If you’d like a break from the hurly-burly of politics, try a couple of music reviews. Here is one of Roberto Devereux at the Metropolitan Opera. It concentrates on the phenomenal soprano Sondra Radvanovsky. Here is one of Simon Boccanegra, also at the Met. It concentrates on the phenomenal baritone Plácido Domingo. He used to be a tenor, but, in his senior years, made an extraordinary career move.

Did I say take a break from the hurly-burly of politics? Well, maybe of today. But dive into the politics of England in 1600 or so. They make ours seem like Romper Room.

Roberto Devereux, in this Italian opera (Donizetti), was Robert Devereux, who was the Earl of Essex. He lived from 1565 to 1601 — when his queen, Elizabeth, gave him the chop. After writing about the opera, I went where I so often like to go: to A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, by Churchill. There are just five or so pages on Devereux, or Essex (in Volume II). But, oh, what pages — touched with the usual Churchillian felicity, color, and strength.

The Queen’s favour had lighted upon the hard, handsome, and ambitious Captain of the Guard, Sir Walter Raleigh. Essex was the younger and the more fiery, and he soon displaced the Captain in the affections of Elizabeth. He too was ambitious . . .

And he “overreached,” as we like to say today. Let me cut to the chase, and the chop.

Essex had been not simply a courtier soliciting, and even fighting for, the affections of his Queen. He was the leader of a bid for power by a faction of her Court. Acutely aware of the Queen’s advancing years, he aimed to control the succession and to dominate the next sovereign. . . . But long years of statesmanship served Elizabeth better than the driving ambition of a courtier half her age. She struck back; and in destroying Essex she saved England from the consumption of civil war.

Reading Churchill often makes you feel more alive, even when he’s writing of events a few or many centuries ago. What a gift. Of course, the English-speaking peoples gave him an abundance of excellent material.

It is to an English historian today, Andrew Roberts, that I owe this acquaintance with the Churchill volumes. He said they were worth reading, and, holy Moses — they are.