Saturday Gallimaufry

1) The best thing I read online this week: Dodie Bellamy’s beautifully written elegy to lost San Francisco neighborhoods, triggered by the contemplation of some artworks that arose within them, now housed in local museums. Go now and read this brilliant piece of writing.

2) Although modern media have seized upon the Tudor period as the prime arena of interest for English history buffs, there are those happy few amongst us who believe that 14th-century England is, at the very least, equally fascinating. You've got your succession of three Edwards, the first being a power-mad Nazi, the second probably gay and according to one report executed per anal implementation of a red-hot poker, followed by Edward III, a military nut who master-minded the Hundred Years' War.

Then you've got your famine of 1315-17, the Black Death around 1358, your Geoffrey Chaucer, your fabulous Peasants’ Revolts of the 1380's, and, to top this astonishing century off, the deposition of Richard II, also possibly a gay person, in 1399. Really, just how exciting can medieval history possibly get?

Thus I was pleased to discover and join a King Edward II group on facebook this week, which referred me to an informative website where that unfortunate monarch still reigns, more specifically at http://edwardthesecond.com/.

[The modest bungalow in Wales where Edward II was born is named Caernarvon Castle. Photo by Daniel Mersey from the Castles of Wales website. Clicking embiggens].