This is an absolutely spiffy set of china plates: Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, The Famous Women Dinner Service, 1932 - 34.: A bold, feminist statement
In the Famous Women Dinner Service, women are invited to sit at the head of the table, so to speak. Their lives, achievements and accomplishments become the focal point of the conversation.

A ( Read more... )

This sounds fascinating, but I am aghast at the price (though it's par for the course for that particular academic press): Ryan Hanley. Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c.1770-1830: 'the Royal Historical Society deemed Beyond Slavery and Abolition worthy of its annual Whitfield Prize, an award that this novel work most ( Read more... )

Other people are speaking out, I don't think my voice adds anything much.
(Though, if it wasn't for pandemic situation, I would be at a conference giving paper on the very curious - evasiveness - around issues of race and anti-colonialism in certain interwar progressive circles. Next year, maybe.)
Even if it wasn't for the not going out into the ( Read more... )

Perhaps everybody's poetic mojo had been all used up on war-poetry? Just that I have been thinking of earlier time of pestilence poems, or maybe that was just that the whole thing seemed generally closer? Or maybe poetry is not the genre, I note that people having been name-checking prose-fiction, whether it's Boccacio, let's go out of the city and ( Read more... )

I am coming around to a consideration that I am officially An Old and in a risk group, though only by reason of age and not for any concomitant reason of health, and therefore that international travel is probably not going to be the most sensible of ideas in the foreseeable future.
I note that An Institution with which I have some association has ( Read more... )

Knackered already. A certain gratification at recognition, etc.
Some good conversations.
Glorious situation, perhaps surpasses that time at Fiesole - food however at lunch did not compare. This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/3041481.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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I made a nice brown wheatgerm loaf (though think I may have added a bit too much salt) as well as basic buttermilk milk rolls for Saturday breakfast, 3:1:1 white spelt/strong white/buckwheat flour.
But today I was taking the bus from Malaga to Granada, which involved finding the bus terminal at the airport once I had got there, but was a ( Read more... )

And I've just looked it up and sure enough, the god of travel is Hermes/Mercury.
So, apart from the really crap night's sleep...
Today's mercurial or hermetic sacrifice was arriving at the Tube station to find a lengthy delay before the next train, which proceeded to not change for several minutes, and then a largely inaudible announcement that ( Read more... )

It's rather an Eeyore-ish time of year for me anyway, and this week I have been in rather lowered spirits, between sleeping not terribly well, and (relevant to that) having bad days for the neck and shoulder problems, and the horrible weather (as a result of which my daily walk is curtailed for reasons of mud), and partner having a cold, and a mild ( Read more... )

Made it to the symposium, which was VERY good, and I am like to suppose that Dr Oursin's contributions in question time were appreciated; also there were good conversations over coffee, lunch, tea, and wine.
I perceive that Naomi Mitchison is, at last, becoming A Thing. I can now go around saying that I knew about Mitchison and was writing about ( Read more... )