IMC Leeds 2011 report, II: Normans and Norman historians

Tuesday’s sessions continued the Norman theme with the strand ‘Normans, Normandy and the wider Norman world: 911 from a 2011 perspective’, bookended by David Bates and me, a fact which in no small way contributed to the pre-paper jitters of the previous evening. There were four sessions in all, though the third was the subject of an annoying clash and I ducked out to take part in a rebellion or two.

IMC Leeds 2011 report, I: southern Italian Normans

Best Leeds ever just about sums up IMC just gone. If last year was all about ‘good papers, good beer and good company‘, then this year’s IMC continued that theme with better weather and an energy about the place I haven’t felt in a while (and as evidenced by the number of people who joined in the dancing). As this year marks the eleven-hundredth anniversary of the traditional date of the foundation of Normandy, there was a decided Norman theme to parts of the conference and most certainly my session attendance. Well, let’s start with Monday and see how far I get.

IMC Leeds 2010 report

After a couple of nights in Whitley Bay with my sister’s family, it was on to Leeds for the annual International Medieval Congress. This was, in fact, the ninth congress I’d attended, which makes me feel rather old. This year can be summed up simply as ‘good papers, good beer and good company’.

Social History conference 2010

This year, for the first time, I attended the Social History Society’s conference in a snowy and wet Glasgow (winter returned at the end of March). It was a novel experience for a number of reasons, not least because my paper was the earliest there by 400 years.  Why then, you may well ask, did I go?

The 2010 Ford Lectures III: William the Conqueror and empire

Fortified by tea with a friend, by now becoming a bit of a ritual, we both made our way to the Examination Schools in Oxford for the latest instalment of David Bates’ Ford Lecture series on the Normans and empire. For one and two, follow the links. The subject of number three, was William the Conqueror himself.

The 2010 Ford lectures II: the experience of empire

In the second of this year’s Ford lectures, David Bates started where he’d left off in the first one: Orderic Vitalis as a ten-year-old boy being packed off to St-Evroul to begin a new life in that monastery on the southern border of Normandy. Certainly Orderic experience uncertainly in leaving England – he did not know the French dialect spoken by the Normans – but he found kindness within the community. Bates thus cast Orderic as a ‘child of empire’ and a good person with which to begin a lecture focusing on the personal experience of empire and how this might form the basis for the exercise of power.

Papers in the offing

Both Reivers and I have been quiet on the blogging front of late as we have moved house. I, at least, have now become a person who gets excited about cookers – it must be middle age creeping up. In amongst all the chaos of moving, proposals for papers and books that I put in with great hope, partial hope and no hope at all, seem to have come back with positive responses, or at least noises which suggest future acceptance. So, for a change, a post on research (yay)!

Battle conference 2009 report

This year, the Battle conference was at Gregynog in Powys due to the closure of the usual venue of Pyke House. Although beer in the Chequers was sorely missed, the conference itself was very interesting and, once I’d got my paper out of the way, enjoyable. I’m afraid tales of the social scene will have to come from someone else, as I was far too exhausted to stay up this year. So, what of the papers?

1066 or what on middle earth was that?

Yesterday and today Channel 4 broadcast a docudrama called ’1066: the Battle for Middle Earth’. The premise of the film is an interesting one, namely to show the effects of the battles of 1066 (Fulford, Stamford Bridge and Senlac Hill) on the ordinary people. The result is  something I thought impossible – Channel 4 makes 1066 boring.

Thinking about space (and time) in chronicles

In my last post I commented on how the problems faced by relativists trying to show time and space in representations of black holes seemed similar to the difficulties faced by historians trying to talk about representations of space in our sources. A recent post by Jonathan Jarrett has also raised some of these questions – is this picture of Toledo in council season a depiction of the council or the relationship between Toledo and its territories? And who is in the tents?