why do I keep going back?

why do I keep going back to the middle ages? it’s something to do with mercers’ school in the 1930s and early ‘40s. a preRaphaelite medievalism with knights in shining armour mounted on snowy white steeds galloping off on a quest to find the holy grail and to rescue fair maidens in distress. By no means the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. but then it was a time and a western world of delusion. when I invented not so much as a better mousetrap, no one was going to come calling even though I lived in a log cabin in the depths of a forest. and the great and glorious british empire on which the sun never set was not the great omnipotent deliverer of enlightenment to the “poor ignorant natives” in the far corners of the globe. even when we’re broke we like to pretend. let’s go out and buy a couple of aircraft carriers. on tick ..

then there were medieval studies at the university of sydney where I was invited in to make up the numbers and possibly go forward to the establishment of a faculty. that was a good start to an area of history I’d not previously explored. pity that the department of classical studies insisted we begin our history in 1476 and not a day before. only in my silver years did I begin to sort out why so much happened as it did and how the bishop checkmated the imperial king .. .. but, please, let’s not go back now to the 4th century. it behaves like an incubus

and my 1977 half sabbatical when I went off to europe to its libraries and monasteries in search of the earliest manuscripts of latin liturgical chant and also of contextual artefacts in the towns villages and countryside. the joys of a eurail pass and the beautiful intercontinental trains which could begin in Barcelona and end as a morning commuter in Oslo in good time to be let in before the official opening time to see the viking ships and discover it was not all rape and pillage. they had musical instruments, for odin’s sake ..

francis cameron

oxford 23 august 2014