Quodlibeta

Isidore of Seville (c.560 - 636) was one of the most influential authors of the early Middle Ages. Although he was a long-serving bishop, he wrote on secular subjects as well as religious ones. He’s best known for his Etymologies, an encyclopaedia in...

I suffer from an addiction. It’s not a craving for alcohol, tobacco or some other substance. My poisons are computer games like Civilization and Europa Universalis. Civilization is up to its sixth iteration now. I was playing the first version at university...

Why did modern science arise in western Europe and nowhere else? If you ever meet a historian of science, for goodness sake, don’t ask them that question. It implies that the West enjoyed some sort of superiority compared to ancient Greece, imperial...

My grandmother, Nana, died at the age of 101 late last year. Here's my tribute from her funeral.
Nineteen sixteen seems a very long time ago. It was the year of the Battle of the Somme in the midst of the Great War. But in June that year, just a week before that great battle started, there was another event, less remarked by historians: the birth...