to come.
A fine decade, still dignified and stylish. Because of the traumas of war, people still valued what they had, even if it was extremely modest. A world that was swept away by the so called "revolutions" of the late 1960s.
I always thought Bond would fit in quite nicely in late Victorian England. Especially since he is, as others have described him, an Imperialist Conservative by design.
Um, actually, the 1870s was an era of severe economic depression in England. There were also high rates of illiteracy and paper was extremely expensive, so there goes the reading. Then again, who had leisure time to read? Most worked sunup to sundown, with only Sundays off. And let's not get into the mortality rates-- heck, even royals weren't safe from typhoid because of the poor condition of the water. Sorry: the Victorian era is my field of expertise. . .
Also mine. Post grad.
My take on the topic was strictly fantasy based. Idealist versions of the late Victorian period abound. Of course, reality was harsh for many. Probably most.
Using many measures, by the late Victorian period it could be argued that immense progress had been made throughout the century. Lowered mortality rates. Improved sanitation. Life expectancy improvements. Massively increased literacy levels. The boom in mass publishing was in full swing. Huge reform movements were beginning to achieve significant change and laying the groundwork for what was to come. Economically there were great variations in the country's economic fortunes. It wasn't one of uninterrupted economic hardship. The country hadn't yet decided to throw away centuries of progress by allowing itself to become embroiled in multiple wars.
As I said. It is the idealised version of that period that many return to with writers like Conan Doyle and Wells and a whole slew of popular fiction writers of the period most of whom are now forgotten. The fantasy of the late Victorian period is captured in many of the classic popular novels of the period.
An exotic, admittedly unreal gaslit fantasy.
I agree. The only reality I think about when fantasising about living during any past period is how much money will I have to live on and how often do I have to visit the dentist.
Sticking to the 1950's, I have been rereading/listening to the masterly Fleming Bond novels written or set in in the 1950s. Casino through to Thunderball. They recreate that decade, admittedly as a fantasy of the 50s, so vividly that it has a seductive quality. His journalistic attention to detail throughout the books gives the reader/listener a real sense of place, a real sense of being there. That writing technique is one of the many reasons the books can be reread time and time again.
For me, the fantasy of living in the 1950s of Europe, England, the Caribbean, and the USA is perfectly captured in Casino, Moonraker, Goldfinger, Live and Let Die et al. As a fantasy. Which is what Fleming admitted he was creating. He wasn't writing kitchen sink drama. He wanted to take people out of their ordinary lives.
The writing makes you want to go there. Fleming lingers over details so much that you can visualise the settings, the food, the clothing, the cars, the landscapes, the buildings. And then he races you through the world with compelling incident.
In a sense, Fleming shows Bond partly living, at times, an upper middle class lifestyle with all the trappings. The good hotels, the fast cars, the good food etc. All of that in between exciting episodes of violence and suffering. Whats not to love about all of that.
Ah..... fellow travelers. It seems I'm not the only history nerd on AJB. I must admit the Victorian age isn't something I know much about. Can anyone suggest a good non-fiction book on the subject?
I have read more on WWII and the cold war, Russia, the US and ancient Rome.
I would like to experience life as a gunslinger/shootist in the Old West circa 1880's.
Technology coming in.
The American Mountain Man era of the 1820s would have also been a neat time.
'Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.'- Benny Hill (1924-1992)