Glad to see that the campaign to keep the Staffordshire hoard in the Midlands is gathering pace - it would be sad if it was allowed to go abroad, as has been suggested in the last few days.
Not sure that they do the cause any good by enlisting posturing popinjay/TV historian David Starkey as their mouthpiece, though. He says: "It transforms the history of the Midlands from some kind of obscure Brummie slum into the centre of England - but we're just at the very, very beginning."
Yes, that's right, because before this, we had no idea that civilisation had even reached the Midlands in the early Anglo-Saxon period.
6 comments:
I am following this with interest...
Your New year blogskin took me by surprise for a moment. Matt. I thought I must have clicked a wrong link ... great to be kept on our Blogland toes!
Forget popinjays for a moment: it was great to see the real thing (a jay, that is) at the Llanelli WWT this w/e. No sign (or sound) of the bittern, but great bullfinches and a kestrel.
Yes, thought it was time for a bit of redecorating!
Still not managed to see a Bittern myself, but an awful lot of bird activity today now that the weather has lifted.
I failed to do it on my comment above, but am endeavouring this year to follow the (?US) convention of giving the (English/Latin/other) name of a given species a capital letter. Is this what you advise generally, or at least for writing (such as blogging) within an international context?
It looked a bit odd this morning writing Puffin in the middle of a sentence, but I do see the sense as explained here by Seabrooke ('The Marvelous in Nature') in her inspirational Ontario blog.
Well, at the magazine, we do give the English names a capital letter to start with, but it's just a matter of preference, really. I've seen it done both ways and I don't think there's any right or wrong.
When it comes to scientific names, though, it is supposed to be a capital for the first word, but not for the second. So, Puffin is Fratercula arctica (confusingly, Puffinus puffinus is Manx Shearwater).
Thank you: good to learn something new today!
I think that David Starkey's choice of words and the slant of his argument have done nothing to help the cause of keeping such an important collection in this country. Less of the "gold" and "silver" and more of the design, the craftsmanship, the culture please and underlining the fact that the "Dark Ages" were anything BUT dark. Brummy slum indeed . . . they must have caught him on the hop for a comment if that's the best he can come up with. Jennie (NOT a Brummy but a Hampshire Hog!)
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