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 23 July 2020

Housekeeping - now and then


There have been not a few articles in the press over recent months about the family tensions consequent upon ‘lockdown’, and of the minor irritations couples have found in living with their partners more or less all day and every day.  Such situations inevitably intensify or magnify the domestic small change of life together. 

It should be no surprise really as this is part of the human condition, and its universality in both time and space is brought out neatly by an online article I chanced upon today. It can be read at What was life like for a medieval housewife? and shows that in many, fundamental, ways life does not, mutatis mutandis, change that much.


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