Today's (24 Feb) episode of i>A History of the World in 100 Objects</i> on BBC Radio Four was on the Basse Yutz flagons, and is an excellent, clear statement on the whole Celticism issue. Highly recommended.
The programme homepage is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/explorerflash/#
Listen again here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/explorerflash/#

The hero and heroine of the book I'm currently reading have just taken a side trip to Wales. They are staying in 'the city of Rhondda' in order to visit the offices of several different mining companies. In the mid 1990s.
Epic fail. Homework, please, Ms Famous Romantic Novelist. (Mind you, I should have known. It's mostly set in a timeless Irish village -- you know the kind, with a musical pub, no television, almost no awareness of the outside world, filled with warm-hearted stereotypes.)

Skirt of the day: circular teal cotton.

Celts paper started. 200 words so far. Don't want to...

Over the course of the last 25 years or so, I've had the curious fate of doing two things that very many people find fascinating: studying the history, literature and languages of the Celtic- and Gaelic-speaking peoples of the British Isles, and writing. It's unusual and it is, I recognise, privileged. I was very lucky: I went from an ordinary state-funded school (a comprehensive, for British readers) to an elite university without having any family tradition of this, the 'right' class background or inherited money. I studied an obscure subject and won state funding to pursue and even more obscure subset of that subject at PhD level. I even managed (with a lot of effort) to gain jobs in which I was able to continue working in this field, both as researcher and teacher. And then I got a novel published. That's a lot of big things. I'm lucky or odd or both. And I know it. I accept that my academic background and speciality are of interest to others. I am usually fairly happy to talk about it, to listen to others' ideas and to offer bibliography, information and ideas.
( But then there's <b>that</b> conversation.Collapse )