1027
Lemuel Gulliver finds that the people of Balnibarbi just don’t appreciate their hardworking academics.
Lemuel Gulliver is visiting the distinguished Academy in Balnibarbi, where absent-minded professors pursue countless schemes for bettering society. In the School of Languages, for example, some experts plan to do away with verbs, participles and words of more than one syllable, but their colleagues are far bolder.
Posted September 16 2017
1028
By the early eighth century, sacred art was thriving in newly-Christian England, but in the East seeds of doubt and confusion had been sown.
Although we associate icons with Eastern Christianity, many churches in Britain prior to the Reformation, and especially in the Anglo-Saxon era before the Conquest of 1066, were wall-to-wall, floor-to-roof, a patchwork of frescoes of saints, Biblical scenes, flowers and animals. Indeed, it was in the East that doubts about sacred art first arose.
Posted September 15 2017
1029
Charles Dickens tells the story of King Henry II and the enchantingly beautiful Rosamund Clifford.
The story of Rosamund Clifford, mistress of a young Henry II, is one of the great romances of English literature. Disappointingly (or perhaps not, since it is a bitter tragedy) apart from the most essential facts it is a legend. The best one can do is to ask one of our great novelists, Charles Dickens, to let us down gently.
Posted September 12 2017
1030
Richard I thought a veteran Crusader and conqueror of Saladin could handle a few French peasants.
Richard the ‘Lionheart’ is best remembered today as the King of England during the time of Robin Hood, an association made for us by Sir Walter Scott’s novel ‘Ivanhoe’. He was an inspiring general in the Third Crusade, courageous and ruthless, but his death was testimony to the caprices of Fortune.
Posted September 9 2017
1031
Rudyard Kipling’s poem about St Wilfrid’s chaplain and an unusual Christmas congregation.
Kipling firmly believed that Christianity should embrace the animal kingdom, and this poem precedes a tale in which a seal plays a key role in the conversion of the South Saxons. That story and this poem are pure fiction, though Eddi (Eddius Stephanus, Stephen of Ripon) really was St Wilfrid’s chaplain.
Posted September 7 2017
1032
The Northumbrian monk is duped into wasting one of his beautifully-crafted sermons on a row of dumb rocks.
This story about St Bede from the 13th century ‘Golden Legend’ is not attested in earlier sources, and Bede himself has taught us to be wary of taking such stories on trust. On the other hand, it is a very good story, and brings to life the profound words of William Shakespeare in ‘As You Like It’:SWEET are the uses of adversity,Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.
Posted September 6 2017