Skip to content

Tag Archives: history

Intellectual MOT

Some thoughts on the enquiring mind, slang, and judging a book by its cover – in correspondence with Tia Goonaratna. — For The Sunday Leader

Battle

for Harry . When Edward was king, Harold, an English earl, and his horsemen rode to Bosham, to the church there. Harold then crossed the sea, his sails full of wind, and came into the domain of Count Guy. Guy took Harold prisoner, and leading him away to Beaurain, held him captive there. Harold and Guy […]

Egyptomania

Review of three books on Ancient Egypt: Egypt: People, Pharaohs, Gods, by Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen; Egyptomania: A History of Fascination, Obsession and Fantasy, by Ronald H. Fritze; and Writings from Ancient Egypt, by Toby Wilkinson. — For The Spectator

Fools’ Charter

A trip to see all four surviving originals of the Magna Carta. — For The Spectator

A motto for mine own generation

habitabamus domum magnam

Eight debut novels

Currently sitting at 12 to 1 for this year’s Booker Prize, first-time novelist Paul Kingsnorth has set the cat among the pigeons through the disarmingly original expedient of submitting his offering in a fictional language. Composed in what Kingsnorth calls the ‘shadow tongue’ of ‘eald anglisc’, The Wake (Unbound 365pp £16.99) explores one angle of […]

theASHtray, vol.13

David Walliams does Roald Dahl, AA Gill does Mary Beard, and I do children’s literature, Little Britain, Donald Sturrock, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Sunday Times, Romans, the Daily Mail, Cicero, Bettany Hughes, Time Team, the Cambridge Latin Course, constipation, movie posters, The Ides of March, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The English Patient, […]