More Noted Things
XL, an early modern edition of the festival, goes up at jliedl.ca on Sunday 15 June. Use the form to send nominations of the best in early modern history blogging since 20 April.Oxoniensis, Mercurius Rusticus, and Edward Vallance discuss a recent decision that the British Library will no longer microfilm UK theses. Students will be asked to submit electronic copies of their thesis to their home institution, which will decide the conditions under which it will be made available to other readers. There's disagreement about whether this is a step forward or backward.
Mary Beard reports that the BBC's Reith Lectures aren't what they used to be. In 1948, Bertrand Russell launched them with 54 minutes per lecture. This year, Yale's Jonathan Spence had only 20 minutes to say something intelligent about Confucianism. The rest of his time was given to answering questions from illustrious guests, like the archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster. Incidentally, Wikipedia reports that"Jonathan Spence was prime minister of the American Historical Association for the 2004-2005 term."*
*Update: The sentence is now corrected.
Botany is National Destiny: Andrea Wulf,"The politics of botany," TLS, 30 May, reviews Philip J. Pauly's Fruits and Plains: The horticultural transformation of America. Jennifer Potter,"People, plants and the British psyche," TLS, 4 June, reviews Mary and John Gribbin's Flower Hunters and Andrea Wulf's The Brother Gardners: Botany, Empire and the birth of an obsession.
Frank McLynn,"Spartans of the Plain," Literary Review, nd, reviews Pekka Hämäläinen's The Comanche Empire.
Finally, OTR.Network Library is a free resource for over 12,000 vintage radio programs. Alas, I remember most of them. Elsewhere, I listened to an episode of"Land of the Lost," a Saturday morning program for children. Red Lantern, the talking fish, gives Billy and Isabel the magic seaweed that lets them follow him to adventures at the bottom of the sea. I suppose you had to be there.