Another train journey home after a productive couple of days in London. Met with some colleagues yesterday - building bridges to the rest of my new team. Today was a reflection day for the talent management programme I'm involved in, so plenty of thinking about what has gone well the last six months, and what the plan is for the next six. Good to be able to take some time out of the day job and reflect on where I'm up to. I'm going to miss being able to do that when the programme finishes.

I think Larry Elliot has got this spot on. I particularly agree that this is a good election to lose.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gmg/op/sjhooUMikweauj41C1_S3Xg/view.m?id=400919&tid=120787&cat=Economics

But the tragedy for the left has to be that when the great crisis came it was in government and took the blame, instead of outside with a winning manifesto promising to end the capitalist nightmare.

After another pause in blog entries... we were away for a week at Easter. A cottage in Shropshire. Very pleasant indeed, with lots of good walking. Highlight was the "Stiperstones". 5 miles up a hill (500 metres) in glorious sunshine. Marvellous. Welshpool and Llanfair railway ran it close though - a really delightful little line running up into the hills.

Following the election campaign quite closely, mostly on Twitter via @GdnPolitics. I have my Labour poster up (first time in years) but am concerned that the Lib Dem surge will open the way for the Conservatives to win more seats than the pundits seem to think they will.

Trying to think of a way to tell my sister that I don't want the joint 40th birthday party she seems to be planning. Failing.

Last weekend was another fantastic walk - probably my favourite one that's within travelling distance of home - Penycloddiau in the Clywdian range. Wonderful ridge line walking with a view of (snow capped) Snowdon.

More updates to follow, but I'm now using Twitter more than I was, so follow @4harrisons if you want to know where I'm up to.

This just made me laugh out loud: http://twitpic.com/1h5bzj

I think this poster is a mistake http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/apr/20/1. All it says to me is that the Conservative party hasn't changed at all - this is a poster that could have been used by Thatcher. It seems to me that it just reinforces Clegg's message about tired old politics.

Brief note. Been on leave, therefore no blog entries for a while (I don't like to blog while I'm away from home). Gobsmacked by the influence of the first TV debate on the general election, and proud possessor of a Guardian 'posh boy' t-shirt (http://www.guardian.co.uk/poshboy).

Another blog post written on a train. This time written in the morning on the train to London, to be uploaded to the blog later when I get home.

I've just finished reading Luttwak's "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" and rereading Sewter's translation of Psellos' "Chronographia". I found Luttwak's latest much less persuasive than his "Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire" of 30 years ago. That book made a strong case for a rational outline of Roman grand strategy. The current work felt far less coherent. Nor does he make the case which I expected him to around the applicability of the Byzantine approach to strategy in a world where our enemies can never truly be 'beaten' in the Napoleonic sense. I thought the one point he does make fairly coherently - that the Byzantines understood the states and peoples around them and adjusted their thinking to suit - is made more concisely in the last section of the "Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies". Still an enjoyable read though.

It was also interesting that I could read echoes of this in the later sections of Chronographia - particularly from Isaac Comnenos on - where, reading between the lines, it seems evident that Psellos is a practitioner of this grand strategy. I can't give the reference as I don't have the book with me, but there is a section where he talks about building allies with the peoples north of the Danube preparatory to military action in the East.

What struck me more though on this reading of Psellos, again in the sections from Isaac onwards, was the conflict between the military and civil parties. I'm not sure to what extent this is still part of current thinking on 11th. century Byzantium, but Psellos seems to clearly outline the beginnings of the run down to the capture of the state by the feudal aristocracy - with Isaac and Romanos IV being 'forerunners'. To pick up Alan Harvey's theories, as the economy expands, the civil aristocracy increasingly promotes this changing economy bringing it into conflict with the landed nobility. This aristocracy based more on land, military prowess, and informal 'feudal' relationships becomes more prevalent, and cannot tolerate the changes being encouraged by the civil party - and to some extent the diminution of it's role in the changed strategic situation of the 11th. century (see the treatment of the generals leading to Isaac's revolt). It captures the state to promote it's own narrow class interest - leading eventually to a catastrophic change in grand strategy (Romanos IV war in the East, bolstering a class based on military exploits in the East).

I would argue that this supports a Marxist view of 11th. century Byzantine history. Economic change and development leading to a revolutionary change as different classes vie for control of the mechanisms of government. Alexios then is not the hero who saves the state, but the confirmation of the victory of the military feudal class.

I think you can see some of this happening in the later sections of Psellos.

Psellos book 6, 122-3 on the end of Tornicius is very similar to the description of the fall of Michael V. Two companions dragged from a sanctuary, one weak, the other courageous.

Me in my (new) silly hat on top of Moel Famau.

Psellus book 6, 82. Maniaces:

"...knew that victories are won not by mere numbers but by skill and experience, and so he picked out for his army those who had the most practical acquaintance with war..."

Supports some of Luttwak's comments about the Byzantine approach to the military and the use of small numbers of well trained troops.

Where does this fit with the degradation of thematic troops during the 11th century?