It is more than two months since I have been able to post here, and though the blog is recently now a full ten years old it is also fair to ask what kind of health it is in. I may now have an answer to that question and time to frame it, but today is not the day where that happens, because news reached me by e-mail today of the unexpected death of fellow medievalist and stalwart member of the black-clad and long-haired,, a couple of weeks after suffering a stroke. Duncan, who had come to medieval studies as a second or even third career, I met when he was at Birmingham and I was at the Fitzwilliam, and over our occasional meetings at conferences and seminars over the next few years he developed into a respected and highly productive scholar of medieval English names, place- and personal, who could make that work comprehensible to outsiders despite handling large datasets by preference. He worked on, most recently, and managed to combine the hard-headedness of real-world employment experience with an irrepressible belief in the power of human ingenuity to solve problems.

Jul 30, 2012. You can learn a lot when you are alone with a taxi cab driver for three hours--even when you only speak intermediate Spanish. From the incessant complaints about there not being a McDonald's or a 24-hour take-out-pizza place within the feudal walls of our host city to the complete lack of awareness.

He also drew good maps. He will be missed by many; with this post I count myself among them. Rest well, Duncan. It is a time of weighty decisions in this part of the world right now. I don’t just mean in the Academy, although today and tomorrow and personally I am in the middle of quite a lot of marking, some of which will affect people’s fates in ways I can’t foresee but can still worry about. No, I mean that, even on the rather specialised terms we currently enjoy. As with every political issue these days this has become a matter of, and in some cases other people’s electorates: and have both weighed in effectively, apparently not realising how much of the ‘Leave’ campaign is being driven exactly by a resentment at other countries seemingly intervening in Britain’s decisions.

Shizuka Kudo 20th Anniversary The Best Rar Password. Hp Omnibook Xe2 Dc Video Driver. Perhaps they’re actually trying to make sure the ‘Leave’ vote wins. In any case, it all has me wondering what perspective a historian can take on it all.

Sheffield’s excellent has but so far, and I feel as if more can be said. Map of the Carolingian Empire under Charlemagne It seems to me that this is one of the rare episodes where the most relevant parallels are from the early Middle Ages, because there is really only one point prior to the twentieth century when Europe could be considered a single political entity and, importantly, its ruler had not declared an intent to add the British Isles to that (as in the times of Carausius, Napoleon or the guy with the moustache and the painting qualification). That time is the period of the Carolingian Empire, albeit with some pre-echoes under the Carolingians’ Merovingian predecessors, and actually there are some thought-provoking parallels. There’s nothing really new in what follows except its application to now, but I still think that’s worth doing.