Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Feast of St John

Posted on 24/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

The feast of the nativity of St John the Baptist, which falls on 24 June, coincides, in the northern hemisphere, with the summer solstice, and combines, like its chronological antithesis 25 December, Christian and pre-Christian imagery and activity in its … Continue reading →

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Botany South and North: The Saga Concludes!

Posted on 22/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

On the 13th floor of the Arts Tower at the University of Sheffield, you will find the Department of Landscape, the most important such institution in the world, containing such luminaries as Professor Nigel Dunnett , currently helping the RHS … Continue reading →

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Botany South and North: A Two-Part Saga!

Posted on 20/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

A slightly dizzying 24-plus hours, which began at 6.45 on Thursday evening, with an after-hours tour of Cambridge University Botanic Garden, conducted by the incredibly knowledgeable volunteer guide Richard Price. We started on the Brookside lawn and moved along the … Continue reading →

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St Botolph’s Day

Posted on 17/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

Today, 17 June, is the feast of St Botolph: a fact which prompted me to visit his church in Cambridge, inside which, in the 45 years I have lived in the city, I have never previously ventured. Pausing only at … Continue reading →

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Wildflowers with Grit

Posted on 16/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

Acting on information received (thanks, M!), I went along a stretch of the cycle path alongside the Cambridge busway today to photograph a (relatively) rare plant now in flower. Rather than (as in my former life) concentrating on pedalling along … Continue reading →

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Open Gardens in Spitalfields

Posted on 14/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

Thanks to an alert from the estimable Gentle Author, we went on Saturday to the gardens open for the National Gardens Scheme in Spitalfields, London, and a splendid time we had. Purely by chance, we started at the smallest garden … Continue reading →

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Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal

Posted on 12/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

The Oxford World’s Classics edition of Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere and Alfoxden journals is one of the very few books I have read where the notes are as interesting as the text itself. Pamela Woof’s mastery of her material leaves no … Continue reading →

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An Hour in the Botanic Garden

Posted on 08/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

It seems quite ridiculous to say that Cambridge University Botanic Garden looked even more lovely and amazing today than it usually does, but this is none the less true. From the daisies on the lawn to the campion, lady’s smock … Continue reading →

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Barnabas Oley, Vicar of Great Gransden

Posted on 05/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

Near the end of John Walker’s selection of letters among the antiquarian great and good of Oxford in the early eighteenth century is an explanation from one John Worthington to Thomas Hearne about the author of ‘the prefatory account of … Continue reading →

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A Week at Waterloo

Posted on 02/06/2015 by carolinemmurray

I’ve just visited the excellent exhibition on Waterloo and its consequences – including literary ones – at Cambridge University Library: ‘A damned serious business: Waterloo 1815, the battle and its books’. It is thoroughly to be recommended – well laid … Continue reading →

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