Dr Francis Young

I know we always infer by analogy with reptiles and birds that dinosaurs had wholly internal ears, but given that they wouldn’t be preserved in the fossil record do we know for a fact that no dinosaur had big floppy ears like an elephant?

This evening, some psychedelic megaliths (psychedeliths?)

Was this is case the model railway needed to be defended? Now I am imagining small barrage balloons being inflated above Britain’s model villages to defend against air attack

Tram, not train

Has any mad dictator ever had an armoured personal tram?

The existence of Netizens implies the existence of Dotcomrades

I’m especially keen to see a story by A.N.L. Munby back in print, NB @liamsims.bsky.social

A film about folklore

Just got this from @blpublishing.bsky.social by @tanyakirk.bsky.social! 📚👻 shop.bl.uk/products/the...

Just about to do some filming 🎥

There's plenty happening at St Edmundsbury Cathedral this Christmas! As well as our advent services, we have a full roster of Christmas concerts! Find out more at stedscathedral.org/whats-on

If the award was conditional on the winning book being a scholar’s last book, it would also be a great way of getting senior scholars to finally pipe down

So many academic book prizes are awarded for first books, how about a prize awarded annually to the most promising last book written by a scholar? (the award would probably have to be posthumous, but still)

There’s a lot of this sort of housing left in London tho - the flats my grandparents moved into in Stoke Newington in 1938 are still there

Yes, I've done this

No-one expects sermons to be original - preaching is the one time you can subject a room of people to the most hackneyed cliches and there’s nothing they can do about it

Yes

I have Edmund: In Search of England's Lost King and can highly recommend it. A really interesting read. I would also recommend a visit to Bury St Edmunds and the Abbey Gardens.

Thanks!

There's certainly a great deal of border crossing! I also deal with the cults of other English saints in Ireland

Yes, it's a very recent development although it is of course a retconning based on the archaic spelling 'faerie'

If you're interested in learning more about St Edmund, don't forget my two books about him, both currently on special offer!

Edmund: In Search of England's Lost King bloomsbury.com/uk/edmund-97...
Athassel Priory and the Cult of St Edmund in Medieval Ireland fourcourtspress.ie/books/2020/a...

Just got this book to review 📚

Scientific research (like all proper academic research) is actually really boring, but thinktanks and the media don't like this fact

But we shouldn't forget a saint who was martyred alongside Edmund - Bishop Humbert of Elmham. An unnamed bishop advises Edmund in the earliest account of his martyrdom, but Humbert was only named later. Unlike other characters in the extended universe it's more likely he existed

But not everyone in the Edmund extended universe is a martyr - Cerne Abbey in Dorset claimed to have been founded by Edmund's brother St Eadwold, who escaped the Danes and became a hermit. The Cerne Abbas Giant may originally have depicted St Eadwold

Because martyrs are prestigious, and Edmund was England's most famous martyr of the Viking age, if you wanted a martyr saint you might want to associate him with Edmund - after all, lots of English Christians died in 869, who's going to notice another one?

We've met a fake cousin of St Edmund, so let's now meet his fake nephew: St Ragener of Northampton. Ragener is a 'found' saint, apparently invented in the c11th when a beautifully decorated grave slab was found under St Peter's church in Northampton

Fremund was venerated at Prescote and Cropredy in Oxfordshire, as well as Dunstable Priory and Offchurch. It's possible he was a real person, but the association with St Edmund may have been made in the c13th to boost this obscure saint's status

Fremund may be slightly better known than other characters in the extended universe on account of John Lydgate's poem The Lives of Ss. Edmund and Fremund, where he rolled their stories into a single work. Fremund is unknown until around 1220, however