Sunday the 22d October was the 20th Sunday after Trinity. That workaday Season of the Church is hasting to its yearly end: soon enough, it shall be Advent-tide, and then Christmas, the birthday and New Year of the Church. But you’ll not be interested in that, and are perhaps doubtful of its relevance. (O thatContinue reading “Forty years long was I grieved with this generation”
Category Archives: The Writing Life
The secret utility of mist and fog: observations on observing
This morning was a morning of mist and fog. Some should no doubt casually label it autumnal. I do not, quite, because I do not particularly measure by weather or by equinox: to me, Autumn has come when first I hear the geese overhead. Fog and mist are not commonly welcome in history or lawContinue reading “The secret utility of mist and fog: observations on observing”
Common senses
The evidence of one’s senses is always in both senses material: a point which writers generally, and historians particularly, ought to bear in mind. Life is not carried on, carried out, lived, in hermetically sealed, soundproof rooms. The writing of history is a literary art. The writer of fiction is the historian of his orContinue reading “Common senses”
Credentialism, Careerism, and the Death of Academic History
This morning, on social media, I ran across a post in which a young PhD candidate at a Midwestern University was bemoaning the domination of the publishing lists in History by persons who were not academic historians. I’m not going to embarrass the young man, or those who commented on his post, by being moreContinue reading “Credentialism, Careerism, and the Death of Academic History”
Book review: Escape to the countryside: Peter Maughan’s Batch Magna Chronicles
Ham-on-Wye is a perfectly plausible English place-name. So is Honey Coombe. And so is Batch Magna. We’ll come back to that. A few days ago (it’s been pissing down rain since), on my morning constitutional, I saw, against the backdrop of oak, pecan, and magnolia, not only mockingbirds and cardinals, but egrets as well. We’llContinue reading “Book review: Escape to the countryside: Peter Maughan’s Batch Magna Chronicles”
Markham Shaw Pyle, author & historian 