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.

What’s wrong with this library catalogue?

Human beings have an almost irresistable urge to categorise things, so correct me if I am wrong, but a library catalogue should be a means of determining what stock a given library has and its probable location by means of a unique classmark. In order for the library to function effectively, there should be a certain logic to the cataloguing – similar books should be located in proximity to each other. As any researcher will tell you, many an interesting tome has been discovered through the sheer joy of browsing the shelves of a well-stocked library when seeking a particular volume.

Some thoughts on boundaries after rereading Orderic Vitalis

The great twelfth-century chronicler, Orderic Vitalis, was a monk of the monastery of St-Evroul in Normandy. His mother was English, his father Norman and he was born in 1075 near Shrewsbury before leaving for St-Evroul at the age of ten. He is a figure that encountered and crossed many boundaries over the course of his life. Orderic is also pretty central to my research as a medievalist fascinated by the use of space, and as such, I thought he was a good subject to write about after reading a comment on our initial post by G. Robertson.