Nick P

Glad to see you’re still in your priam.

5 classes you took in university:

1. Old English
2. Insular Latin
3. Arthurian literature
4. The conversion of England to Christianity
5. Doomsday, damnation and the devil

Good training for everyday life: spotting signs of Apocalypse, or dealing with headless green knights

NO MEANING

So sorry to hear this; what a fantastic hound ❤️

Yes, I think those suggestions are right. Scribe or perhaps later owner/librarian has written in foliation for each quire and that’s noted in the brackets, but James is also saying when there’s a folio missing, or added like in quire c. Have fun!

Yes, very much agree. Fables are asking readers not only to enjoy the parallels between human and animal, but think about the differences and why we shouldn’t accept their rhetoric like, well, lambs to the slaughter. Robert Henryson’s Fables are also brilliant at this ethical complexity

Thank you – but this is not just about not using it. This is criminal, places users at risk of a crime by seeing abusive material of children, and should be prosecuted as such. Please push for this too.

Yes – nearly everyone uses that pronunciation. I suppose it’s one of those phrases whose pronunciation gets fixed in the way that people said Latin in the C19 or early C20

I have a hand-me-down Sebo which is great and no-nonsense. My partner has a Miele (we live in different houses!): also very good and reliable. Good luck!

Though to be slightly more helpful, the OED says ‘ibexes, rarely ibices’

I think it’s iibex, vbex, mcmlxxxviibex or whatever number you’re thinking of

Boomerangenheit?

Yes; I also think ‘barely see’ is the most likely. Give me C15 secretary any day in preference to this! Looks like a great project

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
(W.H. Auden)

Same for me, listening to Radio 3. It’s a fantastic station, but the news slant is often awful. If I’m listening on BBC Sounds I usually skip back a couple of minutes until I think it’s safe to rejoin.

That may be part of it, but at ITV you can make a judgement like ‘tens of thousands of avoidable deaths is more important than the latest unworkable policies from parties competing to be the most cruel to migrants’. Then you can act on that with in-depth reporting, which I know you can do well.

Very timely choice! There’s a lot of Auden to like; I think my favourite (today) is the poem starting ‘Lay your sleeping head, my love, / Human on my faithless arm’. Beautiful and heartbreaking.

Football manager Sam Allardyce.

‘If serious about governing’ doing a lot of work there!

Don’t tell her that Beowulf arrives in a small boat!

Submit your REF return

My first suggestions would be Pearl by Siân Hughes, and Telling Tales by Patience Agbabi. There is masses of great stuff to explore!

So sorry to hear this; what a fantastic writer

Steven Isserlis has told the story that his pianist grandfather, and father (aged 5), arrived in Vienna in 1922 and found a flat. The 102-year-old landlady didn’t want to take in a musician, because a previous musical tenant was noisy. Some guy called Beethoven.

Thanks – helpful advice

The round-up at the end would be called Finale Score

I don’t use Spotify, but BBC Sounds has a complete reading of George Eliot’s Silas Marner; it’s excellent

The margarita ice cream recipe is sensational, so I’d love to have a go at this! Not sure I’ve knowingly had Malibu since I was about 15 though…

Congratulations! Very styl(ite)ish 🤩

It’s basically nonsense, but pre-Conquest kings and historians liked to portray the English as a new chosen people. Good propaganda but dodgy even at the time. The line about common worship is deranged given the C16 and C17. Did he break into ‘And did those feet in ancient time…’ at the end?