Bex Lyons reports on ‘Medieval Myths and Walsall’s Wands’

Saturday 1st September 2018 saw Marianne Ailes and Bex Lyons from the project team in Walsall for an afternoon of Charlemagne-themed family activities at the Leather Museum. Walsall may seem a surprising place for an event celebrating Charlemagne, but the town boasts a rare, tangible reference to the medieval king.…

England’s Bayeux Tapestry by Marianne Ailes

It was a packed church at All Saints, Claverley on Saturday 21st July when more than 120 people gathered to hear a panel of speakers discuss the context and possible interpretations for the unusual frieze of battling knights depicted along the North wall of the aisle. The audience first had…

Marianne Ailes on Charlemagne at Leeds IMC

It has been exciting to see the Charlemagne project grow and interact with other researchers beyond the network. It was particularly good for our panel at Leeds to have two speakers who are from outside the project network: Elizabeth Munro, a research student at SOAS, and Dr Wendy Hoofnagle from…

Bruce Saunders on Adam de la Halle’s ‘Or est Baiars’

Nova’s concert in September 2017 was called ‘A Renaissance Menagerie’. Sourcing pieces for inclusion – music about animals or with animals in them – I came across the Baiars song, words and music both likely to have been by Adam de la Halle. The programme already included glorious soaring pieces…

Jane Everson – Charlemagne in Modena: Literature and Life

The conference held at the Accademia nazionale di Scienze, Lettere e Arti di Modena on January 18 and 19 brought together scholars of the Italian Carolingian narrative tradition and focussed especially on the figure of Luigi Pulci and Il Morgante maggiore. Pulci claims that the stories of Charlemagne have been…