“Wo is the coutrey, where the ruler is wanton” Sir Thomas Elyot, The Bankette of Sapience Sir Thomas Elyot (1490?-1546) is remembered as an eminent English humanist, and pioneer in the use of English instead of Latin for literary purposes. He was a copious and earnest scholar who strove mightily to “augment our Englyshe tongue”[i]… Continue reading
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Samuel Pepys – maker of the Navy, shaper of Stuart England
Many people throughout history have kept diaries of some kind, but I suggest that Samuel Pepys is, as the Encyclopædia Britannica puts it, “the greatest diarist of all.” Pepys’ 1.25 million words on the period 1660-1669 is not just a unique record of a formative and hugely interesting period in English life, but a ground-breaking… Continue reading
#Mediterranean Refugee Crisis 2015
“The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today” James Joyce, Ulysses On watch –In a long slow timeless washReflux of freighted watersSlim frigates ride –Grey grace the warping waves bestrideAnd fall and rise again like GreeksUpreared on dolphins(That classic life still breathingLike a soul trapped in a ribcage.) Our SeaFloats palaces and palm trees –Towns sick with age,… Continue reading
The Bishop in Winter
Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln between 1235 and 1253, was one of the great intellectuals of thirteenth century Europe, and is seen as one of the founders of modern science. He was a poet, preacher, translator of Aristotle, writer of instructional and theological works, and the first English intellectual to think seriously about the nature… Continue reading
Deep State
“Stilled legendary depth:It was as deep as England” ‘Pike’, Ted Hughes The plumber’s van’s been standing since the small hours At the fishing-place beside the chartered town; Its driver has been sounding deeper waters Since he set up as the night was going down. He saw the sun come wheeling up from ocean, Watched whitening… Continue reading
Tide Watchers
At the end of a sand-heaped lane A scene from Rembrandt – Worried lights clustered against hugeness; Lowlit men appraise an upraised ocean Boiling where a beach should be. Quiet speaking on a universal plain As wind blows the buckthorn flat and The blackest of black cattle stand against stars Behind the dunes behind the… Continue reading
The Karleton Kreeper
NOTE: This is a reimagining of a medieval Lincolnshire folktale, of Sir Hugh Barde and the dragon of Castle Carlton The song of the lark was abroad in the Marsh, with March greening the tips of the willows – but in Hugh Barde’s heart it was December. He’d come out of his door in disgust,… Continue reading
Foundations of faith
The History of England’s Cathedrals Nicholas Orme, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024, pb, 306pps., US$27.95 As an amateur student of British history, my shelves creak with books about the Church in England, and the Church of England. Central in all these accounts, and unmissable in townscapes from Cornwall to Northumberland, are England’s world-renowned cathedrals… Continue reading
John Bull’s other island
Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World Jane Ohlmeyer, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023, 368pps., hb, $36 On 1 May 1169, thirty Anglo-Norman knights landed at Bannow strand in County Wexford, to aid the usurped Diarmait MacMurrough reclaim the throne of Leinster. There had always been interactions among the Isles, but those knights… Continue reading
What’s in a Naomi?
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World Naomi Klein, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2023, hb., 399pps. Montréal-born Naomi Klein is a prominent international voice of the left, author of influential and often insightful books about capitalism and climate change. She has spent decades linking capitalism with an alphabet of other isms, from ableism… Continue reading