Academics From England

"We might like to think of Henry III as a gentle and pious king (an image he wanted us to see), but many of those who suffered under the rule of his local officials had a different perspective on their monarch."

"Henry might not be King Louis’s equal in matters of war, but he would be in matters of style (the confusion of style with substance is a recurring theme in Henry’s life)."

"In thirteenth-century Europe, battles were rare, in part because they occurred only when both sides felt certain that they had the decisive advantage (it was relatively straightforward to avoid battle when necessary) and in part because the quickest way to win a battle was to kill or capture the opposition commander; unlike their modern counterparts, medieval war leaders led from the front and, as a result, were subject to more than their fair share of attention. A leader had to be certain of success if he were to engage the enemy in a battle."

"Henry’s major problem was that the local communities of England rather liked the idea that the ruler needed their consent if he were to rule legitimately. It was no longer enough that Henry was God’s anointed; the reforms that had followed in the wake of the Provisions of Oxford had created a widespread expectation that consent could and should be a political force in national politics. Simon and his baronial colleagues had not acted alone in their reforms, but had tapped into the grievances of the county communities of thirteenth-century England. Indeed, it was these local grievances that gave the reformers their political weight."

"In the September Parliament, Henry made the announcement that the lands of Simon and his supporters were forfeit, and that the main beneficiaries were to be members of the royal family. In this act we are once again reminded that many thirteenth-century men and women had a tenuous grasp of the ethics of rulership, despite their repeated public pronouncements to the contrary: the kingdom was put there by God in order that they might predate on it."

"I’ve just finished Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift, and I’m now reading Nora Webster by Colm Toibin."

"My fiction ranges from the early 20th century to the 1970s. The 1950s and 1960s are dramatic because of the rapid changes in society that took place in just a few years. The changes were especially rapid in the Roman Catholic Church, and within the Church, none more so than in communities of nuns."

"The season of the rose is brief, make haste to pluck your posies; Another day you’ll chance to find bare thorns where bloomed the roses."

"Though not a few of the poems in the present volume could not be included in anthologies intended for general circulation, I must yet be allowed to state that I have reprinted nothing that is offensively gross. There is a great deal of dirt — nasty worthless trash — in the miscellanies of the Restoration, and with this garbage I have not chosen to meddle."

"Without you, Heaven would be too dull to bear, And Hell would not be Hell if you are there."

"The poet and critic Bernard Bergonzi, who has died aged 87, was long associated with the teaching of 20th-century English literature at . His books shed new light on the English writing of the first world war and the 1930s, and on developments in criticism since the 60s, which he largely disliked. Monographs on HG Wells, TS Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Arnold and Graham Greene showed Bergonzi at his sensible and lucid best."

"Arnold Rattenbury was too young to be very active in the , but in the early he was friendly with several older Communist writers who had been. ... Although I make limiting judgements on Auden in the following pages, his centrality in the seems to me unmistakable. Unlike other hostile critics of 'orthodoxy', Mr Rattenbury does give a hostage to fortune by proposing an alternative."

"As Wells insists, many of Verne's inventions have materialized since his time. travel is a commonplace, and the circumnavigation of the moon is more than a possibility. Well's imaginings, however, remain as unattainable now as when he wrote: no one has yet contrived to travel through time, or ; we are still unable to , nor can we ."

"The s whom we admire to-day do not appear to love their s, and the s who appraise their books show no signs of doing so either. For a writer or critic to show delight in a character would would seem to-day rather naïve, an old-fashioned response left over from the days of Dickens and Surtees. Characters, it seems, are no longer objects of affection."

"By about 1900 BC, successive invaders, notably from Spain, were ousting Stone Age rulers and bringing Britain into the Mediterranean trade orbit. Sophisticated engineers erected , the , the 20,000 s and smaller stone circles signalling to a sky thick with gods."

"War was justified, especially if the foe was weakly armed, and, preferably, coloured. Beautiful women asserted themselves through romantic bitchiness (which left men very stricken or very bored), through espionage, leading to sudden death in exotic circumstances, or through hunting: 'Gad, George, she keeps her seat like a man, damme, she does.'"

"Peter Vansittart, who has died aged 88, was a master of the historical novel and a writer of outstanding talent. He wrote more than 40 books, which also encompassed anthologies, works on literature and . As he was the first to concede, the reading public could be slow to enjoy his novels. He put this down to his “obsession with language and speculation at the expense of narrative, however much I relish narrative in others”. Nonetheless, he was admired by critics and fellow authors. To , he was “a master of description”, and to , “a carefully accurate historian [and] a splendidly imaginative writer of fiction”."

"Barlow's intellectual and scholarly qualities are arguably most evident in his editions of complex and technically difficult Latin texts, whose meaning he would elucidate with an almost unrivalled brilliance, and in the writing of biography, a genre about which he thought very deeply, as befitted someone who had contemplated a career as a novelist in his youth. Edward the Confessor (1970), William Rufus (1983) and Thomas Becket (1986) are all very important, and demonstrate a profoundly insightful and carefully reasoned determination to penetrate the religious attitudes of the historians of the 11th and 12th centuries in order to reveal the secular world beneath."

"William Rufus had a remarkable career, even for the late eleventh century, when opportunities for the adventurous and talented were plentiful. Born into the middle ranks of the French aristocracy, and only a younger son, he rose first through the achievements of his father, William 'the Conqueror', duke of Normandy, and then through the misfortunes of his elder brothers. Still a landless when his father died in 1087, he took whatever chances came his way, and by the time of his own premature death thirteen years later had become a king of great renown. He was acclaimed by soldiers for his chivalry and magnanimity; and the flaws of his character proved to be no hindrance to success."

"On the 1170, the morrow of the , that is to say, Tuesday, 29 December, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, of the whole of England and of the , was murdered in his cathedral church by four noble knights from the household of his lord and former patron and friend, King Henry II. He had just celebrated what was thought to be his fiftieth birthday. The horror which the killing inspired and the miraculous cures performed at his tomb transfigured the victim into one of the most popular saints in the late-medieval calendar and made one of the greatest pilgrim shrines in the West. The modern , although doubtless better organized, gives some idea of medieval Canterbury with its phials of water tinctured, if faintly, with the blood of the martyr, and its highly charged atmosphere, a combination of the pathetic hopes of the sick and the jollity of the holiday-makers. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales kept the saint's memory green after the Reformation, and the drama has attracted distinguished modern playwrights."

"The lantern which William of Malmesbury used to guide his steps when he was writing his ' ... was the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, annals written in ; and it remains the surest guide. It is particularly valuable, because the first draft, at least, of that part of the Chronicle which covers most of 's reign was put together before the king's death, ... a circumstance which ensured that the events recorded were not chosen so as to explain either the or ."

"All the British s produce viable fruits without the necessity for fertilization () so that, although they have all the advantages of dispersal associated with normal seed production (in this instance of the parachute-bearing fruits), yet their reproduction is equivalent to vegetative propagation."

"In Trees and Toadstools, Rayner has given us an account, written in clear language understandable to the layman interested in science, of the symbiotic relationship which has been found to prevail between the of many of the higher fungi and forest trees. ... the story of 's epochal discoveries, originally initiated as a project to increase the supply of s but resulting in the real opening of research on the important field of forest tree root and fungus association, is well told in simple language."

"As an important member of the flora of Northern Europe, ' is commonly associated with s of a definite type, especially when it occurs as the dominant or sub-dominant species of moorland associations. As such, it is especially characterists of dry heath soils, deficient in and often ."

"An article in ' in June 1959 described Sir Edward James Salisbury as a “prophet and propagandist of botany”. Inspired by the plants that grew wild in his native , he became a pioneering ecologist, lecturer, author – The Living Garden (1935) was a bestseller – and, from 1943-56, director of the . He was also a keen photographer and a large collection of his glass plate negatives – natural landscapes and individual plant studies – was recently discovered in the archives."

"It is not only that the bias of elementary es tends to give the whole subject an aloofness which helps to perpetuate the common attitude that Science is something essentially different and apart from the facts of every day life, it is that it makes it difficult for any but a most experienced and able lecturer to introduce the student to the study of plants in the light of the more recent as well as the older phases of botanical knowledge."

"It is tempting to assume that the process of natural selection has brought about a nicety of adjustment between the seed output and mortality, and this presumption is implicit in most of the writings on this topic. If true, it involves as a necessary corollary that the potential of a species is a measure of its susceptibility to natural mortality."

"... the is extremely tolerant of . It can grow quite well with as much as 1.5% of salt in the sand and will tolerate up to 6%. Moreover, it will endure quite prolonged inundation by a high tide."

"Ability to recognize and identify the commoner s is of some practical interest and importance. ... a few are injurious or even violently poisonous. Of these last, the scarlet Fly Agaric (') ... with a nearly related species, the Death Cap or Death's Angel fungus (') ... with a pale greenish-yellow , common and abundant species about and trees and in woodlands formed by them, are two of the most notorious. The toadstools of both these species, especially those of the latter, contain virulent poisons and if cooked and eaten in the rest condition, are among the most deadly and dangerous poisons known; the Panther Agaric, ', a toadstool with a brown spotted cap, is also common in such woodlands and also poisonous. It is interesting to note that the fleshy caps of these poisonous toadstools are eaten with impunity by s."

"Owing to their lack of and inability to utilize , the stood out as possessing a mode of life fundamentally different from that of green plants. Observations by Pasteur in 1860 and 1862, by in 1879 and 1883, and by in 1883 all showed the former could use a great variety of carbon compounds as food materials."

"It was not till the middle of the nineteenth century that the rich harvest of American s really began to be garnered, though the had already introduced from there in 1663."

"During his long period on the academic staff of Salisbury’s scientific reputation rose steadily with the publication of a succession of research papers in botanical and other journals and of several important books, including The reproductive capacity of plants (1942), and also through his frequent and much acclaimed lectures to a wide range of botanical and horticultural audiences. He was President of the in 1928, Vice-President of the in 1928-9, and in 1933 he was elected a . In 1937 he became President of Section K of the and in 1939 was made Then in 1943 he was appointed to the Directorship of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, made vacant by the death of ."

"From the woods of north-west America came that familiar evergreen shrub ', which in some gardens to-day is almost a weed; yet such was the enthusiasm with which it was first received that roots commanded a price of ten s each."

"A fresh attempt to survey the whole field and correlate the problems of nutrition presented by mycorrhiza plants with those in parasites and insectivorous plants was made by at the opening of the new century (Stahl, 1900). This paper, the most comprehensive study of mycorrhiza from the biological point of view since the publication of 's theory of in trees, has been freely quoted in the text-books and is probably one of the best-known contributions to the literature of the subject. Two aspects of Stahl's work demand attention: firstly, the new hypothesis put forward by him to explain the distribution of fungus infection in s and its beneficial effect upon the hosts, and secondly, the character of the experimental evidence offered in support of his opinions."

"During the last few weeks , , and myself have been exploring an ossiferous at Shandon, near , under a grant from the . Bones of , , bear, wolf, horse, and hare, were found in the débris of a here in 1859, and are now in the . We have worked through a considerable quantity of and , in which and in a thin underlying deposit of cave-earth we have found numerous bones of the above-mentioned animals, indicating at least two individuals of mammoth, eighteen of reindeer, and five of horse, for which latter this is as yet the sole recorded locality in Ireland. The bones of bear show extreme age and signs of disease, and we have found the cast antler of a reindeer. Some of the bones have been gnawed, probably by wolves, and many have been broken by the falling-in of the roof of the cave. Though we have broken into a large chamber, we are as yet unable to form a clear conception of the original form of the cavern. A full account of the cave previous to the present exploration was given by in the ' for June, 1870."

"Our old-established {[w|Botanical garden|Botanical Gardens}} have long carefully collected those species that have been used in medicine. The , founded by the in 1632, was the first. In 1690 the were placed by under the charge of the botanist (1642-1706), who sent collectors abroad; and about the same date presents the , afterwards rendered famous by the encyclopedic works of (1691-1771), to the . In 1760 the was established by the , under the advice of (1713-1792). who was an enthusiastic botanist ..."

"The s are stated to have burnt their human sacrifices in cages; and, though we cannot with equal confidence vouch for the antiquity of that other more harmless use of the Willow, the making of s to be wielded at , or on any other English greensward, even if we forget altogether its many uses in manufactures, we can find many points of interest in the Willows group. It may as well, however, be mentioned here that the wood, especially that of the , is made into paper pulp, besides affording the best charcoal for artists' crayons; whilst, not to mention the undoubted value of the bark for purposes, it is now well known in the medical world as the source of ."

"Wood does not occur in any plants of a lower grade than ferns; and in the higher plants in which it does occur it is chiefly, but not exclusively, in the stem. The main physiological function of wood is the as it grows erect and branches. Submerged s, buoyed up, as they are, by the water, do not form wood in their stems, nor, as a rule, do s, nor, at first, the succulent, flexible shoots of longer-lived plants. In , and in allied plants, the wood, though dense, consists largely of scattered longitudinal strands and often of cells of no great vertical length. Though there are also generally woody layers just below the surface of the stem, giving it considerable strength as a whole, the structure renders s useless as . For all practical purposes, therefore, wood is produced only by the highest sub-kingdom of the plant world, the seed-bearing or flowering plants, the or Phanerogámia of botanists."

"There is, in fact, thirteen times more land north of the than there is to the south of it. This alone must obviously have a profound influence on —the vast ocean area being almost exclusively represented so far as plant life is concerned, by and ; so far few s, such as the Grass-wracks (), inhabiting salt water."

"... ' is widely spread over the north temperate and colder regions of the . In Great Britain it is a common plant, being found in the whole of 's 112 counties, ... whilst its altitudinal range is from the coast to some 2,700 above sea-level.... Itself a characteristic plant of the drier parts of marshes and s, ... the habitat of ' is usually where the is considerable rather than excessive. It prefers soils with a high water capacity, such as or . Provided that its needs in respect to soil moisture are satisfied, it will grow almost anywhere: at the edges of marshes and rivers; in the damper parts of meadows; in roadside ditches; on the sea-coast; ... in damp hollows between sand-dunes; ... and even in woods, if the shade is not too dense. ... It readily colonizes moist ground which has been recently disturbed; and hence frequently establishes itself at the foot of railway embankments, &c."

"… He moves from personal to literary history with muscular seamlessness (much as he did in the earlier books). We leap from Melville to Robert Louis Stevenson to the inevitable Byron; from Elizabeth Barrett Browning – “ in ” – to Sylvia Plath to Virginia Woolf. There are passages about Oscar Wilde and , both of whom Hoare addressed in earlier, rather lighter-hearted biographies. There’s some lovely stuff on Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen – “he looks like a boy you knew at school”. … … RisingTideFallingStar is about the author’s relationship to the sea, but then that could be said about both Leviathan and The Sea Inside. What changes with each subsequent book is that the authorial gaze becomes increasingly inward and self-revealing, the tone more forlorn, until some passages in RisingTideFallingStar attain an almost posthumous air, as if the book might also serve as a suicide note."

"and factors, though frequently of great importance, are usually indirect in their action, influencing plants by modifying more direct factors. Thus s influence . Local differences of or affect , light, wind and drainage. Associated plants modify light and for each other. , s, etc., exert a far-reaching influence on the chemical and physical characters of the soil, and so on."

"It has been said, and with more than element of truth, that the least important part of education is the acquisition of knowledge. The facts of nature, as such, have intense fascination for the nature-lover, yet the value of a mere knowledge of facts may easily be over-estimated. Facts are really s, the value of which lies in the uses to which they may be put. Of far deeper importance, therefore, than the mere committing of facts to memory, is the acquisition of correct habits of study. Habits, that is, of patient and accurate observation, and of clear and logical interpretation and correlation of the facts observed. Facts may be forgotten, but habits remain."

"Each has two (sometimes three or more) thin flat ..., at the base of each of which is a swollen part, lined with hairs and containing a single seed. The seed is covered by a thin brown testa. If you scrape away the testa you will find the inside, consisting, as in the , of a , two s, and a very minute plumule. The cotyledons are green and long and narrow, and are coiled into a sort of ball ...; they too contain a store of food."

"Hoare's Leviathan is part natural history, part literary criticism, part economics and part memoir but at its heart is the author's lifelong obsession for all things whale. ... He traces his love of whales to reading Moby-Dick and vividly recalls his first actual encounter with a at . Hoare now frequently travels to as a volunteer on a identification programme."

"This fascination with the whale, like ’s report from Southampton Water, was an expression of Victorian fashion, a characteristic marriage of ingenious science and human curiosity. In England, live whales were delivered to aquaria in and (although one show was closed, for fear the flagrant activities of its performers should offend genteel dispositions), and in September 1877 a arrived in , in the centre of the world's greatest city."

"Behind me, bare s and es lie as cracks against the sky, evoking a peculiarly English landscape. In the late eighteenth century, drew the abbey's ruins in his sketchbook, tracing out the trees that had grown up around the crumbling gothic arches. In 1816 stayed at on his honeymoon, and painted its scudding clouds and billowing scenery. Theirs were records of a Romantic setting, an alternative reality of sensation and emotion. Hanging over the shore, the gnarled, enamelled branches are made darker by the reflected light of the sea and the stretch of bright shingle,"

"So, over the years, I was regularly asked such things as: Did Jesus exist? Was he mad? Did he ever heal anybody? And the essays included here, to a significant extent, reflect my attempts to answer them. In the world of continuing education, no questions are inadmissible, and no answers, as long as they are carefully and critically argued, are unacceptable."

"Although subsequent generations of Christians would become almost fixated by Jesus’ reputation as a miracle worker and produced ever more elaborate and fantastical traditions, there are good reasons to look closely at the earliest records of this activity."

"If more New Testament scholars could be encouraged to recognise that they are already, to some extent, engaged in psychological analysis of the historical Jesus, and that they are already, as a matter of course, examining data of real potential psychological significance, much could be gained."