Up: BAD HABITS
500K to spare? Four pages of calfskin, 1,300 year old manuscript could be yours in the Sotheby’s summer sale next month. In De Laude Virginitatis [In Praise of Virginity], Anglo-Saxon cleric Aldhelm advises the nuns of Barking Abbey to avoid garments which might ‘set off’ the body and ‘nourish the fires of sexual anticipation.’ But call off the Slutwalk: given this is the first known text aimed exclusively at a female readership, the proto-feminist bishop is doing it for the sisters.
Up: PUPPY LOVE
Hands up who wants to see a video of Somerset Maugham cuddling puppies? The footage is especially poignant in light of the notorious dog-frisbeeing incident revealed in Selina Hastings’ 2009 biography.
Up: IMMODESTY
Salman Rushdie celebrated his 65th birthday this week with a ‘wild’ party at the Four Seasons in New York. In place of the traditional balloon and slice of cake, guests were presented with a leather-bound book containing a scroll of Rushdie’s writings.
Down: CROYDON
As if Kate Moss and Roy Hodgson weren’t enough, Croydon council claimed Lord Byron as one of the borough’s ’50 notable people’ in its failed bid for city status earlier this year. When it was pointed out the poet hailed from more genteel Marylebone, embarrassed councillors said they had ‘confused’ him with a family of hoteliers from nearby Coulsdon.
Down: SCAREMONGERING
‘Classic children’s literary heroes are dying out’ wails the Guardian books blog, citing a tiny online survey by the University of Worcester that revealed 18% of 7-14 year-olds thought Aslan was a giraffe, while a highly suspect 50% claimed never to have heard of Harry Potter. The Telegraph, meanwhile, reports that ‘children with short attention spans [are] &”failing to read books”’, based on the ‘news’ that of 400 teachers polled by publishers Pearson ‘more than four-in-10′ believed children ‘failed to read for pleasure after the age of 11’. The educational declinism fuelled by silly stories like these is not conducive to good policy-making.
Down: ORIGINALITY
Trendy author Jonah Lehrer has apologised after being caught plagiarising his own articles, narrowly escaping the sack from the New Yorker. How quaint that something that’s long been standard practice in British journalism still has the power to cause scandal in the States. Whatever they would make of Richard Littlejohn? In related news, Jay-Z is being sued for allegedly plagiarising his memoirs.
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Anna Baddeley
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