literature – Ad fontes

How not to write a biography – a cautionary tale

In 1980, the Clarendon Press published the first volume of a projected multi-volume biography of the Duc de Choiseul, Louis XV’s foreign minister who is often blamed for France’s catastrophic defeats in the Seven Years’ War, and therefore for a major share of the governmental failures of the Ancien Régime which precipitated the FrenchContinue reading “How not to write a biography – a cautionary tale”

Revisiting Anglican Classics: Jane Austen at 250

250 years ago a baby girl was born in a country rectory in southern England. She was the seventh child for her parents George and Cassandra within ten years. She was baptised privately in her father’s church within a day – in those times of high infant mortality and dread of dying unbaptised, aContinue reading “Revisiting Anglican Classics: Jane Austen at 250”