BL blogpost: Wynflæd and the price of fashion

There is a new post on the British Library’s Medieval Manuscripts Blog today, by my colleague Alison Hudson, to which I have contributed.  It’s on a text which I have written about here before, the will of Wynflæd, the earliest surviving will by an English woman. Wynflæd and the price of fashion

‘That change sank into my heart’s root’: Hoccleve’s Complaint

I am rather fond of Stephen Fry, and have enjoyed his books, film and TV work very much, but in one of his books he wrote something that is guaranteed to raise the hackles of many a medievalist.  The one in question is The Ode Less Travelled, an introduction to writing poetry.  In the chapter…

Egyptian Days and Ayurvedic Man: medical cultural connections

One of the advantages of working in central London is the sheer number of interesting exhibitions and other events going on all around me.  The other day I wandered into the Wellcome Collection to see if they had anything interesting to see, and was rewarded with a free exhibition called Ayurvedic Man: Encounters with Indian…

The things we leave behind

So we are in December now!  Apologies for the late blogpost: I have big changes coming up (good ones), including a house move, so I have been furiously sorting and packing a lot of stuff.  In particular, I have a lot of books, most of which will be going into storage courtesy of a kind…

Caroline and hiragana: learning to write

As I wrote in a recent post, I currently have less time for blogging due to an impending book deadline.  Which is why it is complete foolishness that I have taken up learning a completely new language. Well, sort of.  What happened was that, having heard good things about it, I signed up to Duolingo…

Viking: Rediscover the Legend, Yorkshire Museum – a review

I live within a short walk of a museum mostly dedicated to local history and archaeology.  Of course, this is in York, which has played a significant part in several crucial events in English and British history.  The Romans had a military base here; it was an important site for the Anglo-Saxon church; it was…

The way of the book and the way of the wild: a review of Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake

there is ways to see this world i saes.  there is the way of the boc and the way of the wilde there is the god of the boc and the gods of the mere there is the way of the crist and the eald ways of this land Paul Kingsnorth, The Wake, p. 334 Be…

Strange beings: translating some Exeter Riddles

I saw four strange beings travel together: black were their tracks, very dark traces.  Fast on its journey, bolder than birds, it flew in the air, dived beneath the waves.  The labouring fighter suffered restlessly, he who shows all four of them the paths over ornamented gold. The four strange beings, if you were wondering,…

Anglian-era York at the York Festival of Ideas

The 2017 York Festival of Ideas will be running from 6-18 June, with the title The Story of Things. With a number of the events relating to York’s Anglian era, I was asked to translate a small number of Anglo-Saxon riddles to decorate the promotional bookmarks for this strand of the festival. The three riddles,…

A medieval astronomy lesson

If you drilled a hole through the centre of the earth, and dropped a stone down it, what would happen?  How big are the Sun, Moon and stars?  And, hardest to answer of all, are there any people on the other side of the globe?  I’ve been reading up on medieval science.  In particular, I’ve…