Persistence of Error
Most of the papers I have heard in the past four days of this conference on Anglo-Norman studies have been very good or excellent, but the pool of talent and perception is not as deep as many might...
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To Battle and Beyond! Finding Pevenesel and Hastinga ceastra
I gave a presentation to the Battle and District Historical Society on 16th October titled "Rethinking the Geography of the Norman Conquest". In it I developed the theory that the Brede Valley had...
View ArticleLaudes Regiae - first performed in England in 1066
One of the reasons I re-transcribed and re-translated the Carmen was the conviction that there was much more information in the text than had been previously understood. Even so, it can still surprise...
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Blogging the Archaeology of Portus - Ostia/Ostend/Oslo/Hastingas - and the...
Not far from Rome stands the Monte Testaccio, a hill of potshards 35m high extending over a kilometre and composed of the remains of 53 million amphorae. It is an enduring ceramic testament to Rome's...
View ArticleUnderstanding Bede: Correcting 2 Common Errors and a Jest in Paragraph 1,...
The thing I love about Latin is the precision and richness of the language, which is why I find bad translation so irritating. Word order is not so important because case and tense and other...
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Finding Ala Chocha - a manorial seat of William of Eu in Sussex, possibly...
What makes me spend hours following arcane links to track down something that niggles? The amazing sensation of succeeding in solving a mystery that others have let slide for centuries! Today I...
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Christian Militarism and Empire in Song in 1066 and 1895
Two weeks ago I was in the St George's Church at Brede, East Sussex, originally constructed by Normans from Fecamp Abbey, and opened the hymn book randomly. The hymn revealed might have been equally...
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Viewing the Manuscript of the Carmen in Brussels
On Tuesday a client asked me to be in Brussels Thursday morning for a meeting. I rushed to book the tickets and prepare, and then it hit me. I could finally see the one and only complete manuscript...
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Tidal ports and tidal bores - explaining the loss of Caesar's ships and the...
News of the surging Severn bore coinciding with the total lunar eclipse in March may have solved a nagging mystery and helped me to prove that Julius Caesar and William the Conqueror both used the same...
View ArticleI become an Historian
The die is cast. I'm now an historian. I've been accepted to do an MA in Medieval History at King's College London, happily the finest university for medievalists. Now in my 50s, I choose to...
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Ala Chocha in 1086 was Cock Marling, Udimore, East Sussex - at Senlac
A place named Ala Chocha is recorded in a notification of plea of William the Conqueror in 1086 as a manor of William of Eu. There is no place with this name in any other English or Norman record.In...
View ArticleHistory needs to be more than the written and oral record these days
Few of us would choose to consult an 1840s doctor for a physical complaint, no matter how well regarded by his peers. Phrenology and blood letting have been superseded by modern medical diagnostics...
View ArticleMapping History
Perhaps it is because I am a cartographer's daughter or one of the last students taught by that wonderful geographer George Kish, but I love maps and always learn something from studying maps. Last...
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950th Anniversary of the Battle of Hastings - Why is Battle Abbey at Battle?
Ever since I first started writing a revisionist geography and history of the Battle of Hastings I have been asked the same questions. Where was the battle? If it wasn't at Battle then why is Battle...
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I am an historian, King Harold was a Dacian, and the Carmen of 1066 is...
In 2015 I took the momentous decision to abandon a 30 year career in banking infrastructure and dedicate myself full-time to history. I got tired of being told I wasn't qualified to translate the...
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A windy day in Winchelsea!
I was invited back to Winchelsea, Sussex, by the Winchelsea Archaeological Society to give an update on my researches into 1066 geography. What none of us expected was that Winchelsea would be hit by...
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Finding the 1066 Landfall: Pefnesea or Pevenesae at Lydd and Dungeness
On Saturday we made a sort of family pilgrimage to Dungeness Lighthouse. It was erected in 1960 using several novel principles of engineering and construction innovated by the late Frank Hay. Frank...
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Nathan Bailey's Dictionary and "Harold, the last Danish king"
I have bought another dictionary, perhaps the most wonderful dictionary I will ever own. It is Nathan Bailey's An Universal Etymological English Dictionary and Interpreter of Hard Words. Despite the...
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'Haran Apuldran' means 'Anchorage at Appledore'. 'Hoary Apple Tree' is more...
Victorians were racist, sexist, religionist, imperialist fantasists, with limited grasp of ancient geography, language, and navigation. In their rush to re-write English history as leading to the...
View ArticleGoogle is 20: Talk about making history!
20 years ago yesterday two guys in garage decided to improve the way we find information on the internet and Google was born. I remember exactly where I was when I first heard the word Google. It was...
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The 1066 Surrender of London was at Westminster, not Berkhamsted
I have been thinking much of Berkhamsted, having presented last month to the Military History wing of the Dacorum U3A. It was a full house, which was very encouraging as I was debuting a new lecture...
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Guillaume and William, Guest and West, guile and wile: The vagaries of language
I have been thinking about the vagaries of language today, realising that the certainties of today melt as we trace words back through the very fluid languages of the past. It started with the...
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British Library Exhibition of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms
I gave myself a full day out in London yesterday. After a panel retrospective on 2018 at the RSA I ventured to the British Library for the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition. I was irritated by the...
View ArticleWhat The Heliand tells us about 9th century warrior society and early...
I am reading The Heliand, a 9th century retelling of the Christian gospels that takes vast liberties with the 4th century texts selectively approved by the Emperor Constantine as the Bible (Translation...
View ArticleHow to Get Rich Quick! or Judicial Dispossession and Enslavement in 11th c....
What was the scandal that got RBS into trouble after the Great Financial Crisis of 2008? It boiled down to some small business loan managers (a few bad apples) lending to good businesses with good...
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