In this episode, we look at the aftermath of the English Civil War in the British Isles. Fear of a royalist insurgency in England and support for Charles Stuart in Scotland and Ireland led to a renewal of war and the rise of Oliver Cromwell as the official head of the New Model A ...عرض المزيد
Episode 191: A Vision of the Future
As the English Civil War raged in the 1640s, English grammarians wrote about several developments in the language, including a new sound appearing in the word “vision” and new ways of describing future actions and events. The military conflict was also shaping the language by con ...عرض المزيد
The Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries was a time of rediscovery. With Florence as its epicentre, it saw a revival of the art, culture and philosophy of ancient Greek and Rome, triggering huge shifts in creativity and thought. But what prompted such a hugely influential m ...عرض المزيد
On this episode of the podcast, we begin learning about the Renaissance. We first discuss the Black Death, a bacterial plague that wiped out 30-60% of the population of Europe. We examine how the population crisis caused by the Black Death led to an economic and political crisis ...عرض المزيد
Modern English speakers struggle to find sexual terms that aren’t either obscene or scientific, but that wasn’t always the case. In a recent review of Jenni Nuttall’s Mother Tongue, Mary Wellesley connects our linguistic squeamishness to changing ideas about women and sexuality. ...عرض المزيد