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  • Marengo: Napoleon’s Horse November 15, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Marengo: Napoleon's Horse

    Napoleon had a great fondness for horses, he was often painted in the saddle and Hegel went so far as to call the Corsican general ‘the worldspirit on horseback’. But Marengo, Napoleon’s favourite steed, must go down in history as one of the unluckiest horses that ever lived.  Allegedly purchased by his diminutive master in […]

    Fairy Investigation Society November 14, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Fairy Investigation Society

    ***This post is dedicated to Invisible*** Beachcombing has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about Wikipedia. But every so often there are pages there that are the closest we come to ‘real knowledge’. Take the Fairy Investigation Society that Beach has been looking into for the last couple of days – since, in […]

    Self Decapitation in South East Asia November 13, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
    Self Decapitation in South East Asia

    A short post today as the Beachcombing family celebrates its reunion. The following text comes from the mid fourteenth century and relates to the experiences of a visitor to the court of the Sultan of Mul Jawah (Java or more likely East Sumatra). In this Sultan’s assembly I saw a man with a knife like […]

    Spitfires and Radars in 1944 November 12, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Spitfires and Radars in 1944

    Beachcombing has a terrible record of not respecting anniversaries. But today, in part to subvert all the 11.11.11 nonsense (has the meteor already gone by?) and in part to assuage his own guilt at not having a red poppy in his lapel (the price of living in Italy) he thought he would remember, through an […]

    The Great Crying November 11, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern

    Beachcombing has been troubling his unpretty little head about notable cloudbursts of tears in modern history. In the ancient world, some honest tears seem to have been acceptable: from Alexander crying at learning he would only ever conquer one world, to Aeneas shedding some big ones over women and burnt cities, to Odysseus ‘We must […]

    35 cms from Oxfordshire November 10, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
    35 cms from Oxfordshire

    Beachcombing’s ordeal of single parenthood is coming quickly to a close. Mrs B.’s conference is all but over and by tomorrow morning the house will be a happier place. In the meantime 35 centimetres of soil from just off Goldbury Hill, near West Hendred in Oxfordshire; 35 centimetres that often pass through Beachcombing’s mind when […]

    Gunfire in Notre Dame November 9, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Gunfire in Notre Dame

    A wibt (wish I’d been there) moment in a snatch of about five minutes as Mrs B is still far away from home and Beachcombing has to undertake full babysitting duties for his two terrifying daughters. 26 August 1944, after four long years of Nazi occupation, Paris is liberated by Allied troops and marching into […]

    Review: The Middle Kingdom November 8, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
    Review: The Middle Kingdom

    As regular readers will know Beachcombing went a little fairy mad this summer. Indeed, as we speak two academic articles have been accepted for publication and four more are still waiting the judgement of tetchy referees spread out from Edinburgh to the Pacific Coast. In the process of writing these articles he read most twentieth-century […]

    Eating People Isn’t Wrong (in Tibet) November 7, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
    Eating People Isn't Wrong (in Tibet)

    A crisis of sorts tonight in the Beachcombing household. Mrs B is leaving the family home to go and organise an academic conference in the heart of darkness (aka Brussels). This means that Beach – a better husband than a father – and the Beachcombing’s au pair are being left on their own to look […]

    A-Z of Thuggery November 6, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern
    A-Z of Thuggery

    Beachcombing has been letting his dark side take charge this Saturday evening, while Mrs B. gets ready for mass, reviewing some of the fascinating Victorian literature on the thugs. The thugs, for the uninitiated, were, of course, the Indian sect whose members, in secret, and often without knowledge of their families, murdered travellers. They would […]

    A Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century London November 5, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Medieval, Modern
    A Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century London

       Beach has a longstanding thing about elephants (see many previous posts and many posts to come) and has been wondering recently about opening up a second front on the rhinoceros: a distant reading of a text about Romans importing this beast for their games has been jumping up and down in his head. He […]

    Immortal Meals #7: Papal Orgies November 4, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Immortal Meals #7: Papal Orgies

    It has been a while since Beachcombing visited an immortal meal, one of those dinners past where the great ate and history crackled in the air. Still suffering from the Italian Renaissance bug and given that this is, after all, the season of the chestnut he thought that he would today lift the veil on […]

    Finishing Horace and Whittier in WW2 November 3, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary

    Today’s post represents a definite minority interest: poems being started by someone and finished by someone else in the Second World War. (Sorry).  Take the extraordinary exchange between the German general Heinrich Kreipe (obit 1976) and a young British major Patrick Leigh Fermor (obit 2011) [pictured centre and right] late one night in Crete in […]

    John Goodman Household: Africa’s First Flier November 2, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
    John Goodman Household: Africa's First Flier

    Beach has now spent a year looking at legends and stories about early pre-Wrightian fliers. Essentially they fall into three categories. The Tower Jumpers, 3000 BC to 1500 AD: lunatics who jumped from heights, hoped for the best and typically died. The Renaissance Gliders, 1500-1800 AD: men who sketched out flying contraptions but for the […]

    Beachcombed 17 November 1, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Beachcombed
    Beachcombed 17

    Fraternal greetings to historians, archaeologists, anomalists and bizarrists! First of all an apology is due: Beachcombing fell behind on correspondence in October. He enters the second half of the term contrite and determined to do better. Of the posts in the past month Cocaine and Ancient Egypt drummed up the most visitors, though surprisingly little […]