A week of cataloguing ballads, redrafting bits of writing about news, transcribing, trying to define news, staring out the window looking at the birds, thinking and making birthday cakes. Not necessarily in that order. Some progress made, but not a great deal. As yet, I’ve not located a satisfactory definition of sixteenth century news, so…

Originally posted on bonæ litteræ: occasional writing from David Rundle, Renaissance scholar: I am not in the habit of shouting at the television.  In part, that is because I am not much of a TV-watcher: until my then partner, now wife, moved in, there was no box in the house. When I do sit in…

Originally posted on patter: When I go on the road – as I have just done – I always try to take with me a couple of slim volumes that I can dip in and out of. These are not the academic equivalent of airport novels. Rather, they are often books with quite serious philosophical…

If you’re out there somewhere, Christina, I hope all is going well! Rylands Blog This Curious Find comes to us from Christina Brindley who is researching images of female piety and the development of post-reformation Catholicism in the Diocese of Chester 1558-1630. Christina discovered an amusing poem written by an unknown English nun in Louvain.…

My research would have been impossible without the internet, not just because the digitisation of so many archives allows me to research from home while bringing up my family but also because of the connexions that I manage to make with friends and fellow scholars all over the world. Some of my best friends never…