History Today Hat-trick: The REAL Robin Hood

For the third month in a row, images from a Parker Library manuscript are used to illustrate an article in History Today. This article, by Sean McGlynn, puts forward yet another candidate for the real-life inspiration behind the famous mythical outlaw. The new contender is not from Yorkshire, Nottingham or Lincoln but Kent. And his...

Article in ‘History Today’: Egbert’s England

January's issue of History Today contained an article about King Hákon I of Norway, the so-called foster-son of King Athelstan, illustrated with the contemporary image of Athelstan from CCCC MS 183. An article in this month's issue of History Today focuses on another Parker Library manuscript, CCCC MS 339. The first text in the manuscript...

Article in “History Today” on Hákon Aðalsteinsfostri

The January  issue of History Today includes an article by Synnøve Veinan Hellerud on Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri. Synnøve Veinan Hellerud, author of  Oslo, a Thousand-Year History, explains that Hákon I, or Haakon the Good, nicknamed "Athelstan's foster-son", strove to make Norway more like his mentor's realm, a well-organised Christian kingdom.  Hákon was the youngest son of...

Goodbye to Canterbury

The outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, reflects on the last 10 years in a television programme next week. The hour-long broadcast, which will go out on New Year's Day on BBC2 at 5.30pm, looks back over Dr Williams' tenure as Archbishop; for more details see http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2013/01/goodbye-to-canterbury.html. Some of the footage for the programme...

Michael Wood filming in the Parker Library

We had the pleasure recently of hosting a visit by the historian and presenter  Michael Wood and his team. The Parker Library and its manuscripts, including the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, will be featured in three programmes that the team  are filming for a new BBC series. The trilogy of films, scheduled for broadcast in Autumn 2013...

Library Impressions

This was the scene in the library last week when the impressionist Jon Culshaw visited with a TV crew to talk to Dr Rory Naismith of the ASNC department and to look at some of our Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Jon is filming a series called  Britain's Secret Treasures for ITV about various hoards and other archaeological...

Viking Apocalypse

The Parker Library features in an upcoming documentary on the National Geographic TV channel. The programme, entitled 'Viking Apocalypse' looks at the mass grave uncovered by archaeologists near Ridgeway Hill in Dorset in 2009. The grave contained the skeletons of 54 men, mostly in their teens or twenties, and all had been dismembered; their skulls...