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EXPLAINED: Chaucer | Vintage Vibes

‘Heath Ledger knocked my tooth out jousting with a broom’: how we made A Knight’s Tale

‘The lances were made of balsa wood and filled with uncooked spaghetti – so that when they broke, there’d be an explosion of what looked like splinters’

The Guardian - UK

From the Miller’s Tale to King Lear’s roaring sea, a history of flooding in literature

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale is renowned for its salacious storyline of sexual misadventure. Set in 14th-century Oxford, it tells the tale of John the Carpenter, a husband so terrified that another “Noah’s flood” is coming to drown the world that he sleeps in a basket in the attic – freeing…

The Conversation

Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road review – ‘I could look forever at these passing moments in cosmic colours’

The Japanese master’s weightless gaze birthed not only French impressionism but also the whole ideal of art as a way of capturing momentary glimpses of everyday joy

The Guardian - UK

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‘The violence is relentless. I don’t understand it’: Simon Russell Beale faces up to Shakespeare’s goriest play

The celebrated actor has long struggled with the murder and dismemberment at the heart of Titus Andronicus. Now, at 64, he is finally tackling a play that ‘teeters on the edge of acceptability’ – but he’s made a few changes

The Guardian - UK

Misspoke: The long and winding road to becoming a political weasel word

During the Sept. 24, 2024, debate, Democratic vice presidential hopeful Tim Walz said he “misspoke” when asked to clarify his story of being in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square crackdown in June 1989.

The Conversation

Shakespeare, Beowulf and Chaucer could be back in the NZ English curriculum – should they be?

For the second time in as many years, New Zealand’s secondary school English curriculum will be rewritten, a move which has generated disquiet from teachers and academics alike.

The Conversation

A modern pilgrimage through Herefordshire’s Golden Valley

With nights spent in ancient churches and wayfarers’ meals at farms and pubs, this spiritual four-day walk is all about the journey – and rural England at its finest

The Guardian - UK

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24 of the best-selling novels of all time to read in 2024

Increase your cultural capital and expand your worldview

Evening Standard

At £38,700 for a foreign-born spouse, how many could the Tories afford?

James Cleverly’s new anti-immigration policy, the latest desperate act of a desperate government, means 75% of the population need to be careful who they fall in love with

The Guardian - UK

Rupert Murdoch has a thing for women aged 66. But what could be in it for them?

The media mogul’s new girlfriend, just like recent exes, falls within his favourite demographic

The Guardian - UK

Foraging, art and history in the Kent Downs

Nature and tales of the past are brought to life along the North Downs Way and around Canterbury by new projects engaging visitors with local knowledge and ages-old skills

The Guardian - UK

St Valentine has nothing to do with love or romance and the day was just made up

Poets have created the story that inspired Valentine's Day

Wales Online

Valentine’s Day’s connection with love was probably invented by Chaucer and other 14th-century poets

As an undergraduate, on a tour of Europe, I happened to step into the church where Saint Valentine’s head was kept. The tour guide told us a (likely fictitious) story about Saint Valentine performing forbidden marriages for persecuted Christians under the Roman emperor Claudius Gothicus (possibly 269-270 AD). Valentine was…

The Conversation

Commentary: Clinging to old classics can go hand in hand with banning books

Too often, we forget that fights about what we shouldn’t read are also battles over what we should read. And that every time someone attempts to ban Toni Morrison or Ta-Nehisi Coates, they’re also trying to corral our kids back to Hawthorne and Hemingway, Dante and Dickens.

Los Angeles Times

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The Hindu

Tweezing highbrows

At the elegant soiree where conversations ranged from the God Particle to Pavlov’s dogs, Srinivasa Ramanujan to A K Ramanujan, G H Hardy to Thomas Hardy...

The Guardian - US

From doing laundry to washing the dishes: unpaid work is bad for our mental health

Women do the majority of unpaid labor – and it creates a taxing mental load

Liverpool Echo

Taylor Swift course to be offered at Texas university

The Shake It Off singer’s work will feature alongside literary giants such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats and Plath

The Conversation

The book that changed me: Hilda Lewis' The Gentle Falcon, a vivid, touching tale of the court of a medieval child queen

Fiction has a way of planting seeds in the mind that can germinate for a long time before they spread into root systems or blossom into conscious ideas. A book can change you dramatically overnight, but it can also take its own sweet time.

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The Guardian - UK

Country diary: Goldfinches one, two, three, lift up into the boughs of the pear tree

Creedy Valley, Devon: Their irresistible colour and song nearly proved their ultimate downfall. How lucky we are to still be witness to their charms

The Guardian - UK

Darling buds: books, music, theatre and more with spring in their hearts

From Chaucer’s elemental epic to Gnarls Barkley’s alternative take on gospel, our critics suggest popular culture inspired by the return of sunnier skies

The Guardian - UK

Pere Ubu’s David Thomas: ‘I expect rock music to be smart’

Rolling Stone said that rock’n’roll peaked with Pere Ubu’s debut album. Now, after two near-death experiences, the ‘avant garage’ band are back – with an adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

Los Angeles Times

Mexican cross-country skier won't let pain, age or failure end her Olympic dream

LOS ANGELES — Chaucer wrote that time and tide wait for no man. But he didn't say anything about women, and that's a loophole Karla Schleske believes is big enough to accommodate her dream of skiing in the Winter Olympics.

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