Renaissance architecture: France 1, England 0

Désolée, mes amis Anglais, but having conducted a completely biased and unscientific survey during my recent travels, I am hereby declaring Francois 1er the winner in the 'I’ve got a better chateau than you' stakes. Seriously, look at Chambord:

I mean, no wonder Henry VIII was jealous. Okay, so he had to boot Cardinal Wolsey out before he could pinch Hampton Court but even with his subsequent renovations, at the end of the day it's still a rather grim-looking brick pile:

Sure, there is a nice view from the walled rose garden of the wacky collection of Tudor chimney pots (and that's Henry VIII's chapel on the left, where he married Anne Boleyn) ...

but they aren't a patch on the Disney-esque fantasy that is the roof of Chambord. (Though I'm sure that actually living up there amongst the chimneys and pigeon poo, as the lower-ranking courtiers were expected to do, was less romantic and a damned site smellier than Sleeping Beauty ever experienced.)



Hampton Court has also suffered a bit from later episodes of the historical version of 60 Minute Makeover. Here is the rather awkward result of William III’s (William of Orange) attempt at modernisation, c/- one Sir Christopher Wren (who really should have known better):

Yes, they have simply cut through the old Tudor building halfway down the gallery (right through the windows, in fact!) and cobbled a baroque monstrosity onto the side of it. The half-assed look to this part of the palace was actually the result of that timeless enemy of home renovation projects everywhere: the vision was bigger than the budget and the money ran out. (What would Kevin McCloud say?!)

Home again, and a brief ode to my beloved Tour de France

In an unprecedented display of airline efficiency, Air New Zealand managed to fly me from London all the way home without a single delay (this has never happened to me before). Oddly, although I have returned from summer into mid-winter, the weather here is better than my last two weeks in York and Leeds. Sure, it is cool, but the sky today is bright blue and the sun is shining with that intensity peculiar to the southern hemisphere, a far cry from northern England's rather dour display.

I have had good intentions of sending follow-up emails to all the great people I met at IMC Leeds, sorting out all my conference notes, doing some free-writing on the thinking I've been doing on my thesis topic, and blogging my Leeds experience. But so far, all I've managed is to unpack and do some (much needed!) laundry. Oh, and catch up with what has been going on in my beloved Tour de France (all the stages I've missed so far have been recorded, per my instructions). I managed to catch the first couple of stages on  the TV while I was still in France, but was surprised to find coverage in England pretty limited, especially considering that the Englishman Brad Wiggins is looking solid to take the overall victory! Tonight (NZ time), the riders are off into the Pyrenees. In just under 200km, they'll climb the Col d'Aubisque, the monstrous Col du Tourmalet, the Col d'Aspin, and the Col de Peyresourde (even the names give me a bit of a shiver down the spine). The best will play a six-hour game of extreme chess, testing each other's legs and hearts over and over as they attack up the climbs. For the sprinters and other non-climbers, it will just be a matter of survival, and cyclists that will compete fiercely against each other on the flatter stages will get together in the 'grupetto' and try to drag each other across the stage finish line under the cut-off time.

Many of my friends are a bit perplexed at my passion for this event, and it's hard to explain the unique combination of sporting endeavour, beautiful French countryside, historic resonance, and cultural quirkery that attracts me year after year. But a writer in yesterday's Guardian did a pretty good job of describing some of the Tour's characteristic charms:

"...cars were to be seen parked in the roads leading to the village of Samatan, in the Gers, where the stage began, and which was putting itself on the Tour map for the first time. A field was set aside for a display of local produce, most of it presented under the bizarrely cynical slogan 'Canard heureux, canard savoureux': a happy duck is a tasty duck.

The break had already formed when the riders entered the village of Bassoues, population 350, where the Frankish army defeated the Saracens in the eighth century. A vast banner of welcome covered the facade of the 43m-high dungeon towering over the village, and the field passed through a medieval wooden hall that straddles the main street. On a relatively relaxed and brilliantly sunny day, in which they were no significant changes to the standings, this was a moment of pure magic such as only the Tour de France can provide."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Tips for young players

I'm writing this at 30-odd thousand feet, somewhere over the Pacific. I left London at 9:30pm last night, after taking the train back from IMC Leeds the day before. I spent my last day-and-half staying in Kew and madly photographing documents in the National Archives. Lesson learned #1: If you're going to be spending 24+ hours on a plane with nothing to do but read or peer at a tiny TV screen, you may want to spend the day leading up to the flight doing something other than sitting in an archive, peering at old documents. By a few hours into the first 12-hour flight leg (stop off in Hong Kong for refuelling) I felt like I had sand under my eyelids. I found some more good stuff though, and took loads of photos to assist with future deciphering - some of these docs are in pretty bad shape and will need some digital manipulation to make them readable.

To my severe annoyance (and momentary panic, until I came up with plan B), the battery in my camera died after the first hour, despite it saying it had almost a full charge when I checked it this morning. I should have known it was about to expire because I had been taking video of squirrels, of all pointless things (you Brits probably think this is like filming the rats getting into your rubbish, but to us they are cute little bushy-tailed comics that have the lure of the exotic - no squirrels in NZ). Lesson learned #2: No matter what the stupid camera display says, always give that sucker a full charge before setting off for a day in the archive. Luckily, I had my iPad with me, so plan B was to take my photos with that. They're not as crisp as the ones taken with my camera (the iPad doesn't autofocus the way my camera does and it's hard to hold it steady), but they're good enough to work with. Phew!

Ah, I hear the happy rattle of the drinks trolley approaching down the aisle. I'm completely turned around at this point, and have no idea what day/ time it is. We had breakfast at dawn just before landing in Hong Kong and now, after a two-hour layover, they're serving us dinner and drinks. Oh well, any time is a good time for a glass of bubbly...

On York.

I spent last week in York, reputed to be the 'best preserved' medieval town in England (or something along those lines). It's hard for me to know what to say about my experiences thereof. On the one hand, I became fully immersed in my visit to Micklegate Bar, the ancient stone gateway on which the heads of a number of 'my' traitors were displayed to such devastating (though sometimes unintended) political effect in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Mickelgate museum, although tiny,  has a very good exhibition on the battle of Towton, aided in no small degree by a video that explores in detail what has been learned from a recent archeological excavation of a mass grave from the battlefield. (On this, suffice it to say that if 'chivalry' ever lived in the treatment of the vanquished, it seems to have well and truly died at Towton.) At the other end of the historical scale, I also visited a number of wonderful late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century pub survivals. My 'local' was the Mason's Arms, built in the late 1800s and incorporating into its quirky interior a stunningly carved wooden fireplace from the medieval gatehouse of York Castle (long since destroyed). I discovered some of the best architectural and decorative features (art deco tilework, glass etc.) in a couple of 1930s pubs that haven't suffered too much from 1960s and '70s 'improvements'.

But...( and as a great friend of mine always says, 'everything before the "but" is bullshit'), on the other hand, I can't deny that my first impression of the old town centre was an anticlimax. I had heard so much about York's medieval streets and 'walking the walls' that when I first entered the city, I was utterly shocked and disoriented to find that the first buildings I saw inside the walls were those of a 1960s brick housing estate! To be fair, I came in through the somewhat less tourist-friendly Goodramgate, and was primed with expectations that had been set, just two days earlier, by my experience of Saint Malo. Saint Malo was almost entirely reconstructed stone by stone after WWII, so it was able to be kept entirely 'in character'. By contrast, I imagine York is a more organic survival, so it bears many scars of its industrial past. I had high hopes of the Shambles, which is sold as an authentic medieval cobbled street complete with half-timbered buildings hanging over it at wonky angles. But here again, I'm afraid France won out. I saw much more extensive and better-preserved medieval quarters in places like Vannes and Rennes. I'm probably making myself very unpopular with the locals by saying this, but I'm afraid York was simply too over-built and over-touristed to charm me. Not to mention heinously expensive!

On the up side, though, I did have a couple of excellent meetings with professors from the University of York, which has a highly-regarded Centre for Medieval Studies and a very active scholarly press. Both the people I visited are senior scholars with big reputations in my field, so as a lowly PhD student from antipodean  obscurity, I was initially a bit intimidated. However, they both proved to be very positive and encouraging about my research topic and ideas, and they have given me lots of good advice, contacts etc. It is wonderful to have some validation from scholars of this caliber that I even *have* a research topic and questions worth pursuing. Of particular help, I think, is the offer to read and critique my work as I progress. This is an offer I'll definitely be taking up, starting with my attempt to turn my conference paper from IMC Leeds into a publishable article (my first! in academia, anyway). That will be a project for July-August. I already have a pretty rough draft, so I just need to make sure I dive straight back into it when I get home next week.

I'm delivering my paper at Leeds this afternoon. I'm much happier with it now, after some late editing has tightened up the argument and trimmed some loose threads (all those weird/funny little bits that you so want to include for their entertainment value, but which sadly suck up precious presentation minutes). I'll write more on the IMC in a future post. It's my first time here, and I'm a little overwhelmed by the scale of it, but I have met some very cool peeps, including some fellow medievalist bloggers.

A wee French Faux pas

On this trip, my French has definitely improved a lot. As I've been travelling solo for part of the time, I've been in full-on emersion mode with the only conversations I'm having being with French-speaking locals. The real test came when the NZ friend I was staying with had a minor fender-bender in a nearby village, thanks to France's insane give-way-to-the-right rule, which is basically an accident waiting to happen. The woman who hit us spoke no English, and we ended up going to her house nearby to complete the mountain of paperwork required to file a 'contrat amiable' (a detailed description of the incident that both parties agree to and sign, so the insurance claim can be expedited). I was able to translate both ways, and even gently, but firmly, persuade Madame that she was not entirely in the right.

However, as is so often the case, pride came before a fall. On Sunday, I spent the day in Saint Malo, a wonderfully restored/preserved late medieval - 18th century town that is still intact within its ring of massive stone walls (of which. more in a future post). Anyway, after having walked the walls (widdershins, of course) and climbed the chateau's tower for a view over the 16th century fort and wide, white sand beaches, I found myself in the shop of a local photographer.  The old boy himself was serving the customers, in between yarning to a couple of his mates. I ended up choosing a couple of photos, and launched into a discussion about packaging them so I could carry them home safely. And...that was when the fun began. First, I asked if he had some stiff cardboard to put around them. No, he says, but he has envelopes. I was thinking of those padded envelopes, so I asked if he meant envelopes with 'bulles', thinking of the French word for bubble wrap (papier bulle*). Well, Monsieur looked at me, looked meaningfully at his crotch, then he and his cronies fell about laughing and set to making a number of highly colourful jokes. Turns out I had asked for my photos to be shipped with balls, and not the kind that children and dogs play with! 

* A number of you may recall this vocab from 'The Great Bubble Wrap Incident of 2006', in which I, as the only French speaker, was sent on a perilous and ultimately fruitless mission to find enough bubble wrap to wrap and ship two bicycles from France to New Zealand. That is a LOT of bubble wrap...

A day of culinary delights in Rennes

This morning, I took myself off to Rennes' fantastic food market, the second biggest weekly market in France. It takes place on Saturdays, as it has done for probably hundreds of years, at the Place des Lices, a network of cobbled squares surrounded by wonky pan-de-bois houses. It was truly a banquet for the senses, with just about every type of fresh vegetable, fruit, and miles of fresh flowers on the outside stalls (which ran over several blocks) and on the inner stalls, a wondrous array of fresh seafood, artisan breads, cheeses in myriad shapes and colours (and smells!), and meat and poultry of all persuasions. I had no idea there were so many different types of artichoke, or that the varieties of shallot, garlic, and onion available in France could cover an entire stall. I loved simply wandering around looking and smelling everything, but there was plenty of action with all the  old ladies muscling their way to the front of the queues, the vendors touting their wares in fine dramatic style (no wonder they call it a 'criee'). There were also plenty of adorable pooches for me greet and give a scratch behind the ears. (Rennes is a very dog-friendly city - even the plooty Michelin-rated restuarant next door to  my hotel welcomes them!) I was also quite amused by the site of the market's rickety little tea and coffee trolley, which appeared to be made out of an old pram with a parasol stuck in the top, doing the rounds of the stallholders.

Tastebuds whetted by the sights and sounds of a morning au marche (and an afternoon of shopping), in the evening I returned to dine at Le Cour des Lices, a restaurant right on the edge of the market square that boasts the best of the day's produce. I went in on the off chance and was lucky enough to get the last table, a little one right by the window that would have been a squeeze for more than one person. This place was a real delight. It didn't look like much on the outside, being in a very narrow and somewhat run-down looking old house, but inside it was modern and cooly luxurious, with pale wood-panelled walls and leather banquettes that were warmed by splashes of bright orange in the glasses, tableware, and linen. It is family-run (the wait-staff included a kid who looked about 14! but he did a very professional job) and obviously very popular with the locals, as every second party through the door was greeted with bisous and hugs from the charming maitre d'. My meal included foie gras layered with thin shavings of artichoke, roast pigeon with today's market legumes, and some kind of miraculous caramel buerre-sale mousse-y thing with baked apples. It was seriously eye-rollingly good, and a fitting sign-off to my last weekend in France.

Tomorrow, I am off to Saint Malo for the day on the train, so will report back on this most famous of Breton port towns. Here's hoping the weather is good!

A wander in medieval Vannes

adventures in medieval Vannes 

Vannes is one of those cities I think I could live in. It's big enough to be very vibrant ( plus, the university means there is a decent population of non-crusties) but small enough that you can wander it's medieval centre-ville on foot and not feel overwhelmed. The old city cascades down the hill to the river port in a tangle of cobbled streets and overhanging half-timbered buildings, many of them encroaching so far into the open space of the lanes that the upper stories appear to be on a most perilous lean. On the afternoon I visitied, the temperature had finally shot up into the high 20s after several cooler days, and old men in white singlets, cigarettes dangling, hung out of upper story windows and chatted to each other as the world went by beneath them. 

Vestiges of Vannes' medieval city walls still encircle the old town, and are studded with a couple of squat towers, arrow slits overlooking the river, and with two of the orignal massive gateways. Beneath what remains of the chateau, the moat has long been filled in but, as in many French towns like this (Hennebont in Morbihan and Angers in the Loire spring to mind), they have now been filled in with beautiful formal gardens, their geometry traced in pink roses and dense lines of dark green box. I spent several happy hours here, chasing one alleyway into another, and finally wound up down at the riverside,  so close to the sea that the smell of salt water and mudflats where equally mingled. 

From there, I found my way back to the station and jumped on train to Auray, with the intention of meeting friends for dinner at Auray's lovely little medieval port of Saint-Goustan. However, typically for me, I got just a leetle bit lost trying to walk from Auray to the port. (I don't know why, but I find I am congenitally unable to orient myself to a map!) Swallowing my pride, I finally asked a harmless-looking old chap coming out of the boulangerie clutching his baguette (for dinner, no doubt) for directions. After about 20 seconds and the first set of very complicated instructions, he asked me where I was from. When I told him New Zealand, his face lit up and he started talking about rugby and the All Blacks, which seems to be a universal icebreaker in this country. He then said he would have driven me to the port but his car was at home. No, no I said, 'c'est pas grave', I have loads of time, it's a lovely evening and I *want* to walk. 10 minutes down the road, what happens but the old boy comes driving up beside me in his equally-old and crusty car, and calls out the window, 'You are a New Zealander and a rugby fan! We can't have you getting lost!' (Presumably, the English are left to their own devices...) So, long story short, yes, I disregarded a lifetime of parental advice and accepted a ride from a stranger. A few minutes later, he dropped me off at the port of Saint-Goustan, another enclave of winding streets and pan-de-bois buildings hugging the bank of the river Loch. I met my friends for dinner and we enjoyed a veritable banquet of local seafood while sitting outside next to the water. The scallops (St Jaques) were a highlight as were the whole, very large grilled sardines (pilchard-sized) and the tiny, sweet and tender local mussels. Formidable!

In which I find a shrine to a headless hermit (and other local oddities)

When I'm travelling, I often get the most joy from those quirky little spots that are well off the mainstream tourist routes. Today, guided by a locally produced photocopied pamphlet (in French and complete with spelling mistakes and some very fuzzy photos), I set off on foot to explore the hidden charms of the village of Brandivy and environs. Like so many small villages in this region, it boasts more than its fair share of shrines, churches, and medieval ruins. Thanks to my trusty pamphlet, I was also apprised of some of the local legends relating to these spots. My favourite story concerns 'La Tombe des 7 trous' (tomb of seven holes), a shrine marked by an old stone cross on the side of the track in the local forest. According to the folktale, a holy hermit was travelling along this path when he was set upon by two bandits. He had just enough time to brandish the Host at them before they cut off his head, but the head refused to die. Instead, it bounced around seven times, making seven holes in the ground where nothing has grown since! This story has a bittersweet epilogue, as today the shrine is still occasionally visited by parents seeking a cure for children who have problems walking, and it is garnished with little baby shoes and booties. 

At the much less fantastic end of the scale, another large stone in the neighbourhood - the 'Stele des Martyrs' - commemorates seven 'young patriots' who were killed by the Germans in 1944. This area was a hotbed of  Maquis Resistance and when you see the countryside, its every lane lined with thick drystone walls and deep bramble-filled ditches, you can see why it offered great opportunities for guerrilla warfare against the German occuption. In this case, the bodies of three of the seven dead - sons of one of the nearby villages - were taken to the local chapel, but the night before their funerals the bodies were stolen by the Germans and never seen again.

There is even a little touch of the Da Vinci Code in the 'hood with the stories about La Motte Feodale de Lanvaux, the ruins of a medieval keep dating from the 11th and 12th centuries. Today, there is nothing left but some reasonably substantial outer walls built of stone, but local legend has it that this was one of the places where the Order of the Knights Templar stashed their treasure after they were attacked by Philippe le Bel. Some decades ago, the treasure-hunting became so intense here that much of the structure was seriously undermined by people digging holes in it. Because of this, sadly, you are no longer allowed to clamber amongst the ruins. But when I walked around them, all alone on a quiet rain-fogged afternoon, the overgrown, crumbling stone still created a powerful sense of gothic romance. (Seriously, I felt like Catherine Morland reading 'The Mysteries of Udolpho'!)

In which I get Neolithic

As you all know by now, my first love is all things medieval (closely followed by the Renaissance). So I was quite surprised to be so taken with a place the history of which stretches back 6000 years to the Neolithic period. This was the Cairn du Petit Mont, a site comprising several enormous stone-built cairns containing what were probably burial sites. The first cairn was built around 4500 BC, and the others added to it over time to create a massive mound on a point commanding a view right around the Golfe du Morbihan (although apparently, back when the cairn was in use, large areas that are now under water were arable land cut through by a series of river channels). The chambers are incredible feats of architectural engineering, with massive stone slabs used as lintels, floors, walls and doorways, and even what looks like a processional stairway. In between, the walls are filled out with smaller stones that have been so beautifully cut and finely fitted together, no mortar is needed. It is just as impressive in its own way as a cathedral. In fact, with its solid grace and simplicity, it put me in mind a little of being in the nave of one of those wonderful early Romanesque churches you find in France. 

There are carvings on the slabs that form the walls and although the ones in the oldest chamber are very difficult to make out now, the ones in the other chamber (ca. 2700 BC) are much clearer, and include images such as a sun and snake-like forms. There is also an image that formerly was interpreted as a female fertility deity but which, 'after further recent study', is now thought to represent a phallus. I wonder if this is a reflection more of the image itself or of the people studying it! 

The place must have been perceived as having some serious sacred power, because it seems it was re-used in the Gallo-Roman period for a divinity cult. Sadly, the whole site suffered a dreadful insult during World War II, when the Germans decided the Mont made a perfect surveillance spot and whacked a bloody great bunker right through the middle of it. This obliterated one of the cairns, and cut into the walls of one of the others. It is very jarring to be peering at a 6000 year old rock carving and suddenly notice a big chunk of concrete next to it! 

After our visit to Petit Mont, we ducked down to nearby Port Navalo, a little fishing port lined with cafes and seafood restaurants. (I admit it! I had another galette buerre sale and more rose!) Port Navalo is on a thin spur of land so on one side is the port, surrounded by low rocky cliffs that are topped by a good walking track with views across to Quiberon and out into the Golfe du Morbihan. Around the point is a crescent of white sandy beach, sheltered from the prevailing wind and with incredibly clear bright aqua water. You can't move in this area during the high season of July and August, but at the moment it is not too bad and seems to be mostly locals rather than tourists from England and Paris. I would love to come back here in the winter and experience the Atlantic storms beating against this coast. The massive stone breakwaters in the ports and the stoutness of the fishing vessels tell the story that while it may seem very gentle now, it gets really elemental and wild when summer comes to an end.

La vie est douce

Je m'appelle Amelie. J'aime voyager en train, les galettes avec caramel du buerre sucre, est les  hiboux. Je n'naime pas ... hmmm, I can't think of anything at the moment! That must be because I have arrived in France and am now staying in a beautiful (if slightly dilapidated) 17th century stone farmhouse in the countryside of the Golfe du Morbihan, on a nameless lane between the hamlets of Brindivy and Kerdavid Duchantil. Every time I come to France, I'm reminded of why this country seduces me. It's something about the softness of the evening air and the gentle heat of the sun (so much less harsh than our southern hemisphere orb), and the lush countryside that, even though it is well-farmed, still has many stands of old oak trees and little pockets of forest with mysterious fern-fringed tracks winding into the shadows. The area where I am staying (near Carnac) is well-known as a region covered with megaliths and dolmens that are athousands of years old. When I'm walking through a forest and suddenly come upon a circle of standing stones covered in moss and lichen, I get a certain eerie sense of very deep history that I have not really experienced before. 

We have a family of tawny owls nesting in the barn by the house, and I have been privileged to see them a few times, either hanging out on the roof getting the late sun or, last night, swooping down over the garden on a hunting trip. They are such beautiful animals. Somewhat awkward and comical while sitting on a perch, but majestic on the wing. It doesn't get dark here until 10:30 or so at night, so I go for a walk about 9pm and get to watch as all the little night creatures start stirring in the hedges and fields as the sun goes down. 

Our little local village of Brindivy is a place where not much ever seems to happen ( though it does have an impressive Calvary and some 12th century relics, which I plan to investigate soon). However, it is the home of a legendary creperie, the Creperie du Puits. On Sunday nights, the carpark of the tiny church is packed with locals who have come to eat there, and I can see why. Tonight, I had a galette with half a dozen enormous, fresh scallops in homemade sauce, a half bottle of good Provencal rose, and a salted caramel crepe (my new love), served up with charm by the son of the owner and all for the princely sum of 15€. We will be back!

Oh, I am also happy to report that my French this trip is so much better than the last time I visited. I can actually have normal conversations (in shops and so on) without having to carefully think everything out and translate it all in my head first. 

A little touch of Harry in the night

Today, I fulfilled a long-held desire and went to a play at Shakespeare's Globe in Bankside. And what a play it was. Henry V, performed with such verve and wit that it was impossible not to be charmed. I had one of the 'noble' seats in the front row of the first floor gallery (looking down on the 'groundlings'), and it was a perfect perch, close enough to the stage to be fully absorbed into the world of the drama. The cast made great use of the theatre set-up, with lots of interacting with the crowd and comings and goings through the audience, and it was wonderful to have the music played live on authentic instruments. I'm not sure if it was the authenticity of the theatre (right down to the oak bench seats and open sky above), the quality of the performers, or the traditional interpretation (no WWI costumes or other unnecessary twists), but it seemed much more immediate and alive than any previous Shakespeare play I've seen performed live. Apart from the lack of rotten fruit being thrown and whores plying their trade in the darker corners of the pit (or if they were, I didn't see them), it was probably quite similar (if a lot less stinky) to seeing the play as  it was first staged in 1599.

There was an extra connection for me with the play's subject matter, as I'd spent that very morning at the British Library reading documents relating to Henry V's campaigns in France. One of the texts was a letter dated 1419 from the mayor of Bordeaux, pleading for the king to send more money to pay for defence in Guyenne, Henry's focus (and money) being at that time largely focused on Normandy and the north of France. The English letters regularly refer to the French Dauphin as the 'Dolphin', which always cracks me up. It seems that the history deliberate mispronunciation of French words and names is a long one!

After the performance, I went for a walk along Bankside and through Southwark, which is an interesting mix or somewhat-seedy 17th-19th century buildings that bear witness to the area's shipping and merchant past, and brash glassed monuments to the finance industry. There are some lovely old pubs in the area, like The Anchor (built in 1615), but unfortunately most of them seem to be run by the same big chain and offer exactly the same menu of 'classic' pub grub (i.e. fish and chips or pie and mash). Instead, I found a nice little restaurant right on the waterfront and dined on pissaldiere with reblochon cheese while looking out over London Bridge and the Tower (I'm batting 5 for 5 on choosing good restaurants completely at random). As the sun went down, I raised a glass to the ghost of Sir Simon Burley and all those many others like him, 'beheaded next the wall on Tower hill'.

In which I visit the British Library

So, today's adventures in archive-land involved my first visit to the British Library, which is much bigger and plusher than I was expecting. In my head, I'd imagined something along the lines of your basic university library writ large, and given the generally parlous state of funding for enterprises such as archives, museums and libraries, I also expected it would be a bit down-at-heel in the old design department. So I was pleasantly surprised at its 5 floors of glass and marble, recessed lighting, and finely curved staircases. In the reading rooms, the desks and chairs resemble something out of the business centre in an up-market hotel. The best bit, though, is the massive multistory atrium tower of bound manuscripts in a great cube of glass. (I'm not sure if these are purely for show or if this is part of the storage, but all the different coloured leather bindings and gold lettering make quite an impression. Talk about the bookcase of my dreams!)

Anyway, after jumping through the several hoops required to get a Reader's card, I repaired to the Manuscript room and spent the day with a couple of manuscripts from the 15thC (one of which was originally copied for Sir John Paston). They were written in a mixture of English and French /Anglo-Norman, so I was expecting to have to do some work deciphering them, but I had more trouble with the tiny script than with the actual language. Parts of one of them looked like some mad spiders had gotten loose in an inkpot. It took me a while to get my 'eye' in, and clearly, I need a lot more practice reading handwriting! It's odd, but I realised that I very rarely see handwritten text these days (even my own), because pretty much everything is done on computers. For about the first hour, I was freaking out a bit thinking I wouldn't be able to read a damned thing, even of the English texts, but it got better as I went along. And I do enjoy seeing all those marginal notations and doodles from various readers over the centuries ( if you did that now, I believe the BL staff would take you out and pillory you). There is also something very human and tangible about the way the handwriting goes in cycles, from being very neat at the start of a section to getting progressively rattier a few pages in. I can just imagine that the scribe getting a bit fed up towards the end of his working day and letting things go just a bit.

I'm writing this while I'm having dinner (at a classic pub called The Duke in the lovely old town of Richmond) and one of the many benefits of overseas travel just occurred to me as I was reading the menu. That is, at home we take great pride in 'our' wine industry, which is all well and good, but when you eat out, you rarely see many wines from other countries onthe winelist. And when you do, the most common import is Australian (and the odd Chilean wine, but usually of the cheap-and-cheerful rustic red variety). Tonight, my wine options included varieties from all over Europe, South Africa, South America, and even a cab sav from Lebanon (there was also the obligatory New Zealand sauvignon blanc, just to make me feel at home).