Christina Lee
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Undying Love
February 11, 2014
I met my love in the first year: it was one of those strange encounters with a new culture which I had not heard of before. I am talking about my love for all things medieval here – a love that has outlasted almost everything else. I fell for it deeply: ‘the Discreet Charm of …
Feasting the Dead: Hallowe’en
October 31, 2013
Today is Hallowe’en which according to many sources is based on ‘Celtic’ traditions, because the Celtic year begun on the first of November. While Hallowe’en is not necessarily about the dead (more about the undead) it falls on the night before All Saints’ Day. The Hallow part of the word is derived from Old English …
Prophecies and politics (or: anarchy in ASE)
October 11, 2013
Bob Geldof has joined the ranks of doom mongers when he predicted that the world only has a good 17 years left to go. While there are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic, given all the current wars and human tragedy, the idea that the end is nigh has been around for a long time. …
The Far Traveller
September 24, 2013
I have just come back from a range of different research trips which took me to Shetland, Iceland, Germany and Ireland in a very brief time span. While I have really enjoyed the opportunities to talk with my colleagues, I am less keen on the travel itself, especially since flying is not very comfortable, airports …
Different Strokes
September 6, 2013
Last Sunday I joined the community cycle ride as part of the University of Nottingham’s Life Cycle 3, and while I was cycling along with my IMR colleague Gaby Neher I was pondering the nature of stroke rehabilitation in Anglo-Saxon England. For all the difference between Anglo-Saxon life experience and our own, there are some …
The Enduring Past
June 27, 2013
Last Friday the Nottingham Medievalists celebrated the 25th anniversary of our Institute and it was a great opportunity to talk to colleagues and students old and new, but it was especially wonderful to see so many people from outside the university. It is very obvious that medieval matters to many people despite the inaccurate ways …
Frost and Famine
March 28, 2013
The ongoing cold weather continues to dominate our news. March in Old English is hreðmonað ‘rough/cruel month’ and this March certainly plays up to its medieval title. With a fear of energy shortages we may perhaps understand why winter and early spring were difficult times for our medieval ancestors. Most of the food that had …
Deadly companions: a world without antibiotics
March 18, 2013
In the wake of headlines telling us about the imminent threat of antibiotic resistance I had to think about my own research on the impact of epidemics on early medieval societies. The medieval period can clearly show us what a world without effective antibiotics could be like. When the Middle Ages are portrayed in popular …
The Jewel in the Crown
March 4, 2013
The recent public outcry about Hilary Mantel’s observations regarding the Duchess of Cambridge remind me that it is often Queens, not Kings that fire our imagination.[1] One of these women whose story needs telling again is that of Emma/ Ælfgifu, a woman with quirks, oddities and a lot of character. Unfortunately Mantel has not yet …
What books reveal about us
February 11, 2013
If, for some unimaginable reason, all that remained of the culture of 2012 in 2512 was a battered and annotated copy of Fifty Shades of Grey, a printed programme of the Olympic Games, and video footage of Have I Got News for You?, what conclusions about us would our descendants reach, and how would they …