847
An unknown Anglo-Saxon poet shares with us the grief of those whose homes and feast-halls were laid waste by Viking raiders.
The tenth-century Exeter Book contains a short soliloquy known as ‘The Wanderer’. It is set against the background of the reign of King Athelstan (r. 924-39), who united England and opened the way for the English to return to towns in the north and east ransacked by Vikings, now in silent ruin under freezing winter skies.
Picture: © Andrew Smith, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted September 5 2018
848
A fiery fanatic wins support for the suppression of Christianity in its very cradle.
The Apostle St Paul had been given the name Saul by his parents, after the first King of Israel, but he changed it to Paul in honour of his Roman patron Sergius Paulus, a Proconsul of Cyprus, whom Saul brought to Christianity. Saul’s own conversion, in about AD 33 to 36, had been altogether more dramatic.
Picture: © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted September 2 2018
849
A bird perched upon a church steeple casts a severe glance over the doings of men.
William Cowper (‘cooper’) paints us a picture of a jackdaw, a member of the crow family, perched on the weathervane of a church steeple, and looking down on the world of men with a sardonic eye.
Picture: © Oliver Dixon, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted August 31 2018
850
Walking with his ten-year-old daughter on the beach at Calais, Wordsworth considers the energy of God moving in all things.
In 1792, a young William Wordsworth visited France and met Annette Vallon. The lovers had a daughter, Caroline, but were sundered when Revolutionary France declared war on Britain. Shortly before William married Mary Hutchinson in October 1802, with her encouragement William seized the opportunity of the Peace of Amiens to visit Calais for a seaside walk with his little daughter.
Picture: © B. Leprêtre, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.5.. Source.
Posted August 30 2018
851
Sherlock Holmes turns to his brother for help when the case of a missing Greek proves unexpectedly troublesome.
A translator in London has witnessed what he believes is the kidnapping of a Greek man. Sherlock Holmes is frustrated by the lack of data, so he takes Dr Watson to see his brother Mycroft at the exclusive Diogenes Club. Mycroft, Sherlock claims, is an even better detective than he is.
Picture: From the National Library of Ireland, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted August 28 2018
852
A mild-mannered clerk in the British Embassy’s passport office in Berlin, just before the outbreak of war in 1939, was not all he seemed to be.
By 1938, Germany had stopped forcing Jews to leave the country and was interning them in camps, yet thousands still escaped into British-run Palestine. An angry Arab backlash prompted the Foreign Office in London to dam the flood, but one man had both the will and the means to introduce more than a few leaks.
Picture: From PikiWiki Israel collection, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted August 25 2018