Latest news with #Roundheads
BBC News
15-07-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
The battle that reshaped the course of English history
It has been 380 years since the Parliamentarians defeated the Royalists at the Battle of Langport, paving the way for one of the biggest changes in England's Somerset battle effectively ended Royalist control in the West Country, a key strategic region. This boosted Parliamentarian morale and crippled their opponents forces in one morning of believe that the battle of July 1645, fought during the English Civil War, marked a turning point that ultimately led to the execution of King Charles I and the abolition of the Julian Humphrys, of the Battlefields Trust, said: "This battle really was the beginning of the end for the Royalists." Lord Goring led the Royalists for King Charles I, while Sir Thomas Fairfax headed the Parliamentarian's New Model Army, known as the Roundheads, who were a skilled, disciplined Humphrys said the Royalist army was different."They weren't the finest of troops you could say… a bunch of boozers really and their discipline was poor, they didn't have much money."They weren't being payed and they lived by nicking things off the local population who didn't like them in the slightest," he added. Lord Goring was holding an area about one mile east of Langport towards the village of Huish Royalists wanted to buy time so their army could pull back to Bridgwater. They planted musket troops along the hedges, with a few guns to protect the ford was then that the Parliamentarians came in with "a bold attack", said Mr cleared the hedges of Royalists at what is now Picts Hill by sending musketeers meant their cavalry could "splash across the crossing and drive the Royalists back".The Royalist troops did not put up much of a fight after the Roundheads crossed the water and were driven back quickly, he Humphrys added that metal detectors are stilling unearthing musket balls and pistol shots from the action. Some local people who were being affected by the war armed themselves and were known as "clubmen".They would defend their area from the army pillaging their homes using things like cudgels and pitchforks."The reality for the people of the time was disrupted trade, the armies were never very healthy so they spread disease, they damaged buildings, they took people's 1645, the people of Somerset were "very fed up of the war", Mr Humphrys added. Oliver Cromwell Mr Humphrys said Oliver Cromwell, the most famous Roundhead, detailed that he was actually there at the time, but "he was more of a second-in-command"."He was a fairly minor east Anglian MP, but it was these victories which got him promoted gradually over time."This led to him eventually commanding the whole of Parliament's army," Mr Humphrys added. When it comes to commemorating the Civil War, Mr Humphrys said "we need to remember these people were our ancestors"."Many of the ordinary soldiers had very little say of whether they fought or not and the cost of a civil war is a huge tragedy wherever it happens.""A greater percentage of the population died from this civil war than in World War One," he said.
Daily Mirror
11-06-2025
- General
- Daily Mirror
'I passed the UK Citizenship Test but not everyone would'
Do you know your Cavaliers from your Roundheads? Or which British PM created the NHS? I passed the 'Life in the UK' test on my first attempt but it's fair to say it was not easy. As someone who always tries to do better than average at anything I set my mind to, I know for a fact that I didn't exactly ace the exam. The Life in the UK assessment is an integral part of becoming a citizen of the United Kingdom and consists of 24 multiple choice questions to be completed within 45 minutes. A mark of 75 percent is needed to pass the exam and get a foreigner further along the way to British citizenship. Upon arriving at the test centre I was searched. I had to spread my fingers apart and roll up my sleeves to show that I had no writing on my skin. I was a bit surpised by how thorough the anti-cheating checks went but I followed directions as they asked me to lift my long hair. Then it was into the exam where I hoped the hours of study I had put into trying to pass would pay off as I stared into the computer trying to rack my brain. The Government has a number of guides available to help you prepare for the endeavour and I had opted for the three pack option. This pack consisted of the 'Official Study Guide', the 'Offical Guide For New Residents' and the official 'Practive Questions and Answers' books for the total of £27.99. After studying, I booked my exam, which has to be scheduled online at least three days in advance and costs £50. The scores were not revealed and the Scotsman who informed me I had passed wouldn't tell me what mark I achieved - only going so far to say I had passed with a sly smile. But he did confirm that I had not hit 100% when I asked him as a follow-up question. Still, I was grateful that he had told me at the centre as I had an hour-and-a-half journey back to my house and I wanted to be put out of my misery so I could hit the books again if required. Thankfully, this was not needed and the news was positive across the board as my family members who had sit the test also managed to pass first go - to everybody's relief. The tricky thing about the test is the wide variety of topics that it covers and because of this, I would be very surprised if anyone passed it first go without studying. And if they did, they should look at perhaps applying to be on a TV game show to put their knowledge to good use. I had questions about the ice age, historic migration to the UK, Olympic champions, the civil war, past royalty, Crystal Palace and the structures attributed to Isambard Kingdom Brunel. I don't remember all of the inquiries but I do remember thinking that I would have struggled to pass if I hadn't have studied. I've always prided myself on the fact that my general knowledge is decent. I am well read, regularly watch the news and have a decent array of podcasts that I listen to semi-regularly. The main observation I came away from the exercise of passing my Life in the UK test was wondering how people who have English as a second language managed to pass when I struggled - I'm Australian. It was difficult enough for me as a native English speaker to get across the line and I think it would add another dimension to the challenge. I think many British born people would struggle with the test if they had to do it right now because a lot of the knowledge is not commonplace, nor is it all from one area of subjects.
Bloomberg
24-02-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Labour Should Stop Fighting Itself and Get Back to Its Roots
Britain's ruling Labour Party was born 125 years ago this month, a marriage between largely middle-class socialist societies and the working-class trade union movement. This created a tension that's existed ever since, with Roundheads who see their party as a vehicle to help the working man (and eventually working women too) lining up against Cavaliers championing lofty ideals about human rights and justice for all.
Observer
10-02-2025
- Business
- Observer
AI's civil war will force investors to pick sides
In their satirical history of the United Kingdom, '1066 And All That', the authors W C Sellar and R J Yeatman cast the English civil war of the 17th century as a conflict between the 'Wrong but Romantic' Cavaliers and the 'Right but Revolting' Roundheads. The aftermath of the release last month of Chinese startup DeepSeek's R1 artificial intelligence model, which matches or outperforms existing offerings from US technology titans at a fraction of the cost, has exposed a similar divide among the world's leading innovators in the field of machine learning. On one side are those who strive for artificial general intelligence (AGI), the point where machines match or surpass human capabilities. Let's call them AI Cavaliers. Facing them are AI Roundheads who are focused on the more mundane goal of solving specific problems as efficiently as possible. Deciding which side to back in this AI civil war will be a defining decision for investors in the world's hottest technology. The AI revolution that has gripped global stock markets for the past two years is driven by three epochal trends. The first is the generation of vast volumes of machine-readable data by the digitisation of almost every aspect of daily life. The second is the collapse in cost of computing power prompted by ever more efficient chips. The third is a dramatic improvement in machine learning algorithms — the software that computers use to extract the signal from the noise in data sets. Together these developments have sparked a step-change in the accuracy of predictive modelling. Every technologist agrees that this revolution is a momentous shift for the world. Where they diverge is on the question of where it can be most valuably applied. DeepSeek's dramatic intervention has thrown the differences between two visions for AI into stark relief. The AI Cavaliers have a romantic vision of what the new machine learning algorithms can achieve. They see it as the royal road to the creation of thinking machines empowered with AGI. Their champions are well-known chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude. Their weapon of choice is the large language model (LLM), which uses AI's prodigious powers of pattern recognition to predict the next word in a string of text, with mind-bogglingly coherent results. The data they aspire to crunch is no less than the totality of human knowledge — or at least, everything that can be scraped from the internet. Their appetite for computing power is therefore similarly vast. Indeed, in principle, it's limitless. This intoxicating vision is the stuff of science fiction. So it's no surprise that the launch of ChatGPT's original iteration in November 2022 seized the public imagination and ignited a stock market boom. Yet it is haunted by three big questions. The first is the fiercely disputed technical conundrum of whether LLMs can achieve AGI. The second is the commercial dilemma over whether the models have any enduring competitive advantage. Finally, there is the great financial unknown of how much capital spending these ventures will require in the form of semiconductors, data centres and energy. The release of DeepSeek's model amplified all these doubts. Shares in Nvidia, the leading AI chip producer, dropped 17% in a day, wiping out a record of $600 billion of market value. Energy companies whose stocks had risen on forecasts of galloping electricity demand for AI training also took a hit. In the fortnight since, shares in both Microsoft and Google owner Alphabet sank following trading updates which cast doubt on their vast investments in computing capex. Put bluntly, DeepSeek has cast doubt on the return on investment in AGI. — Reuters
