Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Thursday, 6 February 2014

Accession Day


Today is the 62nd anniversary of the accession to the throne of Her Majesty the Queen in 1952. It is an opportunity once again to give thanks for the Queen's reign and to express loyal greetings and good wishes to her.

As the Queen approaches matching the length of Queen Victoria's reign of 63 and a half years it is intersting to reflect on the comparative changes within these two reigns. I sense that someone in June 1899 would have been aware of far greater changes over the previous six decades than we are in looking back to 1952. In writing that it is not to say that we have not witnessed, whether we like them or not, great changes in this second Elizabethan era.


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