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Post by jamesdoig on Aug 1, 2017 21:41:56 GMT
There's quite a nice Jamesian short story by Michael Harrison in The London Mystery Magazine #19: LMM19 LMM19-2 Like the monster on page 2: LMM19-3
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Post by ropardoe on Aug 2, 2017 9:17:51 GMT
Is this the same Michael Harrison as wrote The London that was Rome? It's one of my favourite nut books (I'm a connoisseur of nut books), and like the best of them it perhaps contains a kernel of truth (inadvertent pun!). The book also inspired one of Roger Johnson's best stories, "The Soldier".
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Post by jamesdoig on Aug 2, 2017 10:52:39 GMT
Is this the same Michael Harrison as wrote The London that was Rome? It's one of my favourite nut books (I'm a connoisseur of nut books), and like the best of them it perhaps contains a kernel of truth (inadvertent pun!). The book also inspired one of Roger Johnson's best stories, "The Soldier". I reckon it must be this bloke: fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Harrison who seems the sort to have written a decent nut book.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 2, 2017 10:56:44 GMT
Is this the same Michael Harrison as wrote The London that was Rome? It's one of my favourite nut books (I'm a connoisseur of nut books), and like the best of them it perhaps contains a kernel of truth (inadvertent pun!). The book also inspired one of Roger Johnson's best stories, "The Soldier". I like nut books. It is very difficult to find any information about this particular nut book, however. What is its nutty thesis?
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Post by Michael Connolly on Aug 2, 2017 11:24:24 GMT
Is this the same Michael Harrison as wrote The London that was Rome? It's one of my favourite nut books (I'm a connoisseur of nut books), and like the best of them it perhaps contains a kernel of truth (inadvertent pun!). The book also inspired one of Roger Johnson's best stories, "The Soldier". What kind of book is this?
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 2, 2017 11:29:44 GMT
What kind of book is this? "Speculation" (a category I saw in a Borders bookstore in Orange County many years ago)?
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Post by ropardoe on Aug 2, 2017 17:51:58 GMT
Is this the same Michael Harrison as wrote The London that was Rome? It's one of my favourite nut books (I'm a connoisseur of nut books), and like the best of them it perhaps contains a kernel of truth (inadvertent pun!). The book also inspired one of Roger Johnson's best stories, "The Soldier". What kind of book is this? Definitely not a nut book. I'm assuming you know enough about it to be aware of the fact that the "complete documentation" proves reasonably conclusively that all the medieval legends about Pope Joan are NOT based on fact?
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Post by ropardoe on Aug 2, 2017 17:56:24 GMT
Is this the same Michael Harrison as wrote The London that was Rome? It's one of my favourite nut books (I'm a connoisseur of nut books), and like the best of them it perhaps contains a kernel of truth (inadvertent pun!). The book also inspired one of Roger Johnson's best stories, "The Soldier". I like nut books. It is very difficult to find any information about this particular nut book, however. What is its nutty thesis? Michael Harrison's thesis is that many of the old churches and other locations in London have names based on the Roman sites they were built on. Thus St Dionis Backchurch was built on the site of a temple of Dionysus Bacchus. St Magnus Martyr was built on the site of a temple to Magna Mater, i.e. Cybele. Now some of these do make sense to me, but most don't (including Dionis Backchurch and Magnus Martyr).
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Post by ropardoe on Aug 2, 2017 17:59:39 GMT
What kind of book is this? "Speculation" (a category I saw in a Borders bookstore in Orange County many years ago)? Er, if you knew how much effort we put into translating all the old medieval Latin sources you wouldn't call it speculation! Which is not to say that my knowledge of medieval Latin hasn't come in useful since in relation to M.R. James!
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 2, 2017 18:25:35 GMT
I like nut books. It is very difficult to find any information about this particular nut book, however. What is its nutty thesis? Michael Harrison's thesis is that many of the old churches and other locations in London have names based on the Roman sites they were built on. Thus St Dionis Backchurch was built on the site of a temple of Dionysus Bacchus. St Magnus Martyr was built on the site of a temple to Magna Mater, i.e. Cybele. Now some of these do make sense to me, but most don't (including Dionis Backchurch and Magnus Martyr). I see; thanks! That seems relatively low-key for the genre. A bolder author would have claimed that this proves Rome was actually London. A favorite of mine is Felice Vinci's THE BALTIC ORIGINS OF HOMER'S EPIC TALES, in which etymology (and some geography) is used to argue that the Trojan war actually took place in Scandinavia, among other things. I must also mention my own theory that the ancient Egyptians, builders of the pyramids, were actually Germans. For what is "pharaoh" if not the German word "führer"?
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 2, 2017 18:30:25 GMT
"Speculation" (a category I saw in a Borders bookstore in Orange County many years ago)? Er, if you knew how much effort we put into translating all the old medieval Latin sources you wouldn't call it speculation! Which is not to say that my knowledge of medieval Latin hasn't come in useful since in relation to M.R. James! Nevertheless, that is the section those people in California would have put your book in. There is nothing we can do about it. It may comfort you somewhat to know that that bookstore, along with all other Borders stores, has since vanished from the face of the earth.
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Post by ropardoe on Aug 3, 2017 8:16:25 GMT
Er, if you knew how much effort we put into translating all the old medieval Latin sources you wouldn't call it speculation! Which is not to say that my knowledge of medieval Latin hasn't come in useful since in relation to M.R. James! Nevertheless, that is the section those people in California would have put your book in. There is nothing we can do about it. It may comfort you somewhat to know that that bookstore, along with all other Borders stores, has since vanished from the face of the earth. I wasn't in the best of moods last night, having just returned home from some aggro with an elderly relative, so apologies if I came over all grumpy! I don't think it does make me feel any better that the bookshop in question has closed. I miss our local Borders in Ellesmere Port, which was the one where Ramsey worked for a time and wrote about. It had a great quiz night and since I'm addicted to general knowledge quizzes, we did quite nicely for book vouchers out of it!
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Post by jamesdoig on Aug 3, 2017 8:34:13 GMT
Which is not to say that my knowledge of medieval Latin hasn't come in useful since in relation to M.R. James! So you learnt medieval Latin before you got interested in MRJ? As a teenager I had to learn Old English after reading The Lord of the Rings and ended up studying medieval history.
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Post by ropardoe on Aug 3, 2017 11:12:10 GMT
Which is not to say that my knowledge of medieval Latin hasn't come in useful since in relation to M.R. James! So you learnt medieval Latin before you got interested in MRJ? As a teenager I had to learn Old English after reading The Lord of the Rings and ended up studying medieval history. The Pope Joan book was written in the late eighties after several years of research so it actually postdates the beginning of Ghosts & Scholars in 1979 . I had a smattering of pre-existing Latin from doing it at grammar school, but I failed my 'O' level dismally, so pretty much started from scratch. I still wouldn't be able to translate anything but the most basic sentences from English into Latin (cause of my downfall at school, I think), but I'm reasonably okay at Latin into English. And it's a skill I keep polished as it often comes in handy (more often than folk might think!).
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Post by Michael Connolly on Aug 3, 2017 12:26:06 GMT
So you learnt medieval Latin before you got interested in MRJ? As a teenager I had to learn Old English after reading The Lord of the Rings and ended up studying medieval history. The Pope Joan book was written in the late eighties after several years of research so it actually postdates the beginning of Ghosts & Scholars in 1979 . I had a smattering of pre-existing Latin from doing it at grammar school, but I failed my 'O' level dismally, so pretty much started from scratch. I still wouldn't be able to translate anything but the most basic sentences from English into Latin (cause of my downfall at school, I think), but I'm reasonably okay at Latin into English. And it's a skill I keep polished as it often comes in handy (more often than folk might think!). I did Latin too. All I can remember is this poem: Latin is a language, Dead as Dead Can Be, First it Killed the Romans, Now It's Killing Me.
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