Tilting at windmills Cervantes wrote and published "Don Quixote" during the Eighty Years' War, or Dutch War of Independence (1568–1648), a revolt by the Habsburg Netherlands to end Spanish rule. In "Don Quixote", the eponymous protagonist consistently misinterprets the motives and actions of his adversaries and allies, and struggles to even understand his own at times — a conundrum regularly resulting in apparently unjustified violent actions and consequences. One way of interpreting Don Quixote's tilting at windmills could be allegorically, thereby promoting critical, skeptical, or satirical evaluation of either a hero's motives, rationales and actions, or the ultimate aims of a nation's foreign
Clavering Windmills Clavering Windmills Clavering Windmills are a pair of Grade II listed Tower mills at Clavering, Essex, England which have both been converted to residential use. They are named North Mill and South Mill. A third mill existed in Clavering until the mid-nineteenth century, known as Clavering Mill. "Clavering Mill" was a Post mill. It was marked on a map dated c.1625 and then in the ownership of Sir Francis Barrington. In 1702 it was conveyed to Sir Charles Barrington. The mill was marked on Warburton, Bland and Smyth’s map of 1724. It was marked on a plan of Clavering dated