Month: October 2016
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Review: American Historian Professor Frank Cogliano’s September lectures
A Review of Professor Frank Cogliano’s lectures, ‘The 2016 American Presidential Election: Precedents and Reflections’ and ‘You think the 2016 US Election is bad? You should try 1800!’, September 2016. With the U.S. presidential election looming ever closer, there has been no shortage of exhibits, film screenings and lectures to entertain American history enthusiasts in…
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Fiction: Liberté, Egalité, Tranquillité
Paris, 8th Thermidor, Year II ‘Behold! The head of a counter-revolutionary who would have us bend our knees to a monarchical tyrant!’ To his eyes, Martin Colbert resembled a peacock garbed in his blue and red tailcoat and hat. The matching ribbons placed sporadically on his person added to this effect. Colbert never seemed to walk…
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Africa’s Haven of Peace? Elections, Politics and Violence in Post-colonial East Africa
As I write, it is the 28 October 2015, and three days have passed since Tanzania went to the polls for the fifth time since the return of multi-party elections in 1995. Elections in Africa are always moments of high tension, and this election is no different. Today, the BBC News Africa page leads with…
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Fiction: The Eclipse
Walking through the cotton fields was one of Sarah’s favourite things to do. Her mother would take her every afternoon after lunch as they were walking to the village and Sarah always looked forward to it. But one day, Mama would not take her. ‘We’ll go tomorrow. Today, I have to make sure the laundry…
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Creating Legacies In Gothic House Design, 1750–1850
An individual’s home is often central to the manifestation of personal identity. Among the English elite of eighteenth-century England, this was especially true. During this period country houses were not private spaces, and house visiting meant that the home became an important medium for display of the family, open to the judgement of observers. However,…
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War Stories: Inspired by my Grandma
We got to stay up later in the summer. Long days chasing each other round the fields and evenings in a quiet corner of the pub playing rummy; shared half pints of shandy; treasures of speckled eggs from the chickens. Falling in long grass and ricocheting off the rope swing over the river. The summer…
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From Oral to Written Folklore: The Evolution and Reception of the Icelandic Saga
The Icelandic Sagas are more than stories about a heroic age of kings, of trolls and witches, and magical phenomenon unseen by our modern eyes. They offer a complex resource of what early settlers of the island deemed important to their heritage. Since the thirteenth century, scholars have attempted to understand the departure from the…
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Fertility in the Early Middle Ages: The Dangers of Folklore
What did an early medieval bishop see when he looked up at the stars? In tenth-century Italy Atto of Vercelli saw divine fingerprints. God had arranged constellations in the heavens, he explained in a sermon, for our benefit on earth. Stars help us to mark the passing of time, to map journeys over sea or…
Retrospect Journal 