Gaps

Well, it appears what happens when Crumpetty gets really busy is...gaps. Big ones. Expect more. Never mind. Some things:

1) Attempting to read Rubin's The Hollow Crown was once more not successful (tried last year, too), and I'll probably give up. It's is not the best book about the Middle Ages, and made me a bit cross. Facts have a habit of being incredibly boring and unmemorable unless extremely carefully (and skilfully) presented, and that's unfortunately what happens in this book. I'm not one to shirk a challenge (unless it involves roller-coasters or shellfish), but I've decided there are better books about similar things. Such as...

2) ...Alison Weir's biography of Isabella, which is excellent. Weir has written a lot - on the bookshelves her output volume visually compares to that of Antonia Fraser (and they both write on very similar things, which might make for interesting comparison some time). Weir constructs biography and pieces together history very cleverly, and although her texts are laden with facts (with even brief endnotes coming close to 100 pages) the writing never feels heavy, confusing or dull. She weaves a good story; and although liberties are taken to bend [lack of] evidence to her will, it's not too annoying. I've just got hold of Eleanor of Aquitaine, too, and look forward to reading it. She's very recently branched out into historical fiction for the first time, with Innocent Traitor, centred around Lady Jane Grey - there's a possibility this might soon(ish) become a TV drama, so watch this space!

3) A week in very soggy Cambridge, hidden in cosy libraries and quiet spots. With endless thanks to LJJ for being a wonderful work companion, even (especially?) when we haven't a clue what each other is talking about! Some work needed a bit of a kick-start and that seemed a good place to do it. Lots of fun, and I managed to have An Idea - which so far has been resilient to crushing. It's probably only a matter of time until the Inevitable Problem occurs, but there is hope! A little grouse, though: people who write in library books. Little marks/comments/pictures in margins are fine, but one reader (and it was one) scribbled his (and it was most definitely a 'his') way through two entire volumes of a biography I was trying to read - this amounted to about 900 pages of MESS. Some paragraphs were unreadable because of his enthusiasm. Enough already.

4) I've come across an author who manages, quite uncannily, to write frighteningly relevant texts. The sentences seem to encapsulate everything that matters, and everything that doesn't. Not going to say who it is, or which books, because that would reveal more about my way of thinking about the world and myself than I will ever admit. I am curious to know if I feel the same way about the books in twenty years...Is this simply indicative of where I'm at now? Or what I fundamentally am? Presumably if the effect is indelible I'll remember to revisit the words to find out.

Justifiable

Work-avoidance is at its best served warm and justifiable - and as one of those lucky people who is interested in almost anything, justification is generally close to hand. Two things keeping me from being Little Miss Efficient today (whilst simultaneously teaching me some genuinely useful things):

1) Practicing reading Early-Modern scripts and manuscripts online. This is one of the most thoughtfully and effectively presented websites I've seen - it's fantastic! The idea is that one might learn and practice reading ye olde handwritings and scribal scratchings by following an impeccably designed and managed set of 'lessons', in which texts of differing complexities are transcribed. The site is maintained by Andrew Zurcher, who knows his and everyone else's stuff - an invaluable site for all Spenser nuts is also maintained by him (without which my Renaissance reading would [have] be[en] all the more anaemic). The handwriting site is an example of how the 'net can and should be put to best effect. That and YouTube, obviously.

2) First there was Pepys, now there's Roger Morrice. Well, not so much "now" as "there was also" - he's well dead. But a compatriot diary to Pepys' is very welcome; he's cited so much that it's good to have another text to go to, similar in form but different in content. This is fairly exciting, given I can already spend hours buried in a volume of Ypesp. It's always 'relevant', because I'm always reading something from the period (or thereabouts) - perfect procrastination, and with bonus educational benefits. A bit more information: here. When Newnham Library acquires the Morrice, that much less Real Work will get done - probably ought to pre-empt that by working now. Probably...

Miscalculation

It took me two days rather than one to get to the end of Richard III's reign - but what's one more day when this project has run a week over already? Actually, I'm not quite going to stop yet - though I've finished the 'learning' part of things for now - next stop is Miri Rubin's The Hollow Crown: A History of Britain in the late Middle Ages. Nothing like a bit of immediate consolidation...or it might be procrastination, but I'm not really sure what from, given that my dissertation's going to have its very own University Library Time next week! All this reading is highly relevant to the Medieval Lit Paper we'll be doing next term, but it feels like I'm indulging my fascination with hi-stories (or, in later periods, His-Tories) rather than Proper Books. Still, more than enough time for that, always.

What's got me gripped about this whole thing is the variation in reports of the period (say, mid-13th century till end of the 15th). There are inevitably big gaps in evidence, and so much of what we 'know' is formed by propaganda of the various factions - like the stories about Isabella (Edward II's queen), or Margaret of Anjou (Henry VI's queen), or Joan of Arc. It's not all about the women - Richard III is a weird and wonderful case in point there, and Henry V - but the woman are particularly interesting because they don't often speak for themselves. There are some letters - about which I know very little, and I've no idea how much they say - but the overwhelming majority of the Middle Ages is written by men. The same can be said for later periods, but far less so - from the 16th century aristocratic women start writing and existing (and sponsoring) much more, and though there are serious limitations those women have at least gained a kind of retrospective freedom: we can hear them. Some might have been respected by their contemporaries (Magdalene Herbert, for example - the poet George Herbert's mother, famous in her own right), but many were ignored or ridiculed or excluded (Margaret Cavendish might take some or all of those titles). The difference being that, however they were perceived at the time, their written words have given them a posterity and a chance at being re-evaluated by subsequent generations. The persons of Medieval women are much quieter, and much more dependent on their contemporary menfolk for their reputations. Never a good idea.

A pretty good book for a starting point is Mark Ormrod's The Kings and Queens of England. Each of the royal Houses constitutes a chapter, and each chapter is taken by a different academic. There is some pronoun confusion (is she the sister of him, or of him? Or the daughter of him?), which often happens when a writer knows far more about the subject than their reader. Ho hum - only a minor annoyance, and the gaps have been filled in from elsewhere. It's a densely written book, which is good for saving trees, but less good for a nice casual reading book - not a beach-read, unless you have an elephantine (or professorial) memory!

Lineage

Internet silence the last few days (a habit likely to continue in the run-up to Term and beyond), because I've been head-down in books about Medieval history - I've got as far as the Wars of the Roses and have to concentrate very hard for long stretches of text in order not to be utterly confused. Mainly because everyone's bloody called "Henry". At least in the Old Testament most people have different names (for a while, at least) - difficult, but different. The most you can hope for in the Middle Ages is that the eldest sons die so the next king's called something different. I'm really mainly focusing on the Houses of Plantagenet, Lancaster & York, but that's more than enough to go on for the time being - as it is I have post-it notes everywhere saying things like:

HENRY IV = HENRY BOLINGBROKE, EARL OF DERBY, RICHARD II's COUSIN. Opposed by HENRY PERCY = 'HOTSPUR', EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND's SON, not to be confused with HENRY (V), PRINCE OF WALES...

...and so it goes on. Before the Henrys there were the first gaggle of Edwards; and after the Henrys more Edwards. For the purposes of this exercise I'll probably stop after Richard III - more than that won't stay in my head for long, so I'll come back to the Tudors in a few months. It's all good fun, though - finally I'm understanding what the Hundred Years War was all about (insofar as it was 'about' anything), though if I read one more time about it stopping and then restarting again I might just call it quits at Ninety Years and be in denial about the last decade or so. Who's going to notice? (Me, sadly). The only thing that doesn't seem to be improving at all is my spelling of Welsh names - I have to check every time, because I keep confusing the Welsh phonetics with the English phonetics, it's like half-knowing a language and then not being able to progress. The whole process is taking far longer than I'd planned for, though, as I'd intended to be doing this for about three days and it's already taken just over a week. I will finish tomorrow. Problem is, when I get my head into something like this I can't usually extract it until a reasonable stopping point rears up, which can become inconvenient. Still, I'm learning a lot, which can only ever be a good thing. Even if it does mean an echoing "Henry Henry Henry Henry" taking the place of tinnitus in my brain.

If there were more time I'd revisit the wonderful Histories of The Bard, if only because another factor of confusion is his fictionalization of things like Henry V's youth, and the turning of historical John Oldcastle into fictional Falstaff. And that's just one of the plays! The Histories are fantastic, and revisit them I will - although it might not be able to happen until it has to, for revision purposes.

Loosely connected to the Henrys (real and artistic) is the subject of Joan of Arc, another figure history has managed simultaneously to immortalise and almost obliterate with fictions and superstitions and - of course - politics. There's a highly recommended staging of Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan at the National Theatre (Olivier Theatre) at the moment (until September 4th), which I'd dearly love to see but probably won't be able to. The cast has some impressive names but, more importantly, Anne-Marie Duff apparently makes a convincing Joan (despite the 'Chair Thing' she appears to do - you can see it in the clip if you follow the link above). Inevitably, and probably quite properly, parallels are drawn in related essays and reviews (including those in the official programme) between martyrdom and terrorism - I'm not sure whether that is pointless or important.

[On the subject of stages and shows, it seems the British Muesum's Chinese Terracotta Army exhibition has already sold 30,000 advance tickets - if you want to go, book now!]

I've ordered Alison Weir's well-reviewed book about Edward II's formidable wife, Isabella, and intend to read it on the train to and from Cambridge next week - I'm going up to get some serious work done (it has to happen some time, wonderful though this freelance education is), and it should be some good light(ish) reading, but just related enough to what I should be doing to assuage the guilt necessarily concomitant to prescribed reading lists - victory!

Extension

Is it just me, or does the idea of carting dead animals infected with Foot 'n' Mouth Disease across the country - from their farms in Surrey to the incineration point in Somerset - seem counterintuitive? It's not the most instinctive way to control the spread of a virus! I'm sure they know what they're doing, it just seems a little odd. As does the irony that the outbreak possibly derives from the Pirbright laboratories, in which scientists develop vaccines for such diseases. Ooops. Their little motto is painfully wrong at the moment, too - "Good science, Useful science"...ahem, Deadly Science...
If it were seven years since the last outbreak I'd go on about Biblical pestilence again, but it was only six so I won't. (I don't really think it's a plague sent by God - though what do I know? - but as I briefly mentioned yesterday that's what I was reading about. Tangential point of interest: in Leviticus 14:44, simple mildew is described as "fretting leprosy", so if there's any green mould climbing your walls your house has a plague. I like the idea of building surveyors looking for brick-leprosy instead of damp rot, there's something as dramatic as house prices about it).

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And the Education rant of the day. The front page of today's Telegraph finally reports what we knew was on its way, the changing (again) of the A Level system. The fundamentals of what's being said are: the current system doesn't stretch the brightest students; new-style exams will cover 4 units instead of the current 6 (more depth, less breadth); an A* grade will be introduced for results above 90%; students will be expected to complete an 'extended project' (like in the International Baccalaureate). There is more to the new system than simply this, but it gets complicated (and detailed) very quickly, so I'll keep it at this for now. These changes are set to come in from 2008.
Much of what's being done is okay, or at least it's well-intentioned (often just the best of a bad job, though), and of course there is no perfect system for everybody - particularly not in a culture obsessed with everybody achieving according to the same standards. (1) They are right in saying that the system as is doesn't stretch the brightest students, and at the moment they are left to challenge themselves or Lady Luck finds them a fantastic teacher/mentor who prevents them from going off the rails with boredom and introduces them to new ideas. (2) Although the intention is to encourage greater depth in doing just 4 units, I suspect that by studying fewer subjects there will be far less accessible cross-referencing, which will ultimately lead to anaemic thinking and examination responses. The consequence will be, I think, increasingly narrow-minded, bored and unaware students. (3) The introduction of an 'A*' we've seen before, and it's an integral part of the GCSE system now. I'd argue for harsher marking and an upping of expectations, rather than the weak filtering that the A* will cause. Stop pussy-footing around the issue and pretending that everyone should be allowed to get A's and above. Make A's more difficult to achieve.

Finally, (4) the International Bacalaureate-like 'extended project', which is where I start gnashing my teeth. Instead of sliding along trying not to look like they're aware of the IB, why don't the Educationy governmenty people just introduce the IB into our mainstream schools? If that sounds like a wild idea to you, get a life. It seems like an incredibly straightforward option, and I have no idea why people aren't taking it. Maybe the same mindset as holding onto the Pound Sterling, though with little historical interest nor economic problems. The A Level system is a broken cobbled-together mishmash of diktat after diktat, respected by few and struggled against by hundreds of thousands of students every year. It is a mess, and unfixable without major alterations - alterations policy-makers are not willing, or not able, to effect. So it's broke, and we can't fix it. The IB, on the other hand, is continuing to have great success and is well-respected across the globe, and schools in Britain are increasingly adopting it as an alternative - or sole - curriculum. It's really good. It's not perfect, but it works. It challenges the most talented students, a fact indicated by the offers Oxford and Cambridge give IB students every year: marked out ouf 45, the standard offer from these two universities is between 38 and 42 points, with the Higher Level subjects requiring between 7,6,6 and 7,7,7. Compare this to A Level offers, which are almost always AAA or more.

The IB covers a broader range of subjects in greater depth. It doesn't sacrifice breadth for hoped-for 'depth' (cf: imminent changes in A Level system) - they study more. It's challenging for the most able students; respected and recognised world-wide; the government wouldn't be able to embarrassedly fix results because our examinations scripts would be sent all over the place for marking. It would require teachers to completely revamp their syllabuses and methods, but if the sweeping changes claimed by this 'new' system are really that sweeping then teachers are going to have a hellish settling-down period anyway, so why not go the whole hog with a system that has been tried and tested? They'd have far more fun teaching it. From what I've seen of IB students, they are quite simply better educated - that to me screams volumes, and it's not just because they all seem to have gone to private schools of one kind or another.

IB, please, Education Balls.

(I did A Levels, by the way).

Babel

Radio 4 was on in the background this afternoon, as it is whenever I'm trying to pretend that I'm not doing a really boring task (though I'm not yet so old that I listen to the Archers - when I hear that theme tune the 'OFF' knob gets turned. Fiercely). There was a little piece on PM ('Tough on news, tough on the causes of news'...) which caught my ears. It was about learning languages at school (which is no longer compulsory, though I'm willing to bet that will change in the next few years); apparently the vast majority of people remember an average of just 7 words from these lessons. I'm not sure after how long away from the classroom these statistics were gathered, whether a year or a decade, but it seems a bit pants.

To see how I fared, I drew up a vocab list from memory in the three languages I studied at skool four to six years ago (French, German & Latin). German wasn't bad - 120 words (mostly nouns); French was more embarrassing with just under 60 (mostly verbs); Latin was...worse. That doesn't translate to a working reading knowledge of the languages, though - I'm better at translating Latin than either of the others (and still use it, increasingly - though need to be far more competent than I am. Something to work on), and I can read French more proficiently than German (LJJ can do my translation!). Weirdly, my grammatical understanding is fine in all three languages. So what's more important, being able to conjure words from nowhere, or being able to understand them when they're presented? I'd like to see the results of a test done to discover how many words people understand, as well as simply recall.

Wanted to write more about ML learning and teaching, but the neighbouring football club has some VERY LOUD (and dire) MUSIC playing, and it's proving too taxing to think in English let alone any other language!

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On a completely different subject, I'm listening to Newsnight at the moment and have learnt there's been an outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease in Surrey (just the one farm at the moment). I feel sorry for Gordon Brown, who has only just gone on holiday with his family - he has to come back because of some cows, bless him. Wonder where the virus came from this time? After spending a chunk of the day reading about Biblical pestilence, this is a bit weird.

Codswallop (ii)

For a more eloquent comment on the TV 'issues' at the moment, take a look at today's blog of ever-aware Prof. Mary Beard. She makes the point far better than I did, obviously!

Antiquity

There was an article in the Telegraph Magazine last Saturday that got me excited - the Terracotta Army is coming to London! Well, maybe not all the thousands of figures, but some. The British Museum is hosting the exhibition, The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army , for several months so there's plenty of time for us to go and see it...several times, perhaps...
(13th September -- 6th April)

On the subject of up-coming exhibitions, there's one on Millais' works at the Tate Britain to look forward to. It's a shame the 'promoting' image is his Mariana painting, though - I can't see it without thinking of the poem to which it is a tribute. Tennyson's text was entirely ruined for me by an awful rendition experienced in a lecture in 2005 - the (slightly varying) refrain of:

She only said, 'My life is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!

is haunting now, and in all the wrong ways. Thanks go to Mr Lecturing Man, not.
Otherwise, so long as no-one recites that poem at the exhibition, it promises to be a good one.
(26th September -- 13th January)

One I'd recommend for its variety is the Work, Rest & Play exhibit at the National Gallery. I saw this one when it was in Bristol, and it was a curious collection. Something for everyone and quite a funky subject, really. I hope they put it all in a single lot of rooms, though - in Bristol it was housed all over the place, and I missed a bit of it.
(On till 14th October)

Hooray for living somewhere within easy reach of London again! Three cheers for that.

Codswallop (i)

All this fuss about TV deceiving its viewers - most recently the ITV Alzheimer's documentary, and before that Blue Peter; A Year With the Queen; Gordon Ramsay's fish non-catching incident, and Bear Grylls' hotel adventures. There have been others.

But I really don't see what all the fuss is about. Well, I do, but I don't understand why it's happening now. We've been fed utter rubbish by the multifarious media for...for all time, really. From the 'best' news-givers to trashy tevelision we're fed lies, half-truths, one-sides and meaningless noises, so why start kicking up about it now? And why not about more important things like the utter bollocks that certain politicians get away with spouting? Maybe it's a good and pointed thing, we're beginning to comment on things like integrity, honesty and fairness...but whether this is extended to include the stuff that really matters remains to be seen - it is, however, a start; better than nowt.