RIP Prince Philip: a cricketer who always called Istanbul Constantinople, had a fascination with UFOs, & who was - as the Queen still is - a living link to the heroism of the generations that lived through the Second World War.
I love this photo! The best one of the Queen & Prince Philip together I think I’ve ever seen.
This is wonderful news! Over the course of the walks I've been doing round London, I've kept coming back to @AllHallowsTower: a church I had never visited before this past year, but which is as moving & fascinating a building as any in the capital.
Here are the details of the visit I made a few weeks back, when I was doing a tour of Anglo-Saxon sites across London. @AllHallowsTower has what I think is the city's only physical remnant of the Anglo-Saxon period on open display.
A new book I know nothing about, except that it arrived in the post today, looks right up my street, & I am now going to curl up & make it my Easter read...
Anne Wroe’s ‘biography’ of Pilate is a book I absolutely loved - so am definitely on for another about the man who, in the Creed, serves as the representative of all earthly power
"The writer of Luke - like the other gospel-writers - is totally uninterested in 'redeeming' the Roman prefect. That Pilate declares Jesus innocent deepens his guilt."
Dusenbury stimulatingly taking on the exegetical consensus there...
Very grateful to everyone who has followed my walk today, and enjoyed it. If it has helped people to appreciate what an infinitely fascinating city London is, as doing it has certainly helped me to appreciate it, I am very happy!
If it is not too cheeky, could I ask anyone who is in a giving mood to consider sponsoring me on a monster 40 mile walk I am doing on St George's Day from one side of London to the other? It is along an #EliteSportsLayLine! And in the very best of causes. givergy.uk/tomholland/?co…
Today, having already walked Roman & Anglo-Saxon London, it is time to move on to the medieval sites in the capital. These, of course, are concentrated within the walls of what had once been the Roman city, but not exclusively so. There is also Westminster, Southwark - & beyond.
Already, by 1066, London was England’s largest, richest & most important urban centre. William the Conqueror, rather than advancing directly on the city after Hastings, made an intimidating march across the s-east before capturing it from the north.
“It is a most spacious city, full of evil inhabitants, and richer than anywhere else in the kingdom. Protected on the left by walls and on the right by the river, it fears neither armies nor capture by guile” – Guy of Amiens (c. 1067) #EvilInhabitants