Five years on

It would appear that On boundaries is five years old. Given my readiness to hide away for periods of time and Reivers’ general unwillingness to communicate through the medium of words, it is a small miracle that we have managed to keep this blog going for a reasonable length of time and contribute to a number of debates, albeit in a small and rather quiet fashion (at times very quiet). Some posts are good, some are not and some are downright rubbish. There are, I think, several pieces which are as relevant now as they were then so to speak, and I want to highlight my selection below.  Reivers is also compiling a list. His will be more amusing, I promise.

The 2010 Ford Lectures VI: Empire? From beginning to end

By the time we reached lecture number VI, this series was proving extraordinarily productive, not only from the point of view of listening to what David Bates had to say, but also from the amount of work I seemed to be doing while drinking tea with friends. In a term that was a long, old slog, I was tremendously grateful. Lecture VI had been given a huge build up so we were all eagerly anticipating David’s conclusion.

The 2010 Ford lectures V: Centre, periphery and networks

This time around tea with two fellow Normannists preceded the latest installment in David Bates’ journey through the murky realms of empire and Norman history. I confess I was probably more interested in this lecture’s title than the others. Regular readers of this blog know that Reivers and I have an interest in life on boundaries in all sorts of senses. Also, my more recent research has focused on looking at the relationship between centre and periphery as made manifest in chroniclers’ descriptions of the landscape. What David did here was to underline how networks in particular perpetuate empire and how, in the case of Normandy, the centre/core remained remarkably resilient.

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.

The 2010 Ford Lectures I: The Normans and empire

This year the Ford Lectures at the University of Oxford are being given by Prof. David Bates (UEA and Caen-Basse-Normandie) on the subject of ‘The Normans and Empire’. This series is named after James Ford who left a legacy to endow a lectureship in British history. Thankfully, the rules are flexible enough to encompass a large slice of European history courtesy of David Bates and the Normans. I hope to be able to attend all six and blog about them in due course.