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  • Best laid plans

    Having made some very clear plans for my work this week, they were scuppered by my youngest who was up all night on Sunday being sick.  He’s been off school for two days, so in the two days I’ve had so far this week, I’ve read 7 ballads and tinkered with my chapter plan, and…

  • Historical Association lecture

      Yesterday it was my great pleasure to give my first talk to a branch of the Historical Association in Manchester.  Called ‘No Lion Wilde, a Lion Tame – Popular Depictions of Mary I’, it was based the research I did for my first chapter on the ballads of the reign of Mary Tudor.  The…

  • Splurge

    I’ve spent a considerable proportion of the week splurging my second chapter.  Second only in the sense of the second one that I’ve written, not that it will necessarily be the second one in the thesis.  It feels good to have a bit more of it on paper, even if it isn’t really even a…

  • Starry, starry night

    You may by now have noticed that I like my garden birds.  I have just been standing out in the garden, which backs on to a playing field and beyond that, the countryside, admiring all the stars and appreciating the song of the male tawny owl that lives nearby. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve…

  • Writing the Fox

    I have been reading ‘the Hunting and Finding out of the Romish Fox’ by William Turner. If I’m honest, it’s something I’ve been putting off because of the density of the text, but it’s actually turned out to be nothing like I expected. Obviously it’s heavily based on metaphor, but it’s rhetorical style is pretty…