Clik here to view.
It's time to find a different figure than the celebrated monarch when talking of judges and court injunctions
Throughout the recent agitation over court injunctions and Twitter, one celebrated figure whom even Schillings cannot attempt to rescue has repeatedly been defamed. It happened again in our letters column yesterday when a former tabloid editor declared that the judges involved "must surely now concede that they look like latterday King Canutes floundering to turn back the tide". While the Guardian would not seek to endorse all that was said and done by a monarch who in 1015-16 so brutally ravaged and savaged his way to the kingship of England, that does not make him guilty of the hubristic act so often imputed to him – his alleged command to the waves to recede at his royal whim. It's by no means certain that this incident ever took place. But most reputable historians, pondering the account left behind by Henry of Huntingdon, agree that if it did his purpose was to illustrate to his courtiers that forces existed that even a king as mighty as he could not hope to control. That these libels persist indicates the need for some alternative cliche appropriate in such instances. One obvious candidate might seem to be the case of the ostrich, burying its head in the sand rather than facing reality; but that will not do, since zoologists say that this is a smear invented by Pliny the Elder. Perhaps if his prediction for this coming October fails as miserably as his earlier prediction for May, the US evangelist who keeps requiring the world to end on a date that he stipulates might be best placed to fill the vacancy.
