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20 Feb, 4 tweets, 2 min read
"Even among philosophers, the passion for fame is the last weakness to be discarded" - Tacitus
"That last infirmity of noble mind," as Milton put it...
The idea that I am on Twitter to promote such few, modest achievements as I have recorded over the course of the past ten years is, of course, an utter calumny.
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More from @holland_tom

Tom Holland Profile picture
21 Feb
Up bright & early for today's stroll through the capital: a tour of Roman London. We shall walk the line of the city walls, and then visit the sites of its vanished monuments. (The archaeological sites, alas, will be shut, but there is always the imagination...) #Londinium
London, unlike most provincial capitals, was a purely Roman foundation. It emerged as it did for the same reason it has always been the greatest city in Britain whenever the southern lowlands are under a unitary authority: it is where the Thames is both navigable & bridgeable.
What did Londinium look like? This is the only known Roman portrayal of the city: a celebration of the recapture of Britain from rebel warlords by Constantius Chlorus, father of Constantine the Great. We know it's London because the letters LON appear below the kneeling figure.
Read 45 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
15 Feb
Fancy Burns to get a redemptive ton. #INDvENG
Well, he's started well. And in his helmet, there is more than a hint of Sutton Hoo. Backing my punt here.
Excellent.
Read 4 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
25 Jan
For this week's bout of Government-mandated exercise, @sadieholland67 & I are going to visit all the churches mentioned in the nursery rhyme #OrangesAndLemons*

* The idea for this came from someone who messaged me about doing the same here on Twitter. Whoever you were, thank u!
#OrangesAndLemons is an ancient tune: people were dancing to it in the 1660s, & so its lyrics may bear the stamp of that fateful decade. But probably not - the earliest version yet found in print dates to 1744 (Tom Thumb's Pretty Song Book).
There are many versions of the lyrics. The earliest begins:

'2 sticks & an apple, Ring ye bells at Whitechapel,
Old father bald pate, Ring ye bells Aldgate,
Maids in white aprons, Ring ye bells at St Catherines,
Oranges & lemons, Ring ye bells at St Clements.'
Read 35 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
17 Jan
To the Victoria Embankment, there to take our Government-mandated exercise by following the lines of two waterways, the Bloomsbury Ditch & the #CockAndPye Ditch. These were channels which drained the marshland that surrounded the village of St Giles - current-day Covent Garden.
The walk is one devised by @teabolton in the second volume of his guide to London’s lost rivers, & follows the line of the 2 linked ditches from the Thames at Victoria Embankment Gardens & then back to Cleopatra’s Needle. #CockAndPye
"With no known natural watercourses between the Fleet, to the east, and the Tyburn, to the west, Covent Garden and Soho are gaps in the London river map. It is, however, quite possible that the ditches rechannelled small streams that existed before the earliest maps" - @teabolton
Read 32 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
16 Jan
“May the Father bless you.
May the + Son of God heal you.
May the Holy Spirit enlighten you,
guard your body, save your soul.”

A prayer from the Sarum Rite, as @SalisburyCath becomes “the UK’s most spectacular and historic vaccination centre”. theguardian.com/world/2021/jan…
So moved by this.
Lichfield as well. The cathedral is dedicated to St Chad, who died in a time of plague (“a mortality,” as Bede puts it, “sent from heaven”), & at whose tomb many miracles of healing were performed.
Read 5 tweets
Tom Holland Profile picture
15 Jan
I’ve bought a loaf of bread that looks like the fossil of a proto-hominid skull...
I have successfully trepanned it
The joy of Twitter: I get to have Chris Stringer deliver his verdict on my loaf!
Read 4 tweets

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