Monthly Archives: April 2017

Love, death, and blissful ignorance: Pliny and the origins of photography

Pliny the Elder, ancient Rome’s great encyclopedist, did not, of course, describe the origins of modern photography – a technique and art that was greatly advanced in Reading, Berkshire, by William Henry Fox Talbot (as described in this wonderful book). … Continue reading

Posted in History of Reading, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Love, death, and blissful ignorance: Pliny and the origins of photography

Bokelmann’s shade

I am in North Frisia right now, spending a few days by the North Sea shore with my son. I fell in love with this primordial landscape when I was a child myself (rather longer ago than I care to … Continue reading

Posted in Epigraphy, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

No graffiti please!

Yesterday news broke about houses that were defaced with graffiti (or, strictly speaking, dipinti – after all, the text was painted onto, not scratched into, the surface) in Cambridge – in Latin: Locus in domos … loci populum is a … Continue reading

Posted in Epigraphy, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment