Another oddball medieval name from the Chronicle of the Good Duke

During my years with the Good Duke I have run across a number of surprising and amusing personal names: Bliomberis Loup and his brother, for instance (follow the "names" label to find him).I don't recall this classic name of an English knight involved in the Duke of Lancaster's chevauche in 1373:Sir Jean Bul...

If walls could talk: A BBC history of the home

My friend Nick Russon alerted me to the existence of a BBC 4 History of the Home now showing on Youtube. I have just watched the first of four episodes and I really like it. Part of it of course is the entertaining Lucy Worsley, who was made to be a TV presenter, but there's also...

Some people you just don't want to fight...

...because some people are just scum.During the first half of the Hundred Years War, when France was in chaos, disbanded soldiers often struck out on their own to fill their purses and their stomachs by capturing both warriors and civilians and ransoming them back to their lords...

Back to the Good Duke

After some months of writing other material, I am back to translating The Chronicle of the Good Duke, Louis II of Bourbon.  (I am astonished to see, by the way, that I started this translation in 2010.)  It's a fascinating view of one of the great warrior-princes (no, not...

A flash of truth cuts through the overheated rhetoric

A Guardian column on "alt-right" celebrity Katie Hopkins' carpetbagging critiques of London stumbles into an important truth. Marina Hyde: For now, it falls to her [Hopkins] to explain London to the Americans. “Londoners can’t even be honest about these attacks,” she told Fox News. “Because it would mean everything they believed in was false.” >Ah, the false idols of the decadent...

La fin de l'Empire romain d'Occident. Rome et les Wisigoths de 382 à 531, by Christine Delaplace,

I return to my old interest in Late Antiquity today, thanks to Michael Kulikowski, who has written an illuminating review of Christine Delaplace's La fin de l'Empire romain d'Occident for the Medieval Review. A boring title, says Michael, and one would not be surprised if the interpretation offered was a hundred years out of date. Ah, but it's not. Says Michael: Perhaps the...

Geoffroi de Charny's son, also called Geoffroi

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A newspaper series you might want to know about

Keen-eyed reporters at the Globe and Mail became aware that a lot of sexual assault cases in Canada were being dropped as "unfounded." Unfounded is supposed to mean that nothing happened. That sometimes 40% of complaintants, people who went to the police knowing that such complaints often go nowhere, were being turned aside and not believed -- this made the reporters suspicious...

Did the Irish save civilization? The reviewers of the Medieval Review weigh in

The Medieval Review Flechner, Roy, and Sven Meeder, eds. The Irish in Early Medieval Europe: Identity, Culture and Religion New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Pp. 288. $39.99. ISBN: 978-1-137-43059-5. Reviewed by Alexander O'Hara University of St Andrews alexanderjohara@gmail.com...

The Guardian tells us what will happen when Queen Elizabeth dies

For a long time, the art of royal spectacle was for other, weaker peoples: Italians, Russians, and Habsburgs. British ritual occasions were a mess. At the funeral of Princess Charlotte, in 1817, the undertakers were drunk. Ten years later, St George’s Chapel was so cold during the...

What can you say about this?

You can say, this story doesn't seem to have made much impact in the US press. It's from the Sydney Morning Herald.Fury in Cambodia as US asks to be paid back hundreds of millions in war debtsLindsay Murdoch CONTACT VIA EMAIL  FOLLOW ON GOOGLE PLUS  FOLLOW ON TWITTER Half a century after United States B-52 bombers dropped more than 500,000 tonnes of explosives...

A three-part review in the Journal of World History.

Just arrived: my review of three books concerning  democracy in world history.  The point I make is that all three touch on interesting facets of democratic history, but none of them are successful at looking at the big picture.  But truth be told two of the three aren't intended to deal with the big picture.  At least, not the big, big picture.Journal of World...

The truth about immigrants?

Dana Kramer-Rolls says on Facebook: Dr. Ben Carson got into some trouble by saying that black slaves were immigrants, too. But I heard poetry and wondered what Maya Angelou would have made of it. I'm not her, but here is my take.They came as immigrants, Stolen by invaders, sold by their kings.They came as immigrants, Chained in the holds of ships, the living and the dead.They...

How the Canadians saved civilization

Today's Globe and Mail has an article by two Canadian professors, Aisha Ahmad and Minelle Mahtani, who say that the "Trump immigration ban ushers in an age of academic darkness. If you are an academic yourself and your research has an important international dimension (meaning that...

My advice to SCA members on service

When I was asked to advise people at Winter War on service, I turned to Geoffroi de Charny's Book of Chival...