Early Modern Whale

This will be my last post for a couple of weeks. I am off with my son Tim to America, a first visit for both of us. A fly-drive, with large ...

Apart from the animals they knew well, much early modern zoology was suffused with folklore and traditional fantasies. I was reminded of thi...

Thomas Shipman: 'The Kiss, To Mrs. C.' Hold not your Lips so close; dispence Treasures, Perfumes, and Life from thence. ...

I bought this photographic print from one of my regular postcard dealers last weekend. There's no date or names, just the stamped 'H...

‘On lute strings cat-eaten’ Are these the strings that poets feign Have clear’d the Ayre, and calm’d the main? Charm’d wolves, ...

I am not at all a hot weather person. I cycled this morning, and returned so over-heated, thirsty and tired that I set about a large amount ...

George Daniel, of Beswick (his dates were 1616–1657) vowed that he would never again take razor to his beard after the execution of Charles ...

I spent an almost spookily quiet Sunday (the England match was on TV) cycling in rural Hampshire. After two visits to churches, one of whic...

On Sunday, as I was coming back from completing the 105 mile 'Circuit of the Cotswolds' Ride (I was rider 396) http://www.circuitoft...

I’ve been unable to get on-line, my ISP having problems. I’ve anyway been reasonably busy with the effort to get degree results out afte...

Posting on the number of the beast reminded me of Dame Helen Gardner - not that the late Merton Professor of English was in any way satanic ...

The world seems to have survived 6.6.06, despite those ominous words, ‘Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of t...

Some years back, we used to run ‘poetry seminars’ for our students. They were more a training for speaking up in class than designed to mee...

Two Royal chaplains are buried at the Parish church in Eversley, in Hampshire, http://www.stmaryseversley.org.uk/ They are Alexander...

I have been listening, over and over, to Handel’s 1707 ‘Dixit Dominus’: I’ve got a version performed wonderfully by The Sixteen Choir and ...

Imagine scholarship without the OED (if you can). Now that the power of the computer has been integrated so consummately with that dictiona...

Charles Cotton again … I’ve always considered Orsino a character delivered in Shakespeare’s highest style of comedy. But students tend to di...