St Benedict Biscop

Here's a very good writeup on St Benedict Biscop, an Anglo-Saxon Benedictine who founded the abbeys of Wearmouth and Jarrow in 674 A. D.

Glorious old England

A remarkable sense of Anglophilia is produced when your current reading consists of Robert Louis Stevenson's Puck of Pook's Hill and James Herriot's books.

Boris Johnson on homemade jam

Here's a delightful article in the Telegraph from the then-MP from Henley, now (if I recall correctly) the mayor of London.

Hey Britons...

• Popular Basis of Political Authority
• Right of Revolution
• Rights
• Equality
• Property
• Constitutional Government

A bit of Gloucestershire in the South Pacific

The entire population of a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean has been found to speak with a West Country accent – because the residents all descend from one man from Gloucestershire.

Rush in Manchester

Here's a great review of Rush's recent concert in Manchester. The money quote:

It's a happy irony that, in this era obsessed with youth, celebrity and fame, it is a trio of unfashionable veterans who can still show the young 'uns how to put on a rock show.

The decline and fall of the moustache

A fun article in the Telegraph, via the Irish Elk. An excerpt:

Strict etiquette was enforced regarding the care of the fashionable accessory. In the 1880s, Rudyard Kipling wrote of a woman who complained that being kissed by a man who did not wax his moustache was like eating an egg without salt.

When the First World War began, it was compulsory for all British officers to have a moustache. Poignantly, that edict was revoked in October 1916, because the new recruits were so young that some could not rustle up more than a thin, mousey streak.

Lives of the English Martyrs

Via Google Books: Lives of the English Martyrs Declared Blessed by Pope Leo XIII. in 1886 and 1895:

• volume 1 of 2
• volume 2 of 2