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Grieving for buildings

Why is the destruction of ancient sites so abhorrent?

By AC Grayling  
June 18, 2015
July 2015

The Scene of the Theatre, Palmyra. © Zeledi

That mighty sculptor Time has razed most of the past into oblivion. We need no Ozymandias to remind us that the treasures of history have, like the people who built and cherished them, either left nothing or just poignancy behind, their ruins half obscured by desert or the entangling encroachments of jungle, and sometimes just poking fragmentedly up between unsympathetic modern buildings. We regret but do not feel outrage at the crushing effect of time’s…

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AC Grayling

AC Grayling is a philosopher and the master of the New College of the Humanities

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