The Boar’s Head Bookshelf reaches the dizzy heights of 53 volumes today, not including my Arden Third Edition copies of the plays themselves …
Tag: Books
Quote of the Week: 28 August
MACAULAY, Thomas Babington: The History of England from 1485 to 1685 (ed. Peter Rowland) (The Folio Society: London, 1985)
Before we look at Macaulay, let me give you one of mine from the classroom. It’s always an attention-grabber – you can see students falling into a few different categories:
a) people who clearly haven’t considered the issue before but are now thinking rapidly;
b) those who panic at the agency I’m potentially giving them; and
c) the ones who get a twinkle in their eye and would like to test my theory but daren’t.
I hardly ever get a d) can’t be bothered or not listening …
Quote of the week: 21 August
Peter Saccio, Shakespeare’s English Kings: History, Chronicle, and Drama (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2000)
One of the biggest problems with being on holiday with non-reading friends is that you become embarrassed by the amount of time you want, no NEED, to spend in bookshops.
So this was a book I could easily have missed whilst browsing a second-hand bookshop in Leominster. I was really lucky to have my other half on hand to find it out for me, because time was running out, and I was beginning to worry about the patience of the friends we were holidaying with, who had already politely wandered round the shop and were now at the ‘waiting outside for you‘ stage ….
Quote of the Week: 07 August
David Riggs: The World of Christopher Marlowe (Faber and Faber: London, 2004)
If you squint, you’ll see that this was one of the books I bought as retail therapy a short while back. I tackled this one first owing to my commitments to teach Edward II again this coming school year – I was hoping to get a few additional nuggets about Marlowe‘s private life.
The book has turned out to be an absolute revelation …
Volumes that I prize above my dukedom …
Amongst the cosmetic changes I’ve made over the past few days, you might have noticed the arrival of a new page: The Boar’s Head Bookshelf.
What’s that all about?
Come, and take choice of all my library
… and so beguile thy sorrow (Titus Andronicus)
An era ended on Thursday this week …
A little bedtime reading …
the man might take as long as a quarter of an hour to expire
Currently reading the wonderfully cheery Hangmen of England, by Brian Bailey (WH Allen, 1989). Whilst reflecting on what fun dinner-time conversation with ‘Uncle Bill’ must have been as he researched the book, I chanced upon this little gem about Tudor executions:
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 