borders closing
It’s sad to see a great store come to an end. We shall miss the amiable ambience of Borders bookshop in Oxford city centre. Gone are the comfortable arm chairs which encouraged customers to sit and browse. The aisles are crowded, the tills ringing away as they have never rung before. All stock is discounted by 20% or more.
I bought Robin Lane Fox on Alexander the Great, the Seamus Heaney Beowulf, and Charles Freeman on AD 381.
I’d tried the Lane Fox before and failed. Now the paperback edition looked less formidable than the immense volume of the hardback. And in the time that’s passed since my days in Lydney library I’ve become more familiar with the Lane Fox style and I do know rather more about the historical period. So when I cast my eyes over the first couple of paragraphs I found myself captivated by the sheer lucidity of the prose.
The Seamus Heaney is something I’ve looked at before among the Old English shelves in Blackwells. There was no special call for me to buy it then. Now I decided that, quite apart from the attraction of the translation, the pictures are worth the asking price. As I turned the pages I came across the Franks casket. A very evocative artefact.
AD 381 did not at first attract me. I skimmed through a couple of pages at random. Put it back on the shelf. Then picked it up again. I could have wished for AD 391 for that was the year the Roman Empire finally became officially Christian though not completely sure as to what brand of Christianity that was to be. Charles Freemen gives me lots of information I’ve been searching for for months. He covers the whole 4th century from Constantine’s military coup (though he doesn’t actually use those words) to the flood of laws promulgated by Theodosius and the repressive situations that followed. The chapter on Ambrose of Milan is especially informative. I have a feeling I shall be going in search of Freeman’s earlier book ‘The Closing of the Western Mind’. which has to do with the suppression of free thinking in the Greek Mode.
Freeman designates himself a freelance academic. When I’m in the mood I propose myself as an independent scholar. I admit the hubris but am considering adding it to my entry in the big red book which comes out each year. We’ll see if I’m still so minded some time after the Feast of the Circumcision.
There was a hard frost last night.
© francis cameron, oxford, 1 december 2009
