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1 week ago | 
the-tls.co.uk | Charles Foster |David Horspool |Darren Freebury-Jones |Mia Walby
For forty-seven years, the writer Charles Moseley lived with his wife in a Fenland village. She died, he remarried, and his new wife found a house in nearby Ely. To the Eel Island is his account of uprooting and re-rooting; of the nature of change itself; of the significance of place for embodied creatures; of the texture of time and the presence of the past.
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1 week ago | 
the-tls.co.uk | Darren Freebury-Jones |David Horspool |Mia Walby |Sarah Lonsdale
For Iago in Othello, to be robbed of a “good name” is to be “poor indeed”. In Editing Archipelagic Shakespeare, Rory Loughnane and Willy Maley contend that much power lies in naming. This short book belongs to the Cambridge Elements in Shakespeare and Text series, co-edited by Loughnane and Claire M. L. Bourne, the aim of which is published bursts of scholarship: scholarship “that challenges – and pushes beyond – the conventional parameters of Shakespeare and textual studies”.
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Jan 5, 2025 | 
theoldie.co.uk | David Horspool |Marcus Bull
The Great Siege of 1565 was a crucial clash of religions and empires In around December 1564, Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire for more than 40 years, issued a decree.
‘I intend to conquer the island of Malta and I have appointed Mustafa Pasha as commander of the campaign. The island of Malta is a headquarters for infidels.’
What the Sultan wanted, the Sultan got.
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Dec 10, 2024 | 
theoldie.co.uk | David Horspool
When I lived in west London, I used to walk past him on my way to the Tube every day. St Volodymyr, ‘Ruler of Ukraine 980–1015’, as the inscription on Leo Mol’s statue has it.
If I had happened to be at this spot in Holland Park in May 1988, I would have seen a gathering of the senior churchmen of Ukraine in all their finery, Orthodox and Catholic, celebrating the unveiling of a statue to a founding father of a nation that was, at the time, still in the unwelcome embrace of the Soviet Union.
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Dec 4, 2024 | 
theoldie.co.uk | David Horspool
"The Oldie is an incredible magazine - perhaps the best magazine in the world right now" Graydon Carter, founder of Air Mail and former Editor of Vanity Fair Give The Oldie for Xmas and save 50% Subscribe History | By David Horspool New show in Oxford is full of dodgy prophets A few years ago, I found myself in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Room of the British Library, reading a prophecy.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
the-tls.co.uk | Michael Taylor |Devoney Looser |Franklin Nelson |David Horspool
How has Ireland become one of the powerhouses of global rugby despite an island population of only seven million and at least three sports (football, Gaelic football and hurling) that command more popular attention? More to the point, on an island of so many historical divisions, why is it that rugby (in which the island of Ireland competes as a whole) has been so successful in addressing – or at least not aggravating – those issues of nationality, faith, class and culture?
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Nov 7, 2024 | 
theoldie.co.uk | David Horspool
A hundred years ago, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig wrote, Germany dodged a bullet: ‘During 1923, the swastikas disappeared, the storm troops and the name of Adolf Hitler all but fell into oblivion. Nobody thought of him any more as a possible political factor.’
Writing this in his memoir in 1941, Zweig knew that he and his contemporaries had been wrong. He was so despairing that, a year later, in exile in Brazil, he and his wife took a lethal overdose of barbiturates.
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Oct 11, 2024 | 
theoldie.co.uk | David Horspool
‘And if you know your history’ sounds like the sort of thing
a politician might say, or a pub bore.
To hear several thousand people say those words together, you would need to be at the football.
Fans as far apart as Glasgow, Liverpool and London can be heard singing them (after a fashion) in the chant that Celtic, Everton and Tottenham Hotspur all claim as their own, ‘It’s a grand old team to play for’.
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Oct 3, 2024 | 
news.williamhill.com | Harry Edward |Mark Hodgkinson |Kelly Holmes |David Horspool
The most prestigious literary prize in the sporting world, the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, has announced its longlist for this year’s competition. Since 1989, we’ve seen the likes of Duncan Hamilton, Michael Holding and Jeremy Wilson walk away with the top prize, while last year saw Lauren Fleshman win with her book ‘Good for a Girl’.
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Sep 25, 2024 | 
theoldie.co.uk | David Horspool
Christmas Day was big news for William the Conqueror - and Washington.
What do you expect to be doing on the evening of Christmas Day?
Some version of sleeping off the turkey in front of the telly, most likely. Setting aside the birth of the Christ child himself (which, yes, probably didn’t happen on Christmas Day anyway), it’s tempting to think that, for one day at least, history might also put its feet up on the sofa.
Not necessarily.
