Category Archives: Poetry

Tragedy, Epic, and the Real

On 3 October, 2013, a boat sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa, a small island in the Mediterranean between Tunisia and the island of Malta, south of mainland Italy. The vessel is reported to have carried up to 500 … Continue reading

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Rest and Peace: Terence on a Reading Cemetery

Towards the South-Eastern corner of Reading’s Old Cemetery at Cemetery Junction, there is an obelisk. It is the funerary monument of John Cecil Grainger, once vicar of the parish of Saint Giles. The obelisk rests on a pedestal, which is … Continue reading

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Sea Shells, Or: How the Deluge Reached Reading

Charles Coates’s monumental 1802 work ‘The History and Antiquities of Reading’ is a treasure house for discoveries surrounding the history of the county town of Royal Berkshire. In its discussion of the specifics of the area of Katesgrove,  the book … Continue reading

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Beer Goggles in Ancient Rome

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology. (Source: http://www.improbable.com/ig/) The … Continue reading

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Can we mend broken hearts?

Originally published on the University of Reading’s The Forum blog: The fence around the University of Reading’s Humanities and Social Science (HumSS) Building is currently decorated with images and captions illustrating Reading’s desire to be ‘asking big questions.’ One of … Continue reading

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A Readingite’s Prayer for Peace

Charles Coates, in the appendices to his monumental 1802 work ‘The History and Antiquities of Reading’, records numerous Latin and English pieces that were performed or recited at Reading School. Among these, there is a Latin ode of eighty lines, … Continue reading

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Fabulous Plagiarism

Originally published on the Engage in Teaching and Learning blog: Niccolò Perotti, the Italian humanist, preserved a collection of fables ascribed to the ancient Roman fabulist Phaedrus. This collection, commonly known as the Appendix Perottina, contains a poem called Prometheus … Continue reading

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Hope and Despair in Roman Britain

Originally published on the Classics-at-Reading blog: The Yorkshire Museum in York houses a most impressive collection of Roman inscriptions from York and the immediate vicinity. On occasion of a trip to Yorkshire in August 2013, I was finally able to … Continue reading

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