A Clerk of Oxford

Midsummer sunset It's Midsummer Eve, and here's a medieval midsummer metaphor, from the Book of Privy Counseling. He is a bl...

My latest column for History Today , on the Encomium Emmae Reginae , is now online - here's a taste: A marriage took place 1,000 y...

'Aeterne rex altissime', with English gloss, in an Anglo-Saxon hymnal ( BL Cotton Vespasian D XII, f. 78 ) On the subject of ...

Bede (Norwich Cathedral) Today is the feast of the Ascension, and it is also the feast of Bede, Anglo-Saxon England's greatest scho...

Resurrection ( BL Yates Thompson MS. 13, f. 125v )   Two short fourteenth-century poems for Eastertide, from William Herebert. This sin...

'Popule meus', in a 13th-century manuscript, BL Add. 18031, f. 174 One of the most dramatic and powerful parts of the traditio...

What a magical time of year this is. In my beautiful part of England, the cusp of March and April is just the moment when spring is reall...