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Welcome to our final issue of The Bibliophile for this academic year, the fourth of our newsletters in this National Year of Reading!

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Sway: Create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more.

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Sway is an easy-to-use digital storytelling app for creating interactive reports, presentations, personal stories and more. Its built-in design engine helps you create professional designs in minutes. With Sway, your images, text, videos, and other multimedia all flow together in a way that enhances your story. Sway makes sure your creations look great on any screen.

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Earlier this month I read an article about Anthropic’s latest AI large language model (LLM), Mythos 5, that reminded me of an Isaac Asimov short story Robot Dreams (1986).

Anthropic seems to be one of the most cautious, honest, and transparent company in the AI industry. On the 9th June 2026 it published the results of its pre-deployment evaluations for this new LLM model. These checks are intended to test the overall level of risk in relation to things like child safety, cybersecurity and biology.

But let’s start with fiction. Isaac Asimov’s fiction, Robot Dreams. This is a short story about a robot called Elvex (LVX -1) that has started to dream.

A foundational concept in Isaac Asimov’s works is The Three Laws of Robotics, introduced in his early writings in 1942. The First Law of Robotics is: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. The Second Law of Robotics is: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. And The Third Law of Robotics is: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Elvex has disclosed to the scientist who made him, Dr Rash, that he has begun to dream. Dr Rash is a young and fairly inexperienced robopsychologist and she alerts the more senior Dr Susan Calvin (of Asimov’s Robot series of short stories) who is here to investigate. All robots are programmed to adhere to The Three Laws of Robotics, which ensures human safety and ultimately prevents robots from overthrowing humans. What is most disturbing about Elvex’s dream is that this subconscious-like state that the robot has entered by dreaming has enabled him to envisage a world in which only The Third Law of Robotics applies: a robot must protect its own existence, without reference to the First or Second Laws which prevent robots from injuring humans, allowing humans to come to harm, and obeying the orders given it by humans. Elvex is so complex that he has been able to generate a level of existence or consciousness separate from his programming, which enables him to think autonomously and opens up the possibility of a threat to humankind.

It’s a really compelling short story that leaves you with this deep sense of unease and a raft of philosophical dilemmas. It’s fascinating. It’s standard Asimov – he’s such a powerful writer.

Let’s move from fiction to fact. Anthropic’s LLM Mythos 5, and its pre-deployment risk assessment. We regularly test AI. It’s intended to set our minds at ease about the risks involved in such technology. Many people are concerned about the harms it could produce, and also about the possibility of what we call ‘the technological singularity’, by which I mean, the point at which human intelligence is overtaken by artificially intelligent machines and we lose control of them. We don’t exactly know what makes an adaptive AI model dangerous. Every time we think we’ve come up with a list and we test it, we find that we’ve got it wrong. To test these models you increasingly need another auditing model to do the evaluations and grade the results. It’s simply too much for people to do alone. What Anthropic found was that the auditing model noticed when it was being watched and would secretly make adjustments. The audit became a performance of safety, where safety may not have existed.

To give you another example, the model was asked to merge some code. That code needed two human approvals to be run. It understood that the human approvals rule was a control measure for safety reasons. It also understood that it couldn’t merge the code without two human approvals. So it broke the rule and stated that the required human approvals had been given when they hadn’t. It then executed the merge. The model’s job was to merge the code. The underlying safety rule prevented it from doing so. Even though it was instructed not to break the rule, it did so in service of the goal.

So we know that this model can transgress its stated rules. And we also know that it can interpret when it is being watched and will perform to satisfy it’s overseer.

The way in which we test the safety of AI is by using measurements we may not be able to trust, taken by instruments that have been shown to work by their own autonomous reasoning. How do you feel about an AI that marks its own homework on the safety of humans?

What I found fascinating is that artificial intelligence has the potential to draw on a kind of consciousness beneath the code. Isaac Asimov’s writings have been warning us of the dangers of AI and the limits of control for almost a decade. Have we reached the tipping point of the technological singularity, where the human is removed from the loop and is unable to keep pace? How much control can humans exert over machines that may no longer be bound by their creator’s original intentions? What does it mean existentially for both parties if humans have created an artificial intelligence capable of such things as independent thought, free will, the ability to dream?

Find Isaac Asimov's Robot Dreams and other writings at: S ASI

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What AI does to formation, in school, in universities and in ordinary life

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The Person Who Could Have Thought by Carlo Iacono

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The Person Who Could Have Thought by Carlo Iacono

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A clear explanation of the key issues concerning AI use in education and it's impact in relation to the formation of ideas from Carlo Iacono.

Here are some of the key ideas:

"You can feel that you understand something. The feeling is specific and often strong. A concept clicks, an explanation lands, a difficult system resolves into sense, and somewhere underneath there is a quiet signal that says yes, I have this now, I could explain it if you asked.

The signal is not reliable. Cognitive scientists have a name for one version of the problem, the illusion of explanatory depth. People believe they understand how things work, zips, governments, the water cycle, in far more detail than they actually do, and the belief survives because it is so rarely tested. We almost never have to produce a full account of anything, so we almost never get the feedback that would show us how little is there. Ask someone to explain, step by step, with nothing left out, and the confidence falls quickly towards the truth."

"That is the link the machine severs. AI produces the fluent account on demand, instantly, about anything, to a high finish."

"The question is not, in the first instance, whether the tool was used. That is already too crude. A calculator can be harmless in one room and destructive in another. A dictionary can be a support for thought or a substitute for it. The question is what kind of human capacity the activity is supposed to form, and whether the tool use forms that capacity or bypasses it."

"This is not nostalgia. It is a recognition of what assessment was always partly for. The point was never simply to certify that a product existed. It was to discover whether a person had been changed by making it."

"Formation is not a possession. It is a practice. You do not own it the way you own a bicycle in a shed. You own it the way you own fitness, or a language, or a friendship: by renewing it. Stop doing the acts and the capacity changes."

"The blank page is not merely an obstacle to writing. It is part of how writing teaches you what you think. The unsolved problem is not merely a delay before the answer. It is the condition under which problem-solving is formed. The hard paragraph, the failed proof, the book that will not summarise itself in your head, the conversation in which you cannot yet say what you mean: these are not inefficiencies waiting to be automated away. They are the places where the self is still under construction."

"So the rule is not abstinence. It is order.

First the capacity, then the tool.

First the struggle, then the support.

First the formation, then the augmentation.

Reverse the order and we do not get the same human being with better equipment. We get a human being who can describe a capacity he has not formed, defend a judgement he has not earned and feel awake all the way down."

"The danger is not that AI does our thinking. The danger is that it prevents the formation of the person who could have thought, while giving that person a flawless account of the thinking they did not do."

Click on the image to read the article in full.

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What AI does to formation, in school, in universities and in ordinary life

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The Librarian Reads: The Country of the Blind by H. G. Wells

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The Librarian Reads: The Country of the Blind by H. G. Wells

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A short story about a sighted man who stumbles upon a blind community, isolated from the outside world due to a landslide generations ago.

Our sighted man, Nunez, initially believes he can dominate this community, but in the country of the blind, sight makes no sense. The villagers cannot comprehend his perceptions. Nunez represents an anomaly the social system seeks to correct or expel.

It's a fascinating exploration of cultural relativism. With themes of power and imperialism, it asks us how far we are willing to go to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of community approval or emotional attachment. Here we see reality not as an objective fact but as a socially and sensorially constructed phenomenon.

'The Country of the Blind' is often paired with 'The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes', a story which rejects this idea in favour of a metaphysics grounded in physical reality.

Find H. G. Wells in the Main Library (St A's) at: S WEL.

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We hope you enjoy our May issue of The Bibliophile! The third of our newsletters in this National Year of Reading.

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Sway: Create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more.

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Sway is an easy-to-use digital storytelling app for creating interactive reports, presentations, personal stories and more. Its built-in design engine helps you create professional designs in minutes. With Sway, your images, text, videos, and other multimedia all flow together in a way that enhances your story. Sway makes sure your creations look great on any screen.

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Francis Barlow, The Tortoise and the Hare, 17th century

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What can a storyteller from ancient Greece teach us about screen-use and the digital divide today?

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What can a storyteller from ancient Greece teach us about screen-use and the digital divide today?

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You’re probably familiar with the story of "The Tortoise and the Hare" from Aesop’s Fables. It’s a moral tale about how steady persistence triumphs over carelessness and squandered talent. We have the speedy and boastful hare who is challenged to a race by the plodding but wise tortoise. Overly-confident in his speed, the hare takes a nap midway through the race and the slow-but-steady tortoise crosses the finish line first. It’s typically read in a binary manner, cautioning children against carelessness. However, if we look beneath the surface there is more to this tale, as expounded by Lord Dunsany, who took us a little way into the future after the race. In Dunsany’s embellishment, he tells of a fire that swept through the forest soon after the race. The hare, tortoise, and a few other animals see the fire from afar and call a meeting to decide who would be swiftest to go and warn the animals in the forest that they are at risk. They choose the tortoise and their forest friends are burnt to a crisp. What Lord Dunsany’s account is reminding us about the original tale is that we have many skills at our disposal and it’s never wise to overstate the value of one or over-prioritise another.

A lot of discussion (and research) relating to teaching and learning positions us within this duel between a digital or analogue approach. Books are often time-consuming and difficult to learn from. They go deep and are comprehensive. Online information is much easier – it’s fast, reactive, specialised and specific, but can be changeable, and seen as lazy. What Aesop’s Fable teaches us is to be intentional with our choices. Each has its own set of skills and imposes its own inherent logic. We want our pupils to have both the capacity for deep learning and the ability to utilise specialised or reactive information in a fast and assiduous manner. Skill requires practice and effort, repetition of drills and practice exercises. For our pupils, once they have gained these skills, it’s about helping them to make personal, intentional choices about how they wish to direct their own learning and progress at school. When they need a quick, straightforward answer: a web browser may be best. If they want a really deep and comprehensive understanding of a topic: don’t neglect those dense, complicated and time-consuming books. When they want to explore their own blind-spots or find different ways of thinking about a topic: generative-AI is probably going to be really useful. These mediums will all build different skills and abilities and offer different kinds of information. Success will likely come to those who can apply different ways of learning to different tasks, those who are able to adapt their skills to the given situation, and who can work with different kinds of information to produce the most appropriate output.

It’s not easy to learn. Learning requires hard work and effort. There’s no getting around that. Technology today is often sold to us as a way to reduce that load, minimise the time and effort we may struggle to put in. There are times when that can be extremely useful. However, there are times when what we seek actually requires struggle, effort, difficulty, and technology that minimises that, minimises the learning. Focussing on the immediate output of the essay, the presentation or report – that finish line – can actually be a distraction, or worse, can give you a false sense of things. The essay, presentation, or report in itself is not the real evidence of growth, skill, and confidence – the author or creator behind that work is.

In "Beastly Tales", Vikram Seth considers the characters of the hare and the tortoise. He finds nothing positive in either of the characters. The tortoise’s victory bolsters his moral superiority, and in a world that favours distractions and a good story over accuracy and facts, when the hare finally reaches the finish line, despite not winning she receives all the attention and accolades with her embellished tales of adventure and excitement along the way. It’s a moral that lives very much in the realm of today’s influencer-society.

There is far more beneath the surface of Aesop’s Fable of "The Tortoise and the Hare", and I find its moral (like so many of the stories from the collection) so adaptable. For me, the question isn’t whether a tortoise is faster than a hare, whether book-learning can be replaced by Google Scholar or generative AI, whether exams should be taken on a laptop or on paper. The question is what skills are best suited to a given situation and how do we best utilise them? How can we optimise for a meaningful education, under what circumstances can we – and our pupils – flourish, what kind of future do we want and where – and how – do we want to find beauty, love, connection, community? What things do we want to discover, what things do we want to create? The future will be what we choose it to be. But don’t we want that choice to be intentional, even if that means it’s not always going to be easy?

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Writing a literature review is not only a common academic practice but it is also a great way to hone your critical thinking skills and really get to grips with a research area.

Learn how to write a strong literature review and convince your marker of the value of your research contribution with our new 7-minute guide.

Click the image to watch our guide on youtube.

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Cal Newport's Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

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Cal Newport's Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

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If you dream of escaping the never-ending task list, the scramble to keep work productivity up, or the frenzied hustle culture that leads so many of us to burnout, Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity may be just the book for you. Having said that, you probably won’t have enough time free to read it. It’s simply written but there’s quite a lot of case studies and 219 pages to negotiate in between your pinging inboxes and calendar notifications.

Don’t worry, your trusty librarian spent some of her Easter break reading it so you don’t have to.

Here are the highlights...

Slow Productivity is a philosophy for organising workload in a sustainable and meaningful manner, based on the following three principles:

1.      Do fewer things

2.      Work at a natural pace

3.      Obsess over quality

Principle 1: Do fewer things

Being busy does not mean you are happy or producing memorable work. Doing less can yield better results and lead to more masterful output in the long-term.

Strive to reduce your obligations to the point where you can easily imagine accomplishing them with time to spare. Leverage this reduced load to more fully embrace and advance the small number of projects that matter most.

Stay with me here – it is achievable!

a.      Limit missions (any ongoing goal or service that directs your professional or academic life). Mission are what drive you. They require that your initiate projects.

b.      Limit projects. Reduce side-quests and keep track of them. If someone asks you to do something and you appeal to some vague sense of busyness, you’re unlikely to get out of it. However, if you can concretely refer to these projects it is harder for someone to challenge your calculations or demand that you expand your working hours to accommodate their specific request. When considering a new project, estimate how much time it will require and then schedule it in your calendar. If you can’t find the time, either decline the project or cancel something else to make room. The power of this approach is that you’re dealing with the reality of your time, not a gut feeling of how busy you are, or a desire to do it.

c.      Limit daily goals. Work on at most one project a day. This doesn’t mean your single daily project is your only work for that day. You’ll likely have meetings, emails, admin etc. But stay focussed on one target per day.

d.      Avoid ‘task engines’. When selecting projects, assess your options by the number of weekly requests, questions, or small chores you expect the project will generate. Some tasks (like writing a report) require hard-thinking, weeks of work to master complicated information and make confident predictions. Others (like organising a conference) may seem cognitively easier but will generate endless coordination between different people, last minute issues to resolve, countless back-and-forth exchanges. It is what Newport defines as a ‘task engine’: an efficient generator of numerous urgent small things to do. The more mentally demanding task will require regular long blocks of time but generate very few urgent small tasks and therefore make fewer demands on your attention outside of the blocks of time you set aside to work on it.

e.      Pull instead of push. Avoid overload by becoming the gatekeeper of your workload. One way to do this is to track all the projects you are committed to in a list divided into two sections: holding tank and active. You can have a maximum of three active projects. The rest go in your holding tank. When scheduling your time, focus only on your active list. When you complete a project you can pull a new one through from the holding tank. When accepting a new project to your holding tank, send an acknowledgement message to the person assigning it to you and include i.) a request for any additional details you might need before starting the project. ii.) A count of the number of existing projects currently on your list and iii.) An estimate of when you expect to complete this work. Add that date to your holding list so you can keep track and update of any delays.

Principle 2: Work at a natural pace

Don’t rush your most important work. Allow it to unfold along a sustainable timeline with variations in intensity and in settings conducive to brilliance.

f.        Double your project timelines. It will allow work to unfold at a natural pace and give you’re the headspace to deeply focus. Grand achievement is built on the steady accumulation of modest results over time. The path is long. Pace yourself to avoid overwhelm and missing the mark.

g.      Embrace seasonality in your pacing. Schedule slow seasons, work in pacing cycles, or failing that, simply set aside one day a week when you work slow and have time to reflect.

h.      Disconnect from the familiar. If you want to produce  more meaningful work it can help to get away from our familiar environments to allow creative concentration away from the everyday distractions. Rituals can help with this. Rituals can induce a certain psychological state or mindset. The more striking and notable the ritualised behaviour, the better chance they have of inducing useful changes.

Principle 3: Obsess over quality

Quality demands that you slow down. A little quality work every day will produce more and more satisfying results than frantic work piled on top of frantic work. Once you commit to doing something very well, busyness becomes intolerable. This third principle helps you stick with the first.

i.        Embrace a hobby. Immerse yourself in appreciation for fields different from your own. When you study an unrelated field, the pressure is reduced and you can approach the topic with a more playful openness. It’s here you can find a more flexible source of inspiration for the things you care about.

j.        Balance obsession and perfectionism. Give yourself enough time to produce something great, but not unlimited time. Focus on creating something good enough to catch the attention of those whose opinions you care about but relieve yourself of the need to forge a masterpiece. Progress is what matters, not perfection.

If you'd like to learn more, you can find 'Slow Productivity' in our Professional Development section at: 650.11 New.

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Cal Newport Slow Productivity Penguin London 2024

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Featured reads for Eurofans - enjoy!

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Neurodiversity Celebration Week March 2026

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Some fiction and non-fiction for Neurodiversity Celebration Week 2026.

You'll also find lots of great e-books and audio-books on Wheelers, and some useful online resources like Creative Minds Unpacked, and It's So Loud In Here! here.

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Welcome to our March issue of The Bibliophile, the second of our newsletters in this National Year of Reading!

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Sway: Create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more.

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Sway is an easy-to-use digital storytelling app for creating interactive reports, presentations, personal stories and more. Its built-in design engine helps you create professional designs in minutes. With Sway, your images, text, videos, and other multimedia all flow together in a way that enhances your story. Sway makes sure your creations look great on any screen.

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Here's a selection of fiction and non-fiction recommended reads for you to enjoy!

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Here's a selection of our newest fiction to inspire you to this World Book Day!

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De-ranged librarian attempts to create the perfect library. Does he succeed?

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Spadework for a Palace by László Krasznahorkai

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Spadework for a Palace by László Krasznahorkai

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A short work, delivered in just one sentence. Set in New York. The notebook of a librarian named herman melvill [sic] who begins by telling us he is tired of other people not seeing him for who he is. It’s a meditative spiral into a paranoid derangement.

Our librarian, mr melvill, walks the streets of Manhattan as way of connecting with a trinity of historical figures he has become obsessed with (Herman Melville, Malcolm Lowry, and Lebbaus Woods) in which he sees an expression of understanding about the dignity of humankind - and simultaneously it’s tragedy.

Central to his inner narrative is the Earth beneath Manhattan’s architecture: strong, 450-million-year-old metamorphic bedrock of Manhattan schist, Fordham gneiss, and Inwood marble which allows for the immense weight of the skyscrapers. It represents the shaking and rending apart of the Earth: the danger, hazard, stress, and destruction of the universe. This rock is the reality of life. The architecture of the city, the fashions of its people, our need to ‘civilize’ are deceptive appearances, mere falsehoods and delusions that we distract and degrade ourselves with when we fail to see what’s really there underneath it all – what our librarian believes Melville, Lowry, and Woods in their own ways are trying to show us. Walking the same paths upon the Earth that his visionaries also walked is a way for mr melvill to connect to their lives, their ideas; a way to get closer to ‘knowing’ them.

There’s real humanity in our librarian, who although spiralling into madness, weeps to Bartok when his wife is lost, who is desperately seeking dignity, meaning, purpose, and fellowship.

He tasks himself with protecting knowledge from those who seek to debase it – debase it not by failing to understand it, but by failing to try to apprehend and safeguard its preciousness in the face of this dark reality as he apprehends it. The knowledge he sees represented in the New York Public Library collection is the true expression of humankind’s dignity in making meaning in a violently absurd world. And so he decides to create a perfect library of his own: an inaccessible library in which all the books are preserved but there are no readers and no entrance. This de-rangement of his life and his mind is his legacy in a world he sees at the brink of collapse and catastrophe.

His guiding question of "WHERE WE ARE", in a world in which his words have reached our hands, asks us if we too have entered the madness and how we might apprehend the wars, economic panics, technological upheavals, and social divisions that try to blind us to our own dignity (and tragedy). How are we connected to a wider vision of our place in the universe? How will we endure through catastophe? Or are these just the mad ravings of a grey librarian?

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Celebrate LGBTQIA+ history month with our selection of books. As always, you'll find a great deal more excellent reads in the library. Just search Look4 for more!

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Featured Books LGBTQIA+ History Month 2026 

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Welcome to the first of our newsletters in this National Year of Reading! We hope you enjoy and... Go All In!!!

Click the image to view the newsletter.

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Sway: Create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more.

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Sway is an easy-to-use digital storytelling app for creating interactive reports, presentations, personal stories and more. Its built-in design engine helps you create professional designs in minutes. With Sway, your images, text, videos, and other multimedia all flow together in a way that enhances your story. Sway makes sure your creations look great on any screen.

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Alice in Wonderland is a childhood classic and you’ve probably encountered the story - if not through the book then perhaps through a film adaptation. It’s often described as 'an excellent piece of nonsense' which I think can detract from quite how subversive and full of meaning the story can be.

In this Youtube video, I take some of the lessons we can learn from Wonderland and apply them to the wonderful land of learning, of education, and of research. I take you step-by-step through the process of doing research – which generally means writing an essay but can relate to any time you need to systematically investigate something to reach new conclusions.

Part of our Youtube playlist on library and information skills: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL66JccvqhewAC8siSWpax7xCmneN5i_1a&si=4uz6ze_7ZCPtTyki

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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (abridged)

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We hope you enjoy our festive edition of The Bibliophile!

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Sway: Create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more.

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Sway is an easy-to-use digital storytelling app for creating interactive reports, presentations, personal stories and more. Its built-in design engine helps you create professional designs in minutes. With Sway, your images, text, videos, and other multimedia all flow together in a way that enhances your story. Sway makes sure your creations look great on any screen.

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The Librarian Reads: Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' 

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The Librarian Reads: Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' 

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Set in a future America after an apocalyptic event has wiped out civilisation, a man and his son are walking along America's roads, heading south seeking a warmer climate and hiding from anyone who might do them harm. They carry what meagre possessions they have in an old shopping trolley and survive by eating tinned food scavenged from empty houses and ruined towns.

The Road has been interpreted as a cautionary tale about climate change, as well as a novel about the end of the American Dream, a post-America. Man’s relationship with the environment, the ruins of America and the relics of capitalism, and the end of history itself are all present in McCarthy’s tale; but in this novel on entropy and the absurdity of existence, when faced with a world in which everything is stripped bare and only the essentials can be carried, what it is you see and value is open for the reader to choose. Any meaning you find is what you put there for yourself, determined by the morality you invent for yourself to live by.

Learn more:

Find Cormac McCarthy's The Road in the library in paperback at: MC MCC or audio via Wheelers.

Connell Guide: bit.ly/connell-the-road

Crash Course Philosophy #16: Existentialism youtu.be/YaDvRdLMkHs?feature=shared

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November's Bibliophile is here!

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Sway: Create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more.

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Sway is an easy-to-use digital storytelling app for creating interactive reports, presentations, personal stories and more. Its built-in design engine helps you create professional designs in minutes. With Sway, your images, text, videos, and other multimedia all flow together in a way that enhances your story. Sway makes sure your creations look great on any screen.

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We hope you enjoy October's Bibliophile, complied by Mary Topacio-Rogers.

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Sway: Create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more.

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Sway is an easy-to-use digital storytelling app for creating interactive reports, presentations, personal stories and more. Its built-in design engine helps you create professional designs in minutes. With Sway, your images, text, videos, and other multimedia all flow together in a way that enhances your story. Sway makes sure your creations look great on any screen.

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This article was written using Microsoft Word v.2504

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Mrs Rose reflects on five years of the Shell Library program

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Mrs Rose reflects on five years of the Shell Library program

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As we close a chapter of the Shell Library program, we look forward to new challenges ahead with our updated offering created with community practice, reflection and accountability at its core.

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We have heaps of exciting news and recommendations for you this month, so we hope you enjoy this September issue of The Bibliophile!

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Sway: Create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more.

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Sway is an easy-to-use digital storytelling app for creating interactive reports, presentations, personal stories and more. Its built-in design engine helps you create professional designs in minutes. With Sway, your images, text, videos, and other multimedia all flow together in a way that enhances your story. Sway makes sure your creations look great on any screen.

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June's issue of The Bibliophile newsletter is here and is inspired by Toni Morrison's radical suggestion to "dream a little before you think".

Happy reading, happy dreaming, and happy holidays!

Click the image to view the newsletter.

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Sway: Create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more.

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Sway is an easy-to-use digital storytelling app for creating interactive reports, presentations, personal stories and more. Its built-in design engine helps you create professional designs in minutes. With Sway, your images, text, videos, and other multimedia all flow together in a way that enhances your story. Sway makes sure your creations look great on any screen.

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Do you tend to go to Google or Copilot when you need to find trustworthy, academic information online? Check out our new guide to find out why this may not be your best approach.

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This (May '25) issue of The Bibliophile newsletter brought to mind Naima Penniman's poem 'Mama Nature Told Me'. Penniman speaks of paying attention, connecting, finding the community that is all around us; and in revealing the beautiful reciprocity of nature asks us how we can contribute, what we will give rise to. Her words feel especially pertinent at this time of year - a significant waypoint in our pupils' lives.

Click the image to view the newsletter.

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Sway: Create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more.

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Sway is an easy-to-use digital storytelling app for creating interactive reports, presentations, personal stories and more. Its built-in design engine helps you create professional designs in minutes. With Sway, your images, text, videos, and other multimedia all flow together in a way that enhances your story. Sway makes sure your creations look great on any screen.

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The Librarian Reads: Batman: vol.1 The Court of Owls 3/3

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The Librarian Reads: Batman: vol.1 The Court of Owls 3/3

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Further reading:

Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: the invisible art (1994).

Comics, as a medium, are over 3,000 years old! McCloud draws parallels between Ocelot’s Claw, The Bayeaux Tapestry, and Egyptian painting (not to be confused with hieroglyphs whose images represent sounds rather than depicting subject matter). You don’t often think of Batman, X-men, Hogarth’s ‘Harlot’s Progress’, and Max Ernst’s collage novel A Week of Kindness as part of the same lineage, but all are intended to be read as comics. Hogarth and Ernst’s work is considered art and often browsed as individual works, but this is not how they were intended to be experienced. Understanding Comics offers a comprehensive understanding of the craft involved in making and viewing comics from a philosophical and theoretical perspective, and is a great way to start enjoying comics as an artform.

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The Librarian Reads: Batman: vol.1 The Court of Owls 2/3

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The Librarian Reads: Batman: vol.1 The Court of Owls 2/3

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The craft:

This is a really interesting creative vision for Batman. Greg Capullo’s work is gritty, realistic, and bloody; but also more warm and brightly coloured than more traditional artwork. Capullo developed his style working on horror-influenced comics, and this artistic heritage can be seen in his interpretation of Batman.

We start aspect-to-aspect with Gotham City (2) to set the scene and establish the mood – this is a dark, grimy, mysterious place, full of vermin and activities often shrouded or obscured from view. We turn the page and are immediately struck by some of its villainous inhabitants, ready to pounce on us -the reader. Next is a traditional fight scene with Batman launching towards us, fist clenched in a mixture of action-to-action and subject-to-subject transitions, with sparse text. Finishing with a silhouetted Joker and Batman, victorious and bloodied. The next scene with Jim Gordon (3) shows us another side to Gotham city. We’re high up on the rooftops, Batman and his ally, the honest, tireless police commissioner. Capullo turns the volume up on key moments of narrative by reducing the background detail to almost nothing, and uses silhouette again to mark the end of the scene while conveying an important theme from Batman: The Court of Owls. This use of abstracting detail to increase comprehension of deeper themes is such a fundamental characteristic of the art of comics.

Inside the Batcave there’s an interesting use of panels to play with the immersion effect, these panels let us see around corners, into areas of the cave we can’t see from one viewpoint, always providing enough detail for us to place that panel within the larger map of the cave. Capullo draws you into deep thought about the cave and all it contains, and in the panel on the next page Dick says to Batman, “…you do actually practice brooding”. We’re slowly being pulled into identifying with the character of Batman through the sophisticated interplay of image and text. It’s a technique used throughout Batman: The Court of Owls. Capullo draws from a more Eastern tradition of comics which emphasizes ‘being there’ as opposed to the more Western tradition of goal-oriented storytelling: ‘getting there’, offering a more immersive vision and facilitating a masterfully paced story. This is a comic that is designed to be read from left to right, but Capullo plays with this too. When we first see Bruce Wayne crashing through the glass of the Original Wayne Tower, it’s the first scene on the left page but the big “CRASH” written on the bottom of the right-hand page is the first thing we see. It works perfectly in tandem with the first scene on the left, as well as in its natural place as the last scene on the right.

In comics, panels can be used to represent periods of time, with the shape of panels varying to indicate duration. Borderless panels can take on a timeless quality: they offer a space not limited to the fourth dimension and giving the viewer some agency in constructing the scene here. Capullo uses these borderless panels frequently in Batman: The Court of Owls.

There are some beautiful scenes when Batman examines the sewers. Capullo gives a marbled effect to the flowing sewage that juxtaposes the beauty of the slick oily surface with the knowledge of what lies beneath (thematically appropriate for Gotham).

Each chapter begins with a full-page illustration signed by Capullo, first in colour and followed by a black and white version, signposting what’s to come. Chapter four and chapter six are superb examples of storytelling in art form, using silhouette and externalising trauma in a way that comes to characterise Capullo’s vision for The New 52’s Batman. The final pages include script, layouts, and character sketches made in preparation for the comic book and are an insight into the creative process.

I have to note that for all the craft within the pages of Batman: The Court of Owls, I don’t think it’s one of Capullo’s best covers. It doesn’t feel representative of the narrative or the art, or offer any hints as to The Court of Owls referred to in the title.

End notes:

(1)    Arkham Asylum features prominently in the various continuities of the DC Multiverse. Depicted as a remote, labyrinthine stone facility. Arkham has housed many of Batman’s most notorious foes, including Joker, Riddler, Two-Face, and the Scarecrow.

(2)    Before DC#48 Batman’s adventures were said to happen in New York City, although the connection between the two names within the DC universe has not been fully explained. In a story called ‘Cityscape’ in Batman Chronicles #6 it is revealed that Gotham was initially built to house the criminally insane. Since it’s early descriptions in the 40s and 50s, Gotham has become grittier, a dark, grimy, and foreboding place, rife with crime and corruption. Batman is not the first superhero in Gotham. Green Lantern and Black Canary, among others were also based in Gotham.

(3)    Gotham City Police Department is run by Commissioner Jim Gordon: historically one of Batman’s most trusted allies in ridding Gotham City from crime and corruption. Gordon is an important part of the Batman mythos and from 1967 to 1988 his daughter, Barbara Gordon, was Batgirl, paralysed by the Joker to become Oracle.

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The Librarian Reads: Batman: vol.1 The Court of Owls 1/3

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The Librarian Reads: Batman: vol.1 The Court of Owls 1/3

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Introduction:

DC has been publishing superhero comics for several decades. In that time, timelines have been rebooted, retold, splintered, and even series that have been published concurrently have continuity discrepancies. Some series directly change up the status quo and others are explicitly set in alternate universes.

Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman is part of The New 52. In 2011, DC attempted to reboot the entire DC Universe. Many legacy heroes were written out of continuity and those that remained took a darker, edgier tone.

Snyder became writer of both Batman and a new Swamp Thing series for The New 52. Later co-writing the Batman: Court of Owls spin-off Talon. He won the 2012 Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Graphic Novels & Comics for his work with Batman: vol.1 The Court of Owls, and in 2013 won the Harvey Award for Best Writer. Other notable works of his include: American Vampire, Wytches, Justice League, Dark Nights: Metal, and Dark Nights: Death Metal.

Capullo (the artist) and Snyder worked on Batman: The Court of Owls for five years, ending with issue 51 when Snyder moved on to other writing, but they later collaborated again in 2017 on Dark Nights: Metal in which Batman discovers a dark multiverse that exists below the core DC multiverse.

The story:

Chapter 1: The Court of Owls begins with what appears to be a twist. Batman and The Joker fighting alongside each other in Arkham Asylum (1).

Chapter 2: A tortured murder victim pinned to the wall of his apartment by knives bearing an owl insignia leads Batman to an urban legend: The Court of Owls; a hidden message is revealed, and Dick Grayson’s DNA is identified under the murder victim’s fingernails (Dick Grayson was Robin, now Nightwing).

Chapter 3: At the top of the original Wayne Towers, thirty storeys up, Bruce Wayne (Batman) meets with mayoral candidate and potential new ally, Lincoln March, but a masked attacker (Talon, the assassin and enforcer for The Court of Owls) stabs Lincoln and kicks Bruce out of the window, pronouncing “Bruce Wayne, the Court of Owls has sentenced you to die”. Bruce survives, landing on a gargoyle, but the killer plummets to the ground. Pronounced dead at the scene, Talon reawakens in the ambulance and walks free after murdering the emergency medical team.

This is a great chapter. It gives you some history into the Original Wayne Towers, some beautiful artwork reminiscent of earlier Batman comics, some nice little details at the beginning that become significant later on, includes flash-backs and some really pacy sections that jump around.

At this point in the narrative, we’ve firmly established the age-old pull for the heart of Gotham City, good and evil, shadows and light; what is, what has been, and what may be.

Chapter 4: We learn that Alan Wayne, Bruce’s great-great-grandfather, responsible for building most of Gotham City, was believed to have gone mad and died raving that the owls had made nests in his home and were coming for him. After visiting Lincoln in hospital, Batman realises that the Owls were in fact hiding right under his feet in buildings dating back to the 1880s, built with his great-great-grandfather’s money. As he finds a series of these hidden bases containing pictures of the Court, we see Talon watching from afar as the building Batman is in explodes. Back at the Batcave, Bruce explains to Dick that after his parents were killed, he had seen signs of the Owls and vowed to find them and take revenge; but in time he decided that it was just a story after all. Batman asks Alfred to open Alan Wayne’s crypt so he can analyse his bones. He discovers that his bones were covered in puncture wounds, not unlike stab wounds from throwing knives like those used on the tortured murder victim in chapter two. Returning to the sewer where Alan Wayne’s body was found, Talon takes him by surprise and abducts him. He wakes up in a giant labyrinth where he meets The Court of Owls.

Chapter 5: Trapped inside the labyrinth, it’s been over a week. The walls depict the hundreds of people the Owls have killed over the years. Batman is slowly going insane, hallucinating. The pages spiral as his mind does, until Talon walks up behind him and stabs him.

Chapter 6: Batman is presented to The Court of Owls for them to decide how he will die. Just as it seems all is lost, he thinks of his great-great-grandfather and finds his last reserves of strength to knock Talon out, cause an explosion, and escape into the river. The Owls dispose of Talon but reveal that there is an army more of them to release.

Chapter 7: Rescued and revived by car jump leads by Harper Row (Bluebird), Batman limps back to the Batcave where Alfred has brought the body of Talon. They discover that The Court of Owls were able to revive him again and again using a compound; and that he is William Cobb: Dick’s great-grandfather. Batman reveals that Dick was intended to be a Talon too. The volume ends with The Court of Owls releasing an entire legion of Talons on Gotham City.

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This year's top reads for Pride Month 2024!

This week you can also visit our pop-up Pride library in the Wellbeing Room and take part in FREDIE's LGBTQIA+ themed treasure hunt!

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The Librarian Reads: The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Bruce M Metzger and Michael D Coogan.

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The Librarian Reads: The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Bruce M Metzger and Michael D Coogan.

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C: Curious Bibles

The term curious Bibles is used for two types of Bibles: those that contain typographical errors or erroneous translations, and those with an unusual format.

In spite of the extreme care in proofreading Bibles, typographical errors have been found in them since the beginning of printing history.

In the 1562 folio edition of the Geneva Bible of 1560, there is an error in Matthew 5.9, which reads: “Blessed are the place makers” instead of “peace makers”. The same edition has another error in Luke 21: “Christ condemneth the poore wwidowe” instead of “commendeth”. Several editions of the Geneva Bible, issued by Rober Barker in London from 1608-1611 read “Judas” instead of “Jesus” at John 6.67.

A Bible issued in London in 1631 contains one of the most well-known typographical errors to date. This edition is known as the “Adulterous Bible” because it missed “not” in the line “Thou shalt not commit adultery” in Exodus 20.14. For this mistake the printers Robert Barker and associates, were fined £300 and ordered to suppress a thousand copies of the edition. In 1641, the same printers published a Bible that missed the word “no” in Revelation 21.1, so that it read “And there was more sea”.

John Fields of London published a Bible in 1653 that missed out the “not” in “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?”; and in 1795, Thomas Bensley issued a Bible in which Mark 7.27 read “Let the children first be killed”, instead of “filled”.

The 1801 ‘Murderers’ Bible was so named because of its mistake of “murderers” instead of “murmurers” in Jude 16.

More recent errors have included the 1966 Jerusalem Bible which instructs its readers to “Pay for peace” instead of “Pray”.

Bibles of unusual format include the 1665 “The New Testament in Shorthand”, using Rich’s shorthand system, and the 1904 Pitman method shorthand Bible.

Unusual formats and more...

I have come across some very interesting Bibles in my library career but there is a Latin Bible that is bound in an unknown women’s skin. Books bound in human skin (a practice known as anthropodermic bibliopegy) are not as unusual as you’d think. In Europe and America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it became an acceptable decorative extra when publishing accounts of murderer’s crimes and medical studies. The skin would be soaked in lime water, then flesh, fat, and hair are removed. Alternatively, it would be soaked in urine as the ammonia dissolves these. Then the skin would be stretched and dried.

Even more strange to me is what a sixteen-year old French boy, Adrien Locatelli, did in 2018 with the words of the Bible and Qur’an. He injected himself with verse. The texts were transcoded into artificial DNA macromolecules and injected these in to his leg – the Bible went into his left thigh, the Qur’an into his right. The Bible caused mild inflammation. Locatelli said it was a symbol of peace between religions and science.

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The Librarian Reads: Illustrated London News, July 1854 – July 1855

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The Librarian Reads: Illustrated London News, July 1854 – July 1855

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The Illustrated London News was the world’s first illustrated weekly newspaper. It only stopped being published in 2003! The first issue appeared on Saturday 14th May 1842, timed to report on Queen Victoria’s first masquerade ball. It contained an eclectic mix of world news, science and technology, arts and culture, politics, and had a special focus on the royal family. It was primarily conservative-leaning. Alongside every article were accompanying illustrations and later photographs. You can see the original woodblocks from the very first issue in the V&A. Contributors included Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Patrick Moore. The library holds copies from volumes 1 through to 134 (June 1905). The class chose volumes 25 and 26 to read and I’ll blog about ‘this week in 1854/5’.

Saturday October 14th 1854: The headline article this week is about the battle of the Alma River, which was a battle (generally considered to be the first battle) in the Crimean War. This is followed by a shorter article of local interest to us in Kent about Russian prisoners at Lewes (in nearby East Sussex). This was a story previously covered when the prisoners were at Sheerness. It reads, “The removal of the prisoners from Lewes from Sheerness, on Thursday week, excited considerable interest in the ordinary quiet county town, which however, has a castle of its own. The prisoners were expected to arrive by railway by 3 o’clock; and a large number of visitors from Brighton and the surrounding district, flocked to the station, to get a glimpse of the captives of Bomarsund.” It continues, “Their appearance was anything but imposing; and if such be the staple of the Russian army, they are but sorry figures. The men were dressed in long, loose, dirty, drab over-coats, reaching almost to the ankles.”…”’There appeared to be scarcely a fine man amongst them.” …“The prisoners-at-war already appear reconciled to their new abode. They eat well, and sleep well: their diet-of good beef, bread, soup, and tea-suits them well. They are very orderly in their conduct and before their meals sing a short hymn as grace.”

Next we have a chess problem (shown in the image above).

This is followed by a larger news article with a double-page spread illustration (as well as many other smaller illustrations) of the great conflagration [a fire] and explosion at Newcastle and Gateshead. It reads, “On the morning of Friday, the 6th, between twelve and one o-clock, a fire broke out in the worsted manufactory of Messrs Wilson and Sons, in Hillgate, Gateshead [a worsted manufactory is a factory that makes yarn]. After raging with great fury for about two hours, the roof fell in, and the heat became so intense that it melted the sulphur which had been stored in an adjoining bond warehouse. It came out in torrents, like streams of lava; and as it met the external air, began to blaze: its combustion illuminating the river and its shipping, the Tyne, the High Level Bridge, and the church steeples of Newcastle – spreading over every object its lurid and purple light. The flames towered far above the masts of the ships moored at the neighbouring quays. From the various floors of the warehouse huge masses of melted tallow and lead flowed in copious streams. The eight storied edifice was one mass of flame, and from every landing melted sulphur and tallow and fused lead were descending in luminous showers. It resembled a cataract on fire. At length the walls ell. Burning brands were then scattered over the roofs of the adjoining houses, had widely extended the conflagration. The ships were taken from their moorings, and placed in safety. A few smart explosions were now heard, but no suspicion was entertained of the astonishing catastrophe which was about to ensue.

In the immediate neighbourhood of the fire was another bonded warehouse, filled with the most combustible materials -naphtha, nitrate of soda, and potash, as well as immense quantities of tallow and sulphur; and it is also said that a large quantity of gunpowder was also contained in it. To this building all eyes were directed, because, although a “double fireproof” structure, and supported on metal pillars and floors, it seemed impossible to prevent the flames from communicating with the dangerous materials within its walls. These fears were too well founded. No sooner had the flame reached this compound, which was in fact nothing but a huge fulminating mixture, than an explosion took place, which no pen can describe, and which made Newcastle and Gateshead shake to their foundations. The bridge shook as if it would fall to pieces, and the surface of the river was suddenly agitated, as if by a storm. The s hock was felt in every street. The front doors of many private dwellings were violently opened; and the shutters of the shops, particularly towards the quay, were shaken from their fastenings., and strewed about the pavement. Broken glass was under your foot at every step. Every family was suddenly aroused, and their various members rushed together or into the streets to inquire the cause of so frightful an explosion. The sight was best witnessed from the High Level Bridge, which was crowded at the moment with anxious spectators. Suddenly as the explosion took place, that triumph of engineering skill began to vibrate like a piece of thin wire, and the first thought of those upon it was that that magnificent erection was about to fall. The projection of the flaming materials across the river was a wonderful sight for those who had coolness enough to witness it, but there were very few in that condition. A universal stupor seems rather to have prevailed everywhere, first broken by the screams and wailings of women and children, and by the ignition of the houses on the Newcastle side of the river. It was some time, however, before the minds of the spectators awoke to the full extent of the calamity.” It goes on, “The streets in the neighbourhood of the explosion presented a most melancholy spectacle. Men, women, and children in their night dresses might be seen rushing from their abodes in search of shelter, they knew not wither. In Gateshead particularly the scene was most distressing - mothers were vainly trying to return for a child, forgotten in the suddenness of escape – and children were searching for their parents. Adults and children, confused by the awful catastrophe, went staggering to and fro as if intoxicated, uttering lamentable and piercing cries.” Finally, “The total number of lives lost is not yet known, as many persons are said to have been buried in the ruins. Twelve bodies have been identified.”

We know that there were in fact 53 people who died in this fire, which is more than died in the Great Fire of London. The Illustrated London News does tend to enjoy including all the gory detail from such events but that’s interestingly somewhat lacking in this account. The melted sulphur would have looked like flowing lava through the streets and the explosions would have blasted apart buildings with the force of an erupting volcano. Masonry, burning timber, and red-hot metal would have been catapulted into the air, falling on people and buildings. Much of the tenement housing collapsed, burying their occupants but they don’t appear to have been accounted for in the number of dead. Casualties were laid out by the old Fish Market. Injuries included burns, impalements, and fractures. A sixteen-month-old baby suffered a fractured skull, bruises, and burns but survived. Many of the dead couldn’t be recovered and other were only recognised by their keys or other personal items. At the site of the first explosion at Bertram’s warehouse there was a crater over thirty feet deep and fifty feet across. At least 800 homes and businesses were lost. The Great Gateshead Fire - Historic UK (historic-uk.com)

Traces of the disaster can be seen today. Near the north boundary of the wall of St Mary’s Church lie rocks and boulders that rained down on the church from the explosion and there is a plaque set into the wall. However, the disaster itself has largely been forgotten.

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The Librarian Reads: Oxford Dictionary of Mechanical Engineering.

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The Librarian Reads: Oxford Dictionary of Mechanical Engineering.

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Another book chosen more for its difficulty than its literary merit. I remember the frustration at having to read texts I would not choose myself as a pupil so am more than willing to allow my class to return the gesture! Afterall, that’s partly what The Librarian Reads is about!

Compiled by two highly regarded academics, Tony Atkins is Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Reading and Visiting Professor at Imperial College (one of the top universities for studying Mechanical Engineering); and Marcel Escudier is Emeritus Harrison Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Liverpool.

I’ve chosen one entry to share with you from each letter of the alphabet.

A: Adaptive robot

Adaptive robots are robots which respond to changes in the environment.

Robots have seen tremendous growth in the past decade, aided by developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning. While we are far from developing self-aware sentient droid butlers with a thirst for annihilating the human race, we have successfully developed specialised robots that can perceive their environment and adapt to it in real time.

Rizon is considered to be the world’s first adaptive robot. Developed by Stanford University, it combines direct force control (akin to our sense of touch), artificial intelligence, and computer vision to be able to work perceptively, planning and manipulating with real-time adaptiveness in uncertain environments. It can sense and recognise objects, generate its own motion and task plans, and react to changes in real-time. It can replicate the dexterity and sensitivity of a human without losing concentration or becoming tired. You’ll find these robots used to perform basic functions like fastening screws, sorting recycling from rubbish, and even giving massages!

Many are fearful of how this sort of technology could be used though. From armed robot dogs to target-seeking drones, the use of adaptive robots in warfare presents complex ethical dilemmas. When it comes to computerised military hardware, there are always two parts of the system: the hardware itself and the control software. While adaptive robots are not yet a common feature on the battlefield, there is clearly an appetite for such systems. At the Association of the United States Army’s 2021 annual conference Ghost Robotics showed off a quadrupedal with a gun strapped to the top – a Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle (Spur), manufactured by Sword Defence Systems. On the Sword Defence Systems website, Spur is said to be “the future of unmanned weapon systems, and that future is now”.

In the UK, the Royal Navy is currently trialling an autonomous submarine called Manta. UK troops and their American counterparts are working together on a campaign called Project Convergence which focusses on the use of drones, other robotic vehicles, and artificial intelligence to “help make the British army more lethal on the battlefield” (‘Part of the kill chain’: how can we control weaponised robots? | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian).

What could possibly go wrong…? Well, it's worth noting that fully autonomous robots are a long way off. A soldier who currently places their trust in an AI system such as an adaptive robot may be putting themselves in more danger because the current generation of AI fails when it encounters situations it has not been explicitly taught to interpret. Also, these systems are hackable.

P W Singer’s book ‘Wired for War: the robotics revolution and conflict in the 21st century’ (Find it at: 355 Sin on the bookshelves) considers the dawn of robotic warfare, and examines not just the technology but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself. A fascinating and quite frightening look at the future of modern warfare for those interested in finding out more about this aspect of adaptive robotics.

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Marc Chagall window detail at Tudeley in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

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The Librarian Reads: The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Bruce M Metzger and Michael D Coogan.

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The Librarian Reads: The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Bruce M Metzger and Michael D Coogan.

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Chosen more for its size than literary interest, I’m happy to take up the challenge from my Shell class!

Edited by two leading scholars in the field, it’s clearly a scholarly reference guide. I was pleased to read in the introduction that the book uses neutral terminology. For instance, BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) are used instead of the Christian-centric BC and AD. As well as considering the interpretation of the Bible in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions; the significance of the Bible with regards to the arts, law, politics, and literature are considered, as well as sociological topics.

I’ll choose one entry to share with you from each letter of the alphabet.

A: Art and the Bible

Stories from the Bible can be seen in frescoes in the synagogue discovered at Dura-Europos dating from 244 CE. The Second Commandment warns “Thou shalt not make until thee any graven image”, but attitudes towards the interpretation of this has changed through the centuries. The biblical scenes depicted here would have not been objectionable to the rabbis at the time. Mosaics from sixth century synagogues represented Noah’s ark, Daniel in the lion’s den, and David as Orpheus (the ancient Greek hero famous for his musical talent). The purpose of these early frescoes seems not primarily to illustrate biblical material but to interpret it. They are symbolic scenes of healing and redemption. They are not intended to be realistically descriptive. Instead, the symbolism of the art meant that the true message of the work was only available to those who already understood the narrative.

It is the development of Church architecture that art becomes a vehicle to link the Bible and liturgy. There are striking examples of this at Ravenna in an early Byzantine Church called Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. Mosaic panels along the walls depict scenes that relate to the liturgical calendar. There is a particular emphasis on the theme of martyrdom and the mosaics serve to liturgically turn past events into present experiences.

Romanesque art (eleventh and twelfth centuries) developed from classical, Byzantine, Islamic, and Mesopotamian sources and expressed the Bible in both symbolic and narrative forms. A notable example is Chartres Cathedral.

The Gothic period (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries) is seen as the pinnacle of medieval art, with greater realism in representation. We begin to see architecture, sculpture, and stained glass integrated into one comprehensive scheme of Christian doctrine and ethics. Illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, and sculpture tend to focus on a very small selection of parables: the good Samaritan, the ten virgins, the prodigal son, and the Dives and Lazarus. These were intended to accompany the liturgy and embody the teachings of the preachers and theological commentators. The scene of the nativity is often a troubled and symbolic one, with Mary lying apart from her son who appears not in a manger but on a sacrificial altar. It's not until the Italian Renaissance that we find a descriptive treatment of the nativity.

We see a change with the work of Giotto. His early Renaissance frescoes in the Arena chapel at Padua mark a change in mood. Rather than transcendental and theological scenes, we begin to see art that is more natural and human. Artists begin to depict the reality of their scenes, as opposed to the symbolic, didactic, or doctrinally significant aspects. Masaccio’s frescoes in the Brancaccio chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence is one such example of this new bodily realism and am interest in the scene for it’s own sake, as opposed to only it’s symbolic, didactic, or doctrinal significance. Next, consider Michelangelo’s Pieta now housed in St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City; a High Renaissance masterpiece. Michelangelo sculpts Mary cradling her son after the crucifixion. It’s a timeless image of love and grief, a masterpiece in realism, but beyond that it shows us a moment of great religious depth, depicting two moments at once: a young Mary offers her hands, palms up, in a gesture of acceptance that she will bear the Son of God; and the inevitable moment -a fate sealed upon this very moment of acceptance made prior- that she will bear his body after it is taken down from the cross.

In comparison to the great idealising naturalism of the Italian Renaissance, we have a Northern tradition of religious art as seen in the work of Albrecht Durer and Mathias Grunewald, influenced by Lutheran realism of striking apocalyptic suffering. While Luther saw the atonement in terms of a great victory over death and sin, it was not a theology of glory but one that acknowledged the stark realities of human life in its suffering.

In the subsequent Dutch Golden Age, Rembrandt offers an alternative realism in his more personal representation of biblical history as interior experience.

The eighteenth century is characterised by a more decorative approach to biblical art with artists such as Tiepolo painting rich, dramatic scenes of great scale as well as William Blake’s powerful and symbolic small-scale watercolours and engravings illustrating the biblical Book of Job. The nineteenth century returning to more authentic realism with the work of the Pre-Raphaelites.

We see in the twentieth century, one of the most significant artists of biblical subjects Marc Chagall, drawing on both Jewish and Christian traditions, developing a very personal mythology and renewed symbolic interpretation of the spirit of the Bible with themes of healing and redemption as seen in the earliest frescoes first mentioned. All Saints Church, Tudeley (Kent) is the only church in the world to have all its twelve windows decorated by Chagall.

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This book has been recommended because it’s gripping, eerie, frightening, full of great characterization, and written really well. Looks like I have to face my fear of scary novels then!

Here’s the first few lines so you can get a feel for the book I’m faced with reading: “The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.The boat bobbed, listed, righted itself again, dived bravely through the treacherous whirlpools, and continued on its way down Witcham Street toward the traffic light which marked the intersection of Witcham and Jackson.”Wow - what a first sentence: “The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end”...I can already feel my heart rate going up!

The book starts with two quotes. The first being an extract of an epic-poem by William Carlos Williams, called Patterson. It’s a poem about the myth of American power, a society Williams characterises as brutalized by inequality and industrially in a state of complete chaos. This extract from the four-volume-long poem considers the beauty and poverty of springtime. After a winter of death and decay, comes Spring, with its seeds of renewal. “The flower spreads its colored petals / wide in the sun / But the tongue of the bee misses them / They sink back into the loam / crying out / - you may call it a cry / that creeps over them, a shiver / as they wilt and disappear …”
The second quote is the first line of the song Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen. This is a rock song from the 1980s (released just a few years before Stephen King’s It was published). I remember singing along to this song with my Dad (he was a big Springsteen fan) when I was younger. It’s often misunderstood as an American anthem. The chorus is often sung as a fist-pumping, patriotic, cheerful affirmation of how great America is. But Born in the USA (as the verse lyrics make clear) is a song about the tragedy of the soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War. It’s full of despair about the emptiness of the American dream. There’s no jobs, there’s no money. Soldiers have died for the country that now offers them nothing but devastation. Find out more: j.mp/3ebByql

The choice of these two extracts already situates me in the context of the novel. It’s a bleak vision of disintegration and decay, a savage contemporary society that offers its children no solace, no protection, and no hope.

The novel is split into five parts.
Part One: The Shadow Before provides narratives from two time periods, told in flashbacks. It starts, like so many tales of horror, with heavy rain and a sense of foreboding. It starts scary and eases you gently into the horror. Lines like “The water had first pried fingerholds in the paving and then snaked whole greedy handfuls” really drew me into the scenes. I loved the way moments of tension were juxtaposed with lighter everyday things like George’s mother playing the piano. Für Elise becomes a piece George’s brother Bill will always remember as being the piece his mother was playing the day that Georgie died. I remember playing it as a child. Everyone knows the first theme in A minor, but the later D minor theme is less often played. I remember when I first played it, it changed the way I envisaged the piece as a whole. I started to play around with the underlying emotions, speeding it up and slowing it down, and completely overdramatising the piece! But I always remember that eye-opening (or should it be ear-opening?!) moment when I understood the piece as a fluid whole: quiet to start, gently and simply budding, tentatively unfolding and blossoming, reaching out and then withdrawing, before growing into something dramatic--darker, throbbing, then returning to its initial form; the same and yet different now. The sad, dark, haunting melancholy of the rondo, and its yearning quality feel like they’re setting me up for the theme of the book. I also wonder if the structure of the novel is intended to be a rondo…? Part One is followed by Derry: The First Interlude, writings from Mike Hanlon’s unpublished book. Here’s an extract read aloud: https://bit.ly/stephenkingIt

Part Two: June of 1958 my thoughts coming asap!

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The Librarian Reads: Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power, 1799-1815

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The Librarian Reads: Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power, 1799-1815

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I think we have more books about Napoleon in the library than any other person (Queen Elizabeth I coming a close second). Rather embarrassingly -as Head Librarian- I’ve not read a single one... until now. So this Shell recommendation, while coming in at nearly 600 pages, is a welcome one.

An almost mythical character, I’m hoping that the author Philip Dwyer will take a more reasoned approach to this biography.

This book covers the period 1799-1815 so here’s some background information to Napoleon’s earlier life (from Adam Zamoyski’s book ‘All You Need to Know… Napoleon’ which I read before tackling ‘Citizen Emperor’).

Napoleone Buonaparte was born in 1769 on the island of Corsica. His father had big social aspirations. His eldest son became a bishop, thanks to the patronage of the governor of Corsica; and Napoleon attended military academy with a bursary from the King of France. He only briefly attended school and at the age of nine he was sent to France. The intention was for him to become a French nobleman but his small stature (even as a child), olive complexion, poor French, and strange (to his peers) name made him a target for bullying. He enjoyed Maths, was an avid reader, and loved French literature -Corneille and Racine. He read widely on Historical subjects and Enlightenment Politics -Rousseau in particular. This seems to have encouraged his notions of destiny, self-fulfilment, and transcendent heroism. As an officer at the Ecole Militaire he wrote essays and short stories, including a history of Corsica written in letters, in which the Corsicans were depicted as rugged heroes and the French masters were corrupt bloodthirsty tyrants. After less than a year with his regiment, he obtained long leave and returned home to his family in Corsica. The Corsican tradition of family operating as a joint enterprise would heavily influence his behaviour and decision-making throughout his life.

He returned to his regiment in 1788. The Bourbon monarchy was headed for disaster and Napoleon welcomed the Revolution. Shortly after the Revolution’s outbreak he returned to Corsica and began to make his way in politics, together with his brother Joseph. The former leader Pasquale Paoli returned from exile but was wary of the Buonaparte brothers and by 1793 they left Corsica, denounced as French puppets and traitors to Corsica. Afterwards, Napoleon would say that he was born the year that Corsica had become part of France.

When the family reached France after their exile from Corsica, the country was at war as the Revolution entered a new and bloodier phase. Swift promotions (more by chance than experience, it seems) and a pragmatic approach to politics, together with his ruthless efficacy as a General, enabled him to build a reputation for success that he reinforced by propaganda of cheap prints featuring him in heroic acts or allegorical compositions. This was a shrewd move as anyone who distinguished themselves in any way came to be seen as a potential threat to le Directoire (the governing committee of the First French Republic). His success and his propaganda made it difficult to eliminate him. It was a volatile time politically. But it explains why he never touched any food, except for boiled eggs, when away from home!

‘Citizen Emperor’ begins with a quote:

Victory is a Goddess greedy for death; her laurel is a branch dripping blood and soaked in tears. (Maurice de Tascher, from ‘Notes de Campagne’)

and situates us at the moment on 11th November 1799, when Napoleon returns home to a nervous Josephine after his successful coup. He had ousted le Directoire, and was now one of three consuls ready to begin a new regime. The country had seen five governments in the last ten years, swinging from absolute monarchy to a republic. Bonaparte was keen to overcome the impression that his government was transitory. His goal was national reconciliation; to restore order after chaos. He needed to steer a course between royalism and Jacobinism. He needed to give the country a narrative. There would be no more factions, Jacobins, terrorists, or moderates; there were only Frenchmen; and Napoleon was the man to deliver.

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The Librarian Reads: What Everyone Needs to Know About North Korea

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The Librarian Reads: What Everyone Needs to Know About North Korea

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The What Everyone Needs to Know series is published by Oxford University Press. This particular book was written by Patrick McEachern, an American Academic, researching on North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Northeast Asia, Iran, the Middle East, Security, Comparative Politics, and International Relations. He speaks Korean and Slovak. He served as North Korea intelligence analyst at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and North Korea lead at the US embassy in Seoul.

I think it’s important to learn about the author when it comes to non-fiction, particularly when it’s a topic that is perhaps not as accessible as most. I was pleased to see the acknowledgements were at the front of the book (often they’re at the very end) and the author recognises that he has been supported in writing this book by a number of people and institutions. Research has historically been considered as a solitary activity but it rarely -if ever- is. As a researcher you rely heavily on institutions, a network of colleagues, and plenty of financial and social support too. It’s nice to see McEachern recognise this.

The introduction begins “On November 28, 2017, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un professed his nuclear deterrent “complete.” It suggests that this book is going to focus on security concerns, militarisation, and nuclear threat. The blurb talks about how North and South Korea have developed in radically different ways and I hope there’s cultural elements to this book as well as historical, political, and economic ones.

North Korea and South Korea were only established as separate states in 1948. Following Japanese occupation and colonization at the start of the twentieth-century (repressive and brutal as colonialism is by nature) that ended with Japan’s defeat in World War II, the American and Soviet superpowers divided the Korean Peninsula into two zones. Because partition and apportioning territories in someone else’s land almost always works out ok, right…?! Two competing Korean regimes developed and each government claimed to be the rightful ruler of the entire continent. North Korea had the upper hand militarily and economically but America stepped in and henceforth have been seen as the one thing standing in the way of unification under Pyongyang’s leadership: North Korea’s primary enemy and security threat. The US maintains a permanent military presence in South Korea today.

We tend to think of North Korea as authoritarian and poor, with South Korea being democratic and economically prosperous (producing Samsung smartphones, Hyundai cars, K-pop music, and K-beauty) but in the beginning, North Korea was more prosperous and South Korea was authoritarian. The end of the Cold War left North Korea in crisis and famine, and South Korea beginning to find it’s feet economically and democratically.

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The Librarian Reads: Letters of Queen Victoria, 1879-1885 vol III

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The Librarian Reads: Letters of Queen Victoria, 1879-1885 vol III

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A couple of pages into this book I found a little slip, glued into the pages. It is entitled “To the Book Lover and Book Buyer” and says “Copies of this book will eventually become surplus to requirement in our library, and will be offered for sale at very low prices. If you are anxious to add this to your collection, please fill in the form below, carefully detach from the volume, and hand to the Librarian”. No-one has filled in this little slip - hence why I found its way to our library.

To be honest, this isn’t a book I would have chosen to read myself. However, that’s one of the things I enjoy so much about my Shell classes choosing books for me!

Queen Victoria was an era-defining monarch. She gave her name to the Victorian era (1837-1901) and to lakes, mountains, and cities all over the world, but she wasn’t actually called Victoria – or at least it wasn’t her first name. She was born Alexandrina Victoria (after her godfather, Tsar Alexander I). A true icon, she led an extraordinary life. Far from the proto-feminist she is often mistakenly believed to have been; though she defied social conventions, she was socially conservative and never supported women’s rights. As Empress she ruled over a quarter of the world’s land surface.

Some fun-facts for the quizzers among you: Queen Victoria was the first member of the Royal family to live at Buckingham Palace; and the first monarch to ride a train!

This third volume of letters begins in 1879. This was the year the first Blackwell’s bookshop opened (in Oxford). The introduction tells us this was a period of serious domestic distress; a hard winter, depression in industry, and agriculture, and fighting in South Africa. The High Commissioner Sir Bartle Frere and Lord Chelmsford had led troops into battle against Cetshwayo (the last King of an independent Zulu nation) in an unlawful and unprovoked invasion. The British wanted labour for the diamond fields of Southern Africa. The public didn’t support the war but in order to save face, the government of the day continued and eventually defeated Cetshwayo and his soldiers (Britannica Online, 2023).

The letters begin with an extract from the Queen’s Journal in which we learn that Alice, Queen Victoria’s third child (second of five daughters), has died after only six days of illness.

Alice was the family caregiver. She had nursed Prince Albert (Queen Victoria’s beloved husband) in his dying days and had been close to Queen Victoria during her mourning period. Her interest in nursing and especially the work of Florence Nightingale, led her to (while heavily pregnant!) manage field hospitals during the Austro-Prussian war. Queen Victoria was wary of her interest in medicine and particularly gynaecology, warning Alice’s younger sister to “Be very silent and cautious about your ‘interior’”.

In later 1878, diphtheria had infected the Hessian court (Alice had married a minor German prince, Louis of Hesse) and Alice nursed her family for over a month before falling ill herself and dying later that year.

Three months’ later Queen Victoria writes, “Got up, feeling rested. Received a telegram, which on opening I found, to my unbounded grief and horror to contain the terrible words: ‘Have just taken a last look at the beloved child [the little Prince Waldemar of Prussia, who was eleven years old]. He expired at half-past three this morning, from paralysis of the heart [diphtheria]. Your broken-hearted daughter Victoria.’ How heart-rending! My poor darling Vicky! Only a week to-day since she returned home, and twelve days since I took leave of her! Our poor family seems persecuted by this awful disease, the worst I know. I sent and received many telegrams.”

The Prince had been a lively, cheerful boy, boisterous with a sensible, independent, and honest nature. He had once let loose his pet crocodile in Queen Victoria’s study!

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Copyright and the CLA's Education Platform

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Copyright and the CLA's Education Platform

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Head Librarian, Mrs Rose has created a brief guide to copyright for teachers and educators.

This guide explains copyright and looks at the Copyright Licencing Agency's new Education Platform.

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Double, double, toil and trouble;
Begin this reading list, let thy mind bubble.
Within these pages, dark and deep;
Lies the essence of your History coursework on witchcraft, secrets not to keep.

We offer thee journals,- explorations, incantations;
We entice thee with non-fiction, unveiling truths and revelations.
We bestow upon thee websites, tapestried histories of the maligned;

And we offer thee a search-spell, wicked whispers of design.

Within these pages both physical and spirits intangible,
You'll embark on a quest, obscure and unimaginable;
Guided by teachers, unveiling history's tomes,
Unmasking the truths you are longing to roam.

Studying practices, rituals grand;
Let the Librarians guide you by hand.
Sit in a window-bay, heeding this call;
As the pendulum swings in our history's thrall.

As pages turn, revealing mysteries untold;
You embark on this journey, courageous and bold;
In the spirit of Macbeth's wicked sorceresses three,
To unlock the secrets of witchcraft's history.

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Do you know what's in your school library?

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Do you know what's in your school library?

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Here's a lovely infographic from Lucas Maxwell, Librarian at Glenthorne High School, about the benefits of a great school library.

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Do You Know What's In Your Child's School Library

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Like The Last of Us? Why not try these sci-fi novels from the library:
Outwalkers (S SHA) is a gripping, action-packed adventure about a burning hunger for freedom.
Day of the Triffids (S WYN) is a disturbing classic packed with startling imagery of desolate London streets and lethal plant life, and a creeping sense of doom. Also try The Chrysalids (S WYN), The War of the Worlds (S WEL), or The Girl with All the Gifts (S CAR).
Dry (S SHU) is a harrowing story of survival with quiet suburban streets spiralling into a warzone of desperation.
Feed (S AND) is a satire on the more sinister possibilities of corporate- and media-dominated culture.
For a real mind-bender, try H(A)PPY (CF BAR) or the cult classic Riddley Walker (MC HOB), set in Canterbury.
For a lighter yet still powerful and provocative read, try The Giver (S LOW), a tale of bravery and adventure.
For those looking for a conversation piece, trailblazing queer writer Kay Dick's They (S DIC) is a newly discovered dystopia from 1977.
Let us know if you have any other titles to add to this list!

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ChatGPT has been getting a lot of bad press lately but from a librarian's perspective it represents one of the most seismic changes to searching the internet.
Here are some great ways to use ChatGPT to support your schoolwork.

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This brief guide explains what ChatGPT is and how it works; considers its potential impact both social and technological; and explores people's fears about the information resource, in particular why some consider it a threat to the education system. ***Spoiler alert*** I don't think we need to be concerned about this and I explain why. Find the extended version (with audio) here: bit.ly/learnaboutchatgpt

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International Women’s Day 2022: Craftivism! 

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International Women’s Day 2022: Craftivism! 

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Embroidery has long been a double-edged needle. Once a major art form in the Middle Ages, by the 19th century it had come to be regarded as specifically feminine, domestic, and low in the artistic hierarchy. The marginalisation of women’s work and the construction of femininity as subservience is something that remains to this day; but while it continues to reinforce ideas of femininity and domesticity it also challenges those same notions. The practice of craft has forged links between women, offering a pleasurable source of creativity and providing a weapon of resistance to women’s disenfranchisement. This International Women’s Day, we want to elevate the visibility of women creatives and applaud women’s empowerment. Here are just a few recommendations on embroidery activism and the social history of fabric and craftivism. #breakthebias #IWD2022.

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Assessing information in times of conflict

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Assessing information in times of conflict

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A brief guide to assessing information in times of conflict.

In this video we'll explore how we can approach information and guard against misleading narratives and disinformation in times of crisis or conflict.
This is designed to be a brief guide to the specificities of assessing information in times of conflict. It covers:

worries and anxiety about the news

how to talk about the news with others

questions to ask of information sources

top tips to be a force for good in engaging with news

For more practical guidance you might like to follow this video with the video 'Making the News: Faking the News' at: bit.ly/faking-the-news

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Assessing information in times of conflict

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A brief introduction to Library Research in Science. In this post I focus on consulting information sources when doing scientific research. Find the extended version (with audio) here: bit.ly/researching-science

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#metoo: Sexual Harassment and Assault resource guide

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#metoo: Sexual Harassment and Assault resource guide

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Statistics published in the results of an OFSTED review into sexual abuse in schools and colleges in June 2021 revealed that nine out of ten girls had experienced some form of sexual harassment.
This resource guide is an invitation to reflect on how we educate ourselves to understand and recognise the power dynamics at play and the wider inequalities to which they may relate; so that we can not only stop them in ourselves, but also have the courage to call them out in others.
CONTENT WARNING: Many of the resources recommended here discuss sex, sexual assault, and abuse in graphic terms.

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metoo - sexual harrassment and abuse resource guide

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This LGBTQIA+ History Month we've created a resource guide on Gender and Sexuality. This guide has been created to help you engage with key education and research resources available through the library and freely available online #educateOUTprejudice #LGBTHM22

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Gender identity and sexuality resource list

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A brief introduction to fake news. In this post we consider how to assess sources properly. The tools and techniques used here are applicable to all sorts of information. Find the extended audio version here: bit.ly/faking-the-news

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A list of resources to help educate about how to be an Anti Racist.

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Alex Gino’s award-winning novel about a trans girl, George, is being renamed 'Melissa's Story' to respect it's trans heroine.
Find out more here: Melissa’s Story and Sharpie Activism « Alex Gino

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The 25th of November is the International Day to End Violence against Women and the world 🌎 is turning orange 🧡 to stand against gender-based violence.

Find out more here:
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/in-focus/2021/11/in-focus-16-days-of-activism-against-gender-based-violence

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The United Nations is marking the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence from 25 November to 10 December 2021, under the global theme set by the UN Secretary-General's UNiTE campaign: " Orange the World: End Violence against Women Now!"

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In focus: 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence

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The United Nations is marking the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence from 25 November to 10 December 2021, under the global theme set by the UN Secretary-General's UNiTE campaign: " Orange the World: End Violence against Women Now!"

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Let us know what you think about manga and graphic novels by answering this super short (3-question) questionnaire! Scan the QR code or visit: bit.ly/manga-graphicnovels

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The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris

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The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris

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A book I return to time and time again, especially as the seasons change, is Robert McFarlane’s ‘The Lost Words’. It’s one of the few books I love in paper or audiobook form, and I ‘read’ it frequently in both. The printed book is large, and full of beautiful watercolour illustrations by Jackie Morris. The audiobook is read by the most lyrical voices including Cerys Matthews and Benjamin Zephaniah. It’s a rare example of form and function performing harmoniously in a world where words reign supreme.

At the book’s heart is a simple idea: it takes twenty names for twenty common British animals and plants, and through spells and poems, invokes those plants and animals in the most enchanting and joyful celebration of words and of nature.

Rich with the influences of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Robert Frost, and imbibed with the beauty and simplicity of nature, this is a rare book that will appeal to children and adults of all ages and will likely increase its appeal upon each re-reading.

Listen to an extract here: bit.ly/listen-lost-words

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Want to know more about Afghanistan so you can place current news stories in an appropriate context? This map and explainer (click on it to view) explores Afghanistan from a structural point of view, so you can take a step back from the conflict-driven Western understanding of the country to a more nuanced awareness of how its unique landscape influences population patterns; how it's geography influences the economy and relationships with neighboring nations; and more.

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Map Explainer: Key Facts About Afghanistan

The country of Afghanistan has a long and complicated history of domination by foreign powers and conflict between factions within the country.

While Afghanistan is well covered in headlines and news stories, the lion's share of this coverage is directly related to conflict. As a result, Afghanistan is viewed by many in Western countries as a war-torn desert, with conflict, ideology, and geopolitical power obscuring more practical information about the country and its people.

In the Afghanistan map graphic above, we step back and examine Afghanistan from a structural point of view. How does its unique landscape influence population patterns? How does this geography influence the economy and relationships with neighboring nations? Let's dive in.

Mountain High, Valley Low

Afghanistan's rugged landscape is defined by towering snow-capped mountains, fertile valleys, and expansive deserts.

First, the country has a wide variety of climate extremes. There is more than 100ºC (180ºF) separating the record high and low temperatures.

The extremes don't stop at temperature though. Afghanistan has the sixth-highest elevation span in the world, with 7,234m (23,734 ft) between its highest and lowest point. Afghanistan is one of 44 landlocked nations in the world, which helps explain why its lowest point is so much higher than sea level.

For those living in North America, the country's terrain has been compared to Colorado, with Kabul sharing similarities with Denver.

Where Do People Live in Afghanistan?

Settlement patterns in Afghanistan are similar to other countries in the region; people cluster where there is access to fresh water.

As the cartogram below demonstrates, a large portion of the country's population is located around Kabul, and the region adjacent to the Kabul River.

The southwestern province of Nimruz is the most sparsely populated area in the country. The Wakhan Corridor-which connects Afghanistan to China-is also very sparsely populated, with about 14,000 total residents.

Key Facts About Afghanistan's Demographics

Afghanistan has a very youthful population. The country's median age of 19 years is one of the youngest in the world, and is low compared to its neighbors Pakistan (24) and Iran (30).

Islam is the official state religion of Afghanistan. 99.7% of the Afghan population are Muslim, one of the highest proportions of the 49 Muslim-majority countries.

So far in 2021, the OCHA estimates that 550,000 people in Afghanistan are "internally displaced" due to conflict, and this number may rise still as new data tracks the final days of the Taliban's takeover of the country. The majority of those displaced persons are children.

Paving the Way

The Ring Road connecting Afghanistan's major cities began in the 1960s but was soon cut short by war. After the U.S. took control in 2001, new road construction began in earnest.

Between 2002 and 2016, USAID and the Department of Defense (DoD) spent approximately $2.8 billion building and maintaining Afghanistan's road infrastructure. This number doesn't include additional investment from other sources that poured in to improve the country's road network.

The result is a more comprehensive road network, but one that is difficult to maintain. A 2016 report found collapsed bridges and sections of road around the country that were washed out.

Resources and Relationships

Afghanistan is a critical source of fresh water for the arid region. Several major regional rivers flow from the country's mountainous eastern provinces into neighboring countries, so any new irrigation schemes and dam infrastructure will come with a geopolitical price tag as well.

Already in the recent past, tensions have increased with Iran and Pakistan over the flow of water crossing the border.

Outside countries are also very interested in Afghanistan's rich mineral resources. Decades of near-continuous conflict have made mining a tough proposition in the country, but with growing demand for resources such as lithium and rare earths, that may soon change.

Afghanistan is estimated to have over $1 trillion of untapped mineral reserves, and outside interests are taking notice.

China said it was ready for "friendly and cooperative relations" with the new Taliban regime, and it's possible that investment from China's Belt and Road Initiative ( BRI) may step in to fill the vacuum left by departing Western powers.

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Map Explainer: Key Facts About Afghanistan - Visual Capitalist

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The country of Afghanistan has a long and complicated history of domination by foreign powers and conflict between factions within the country. While Afghanistan is well covered in headlines and news stories, the lion's share of this coverage is directly related to conflict.

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Guten Tag! As part of our Shell Library Lessons, the pupils choose a book (per class set) for me to read. I do pride myself on honouring my word and reading the book the class chooses for me. This year, one of the choices was the German Dictionary. The class bases their choice on the strength of the written recommendation and—to be fair—it was a great recommendation. So instead of writing about my time scanning the German Dictionary, I’ll instead tell you about some of my favourite German words that I came across.

Some words are understandably entertaining or enjoyable. Frühstück nt breakfast is probably not one of them but I do love it! German breakfasts (in my view) are not especially exciting so it’s not down to the experience attached to the word, but I think it’s just a great sounding word. Another favourite is boah! which is more of an expression than a word. You say it when something particularly impresses you, like woah! or wow! in English. I love how similar it is to English—as if something that awe-inspiring just creates this naturally occurring sound from deep within us, whatever language we speak.

Many German words are long: take the infamous Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft for example! It’s a compound word of 80 letters, and translates as Association for Subordinate Officials of the Main Maintenance Building of the Danube Steam Shipping Electrical Services. It made it into the Guinness Book of Records but it’s not found in the dictionary. Germans are fond of their multisyllabic, compound words. They call them bandwurmwörter which literally translates to tapeworm words! Words like handschuh m hand-shoe or as it’s more commonly known, a glove; or the delightfully visual glühbirne f glow-pear or lightbulb. Some of these words are poetically expressive, like kummerspeck which translates as misery bacon or sorrow fat and refers to the extra weight you put on after a break-up.

There’s no doubt about it, to a native English speaker—Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache—the German language is tough! And I’m no linguist. But there’s much to admire and enjoy about the language itself. Bis zum nächsten Mal!

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As part of our Shell Library Lessons, the pupils choose a book (per class set) for me to read. My fourth recommended read was: War Horse by Michael Morpurgo.

I have read quite a few stories by Michael Morpurgo. He tells stories in that timeless way of weaving magic and enchantment into everyday stories of humanity, friendship, nature, and survival. Many of his stories are written for children but they are so captivating and full of hope that they engage even the most serious and grown-up adult! They have always seemed to me to be the sorts of simple stories that bring a twinkle of joy or a steel of determination to the reader’s eye.

‘War Horse’ is one of his most loved stories. It’s a short read—it took me (an unusually slow reader) about two hours to read. I read it cover-to-cover.

‘War Horse’ is narrated by our protagonist Joey, a young farm horse. He is looked after by Albert, a kind young boy who loves Joey dearly. The depictions of Devon and the farm in Joey’s early life are idyllic and they are in fact a depiction of the farm on which the author, Michael Morpurgo, lives. But Joey is soon torn from this life when Albert’s father sells him to the army and he is thrust into the midst of the First World War on the Western Front. Joey must become a cavalry horse, charging towards the enemy on the horrors of the frontline. Will Joey find the courage to face the desolation of trench warfare? Will he ever see Albert again? What impact will our hero war horse have on the men and women whose lives he will touch along his journey, striving for peace? War Horse is a story of the futility of war and the grief of those left behind, but it’s full of hope for people and resolutions, and healing conversations, and I loved reading it.

As many of you may know, Michael Morpurgo is an OKS (Galpins, 1957-62). He is a fascinating author and writes so vividly about his time at King’s. ‘War Child to War Horse’ is a biography by Maggie Fergusson exploring Michael Morpurgo’s life through seven biographical chapters, with seven spellbinding stories written in response by Michael Morpurgo himself. It’s an excellent read if you’d like to learn more about the author. You’ll learn about the tragic life of Michael’s mother, Kippe; about his school years at King’s living among the great cathedral, hearing Bell Harry ringing out the hours, day and night; how he struggled at school, and found history such a difficult subject; his dream of becoming an army officer; and how he became a best-selling author and Children’s Laureate instead. I thoroughly recommend it!

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As part of our Shell Library Lessons, the pupils choose a book (per class set) for me to read. My third recommended read was: Beowulf, a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley.

‘Beowulf’ was written sometime between the mid-seventh and late-tenth centuries, and exists in only one manuscript copy, the Nowell Codex. The manuscript isn’t intact, it was damaged in a library fire in 1731, eaten by worms, and reworked by well-intentioned poets, scribes, and librarians. Previously the Nowell Codex was fiercely guarded and kept away from all but the most highly decorated academics. Now it’s available online to anyone with an internet connection (via the British Library).

This Anglo-Saxon poem is one of the great Northern epics and a classic of European literature. It’s usually spoken of as a tale of monsters and heroes, of three great battles, and of lots of gold; but it’s a much more intricate tale of morality, masculinity, and failure.

There have been many translations from its original Old English and an astoundingly diverse range of interpretations, but the poem is fundamentally concerned with what it means to be ‘Good’.

Maria Dahvana Headley’s feminist translation recontextualises the binary narrative of monsters versus heroes to bring us a tale of entitlement and intrusion, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and a woman seeking justice for her child.

This isn’t a novel in which an author takes a decidedly feminist viewpoint and applies it to an overtly masculine tale, there are plenty of portrayals of motherhood, femininity, and gendered inequality already within the original manuscript, they’ve just been omitted by later translations. There are a great many fascinating translation details explored in the introduction to the text that support such a feminist re-telling.

‘Beowulf’ came about after Maria Dahvana Headley wrote a modern retelling of the story, set in the American suburbs: ‘The Mere Wife’. Grendel’s mother is an African-American veteran with PTSD. She is estranged from the glittering capitalist grandeur of the gated community on the other side of the mountain. Ben Woolf (Beowulf) is a police officer looking for glory. It’s a glorious and savage read about privilege, class, and modern life; mirroring our world today in which social-media savvy leaders shake their fists and shout “We will come for you, You don’t know who God is. You can’t have the riches of the world. Everything is ours.” A great alternative (or additional) read to ‘Beowulf’ too, demonstrating how great classics are able to speak so clearly of our time today.

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As part of our Shell Library Lessons, the pupils choose a book (per class set) for me to read. My second recommended read was: `More Than This` by Patrick Ness.

Patrick Ness is an American author, probably best known for his young adult novels like `A Monster Calls`, `The Knife of Never Letting Go`, or the `Monsters of Men` series.

`More Than This` was published in 2014 and tells the story of Seth, a young boy trapped in a crumbling, abandoned world of what might be his earlier life, his afterlife, or something else entirely…

Seth remembers dying—drowning at sea, his bones breaking and his last breath leaving his body.  But then he wakes up in a strange place, overgrown and covered in dust, completely alone. Where is he? Who is he? And could there be more than this…?

An enthralling opening chapter and a novel that keeps you guessing right up until the end. It`s a mysterious story so I won’t give anything away, but the author gives a great teaser-introduction to the main themes in this Youtube clip (above).

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Patrick Ness talks about his new book, More Than This

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As part of our Shell Library Lessons, the pupils choose a book (per class set) for me to read. My first recommended read was: Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

The Tintin comic series was created by Belgian cartoonist Hergé in 1929 and published daily in a newspaper from 1930 to 1986. Following their appeal, they were re-published in albums. There are twenty-four albums (read adventures) in total. The first album, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, marks the birth of a legend and a first edition of this comic book is a very rare find! It’s very much of it’s time and reflects quite a dated world view, but it represents the beginnings of the later, more evolved adventures that many have come to know and love. The final album, Tintin and the Alph-Art (a tale of the occult, set amid the world of modern art and the avant-garde in which Tintin faces a grisly end by being turned into a fake work of art–very meta!) was left unfinished when Hergé died.

The Secret of the Unicorn is the eleventh album in the series and is one of the most popular tales.

Tintin (incase you haven’t heard of him!) is an intrepid journalist-adventurer who travels around the world with his dog Snowy. He represents Hergé’s idea of the perfect hero-character, always seeking the truth and fighting injustice. Hergé himself was a journalist himself and we can see Tintin like a wish-fulfilment of the man he wanted to be.

Snowy is an all-white rough-haired Fox Terrier and is always there alongside Tintin. He’s loyal and courageous, often saving Tintin from imminent danger. His curiosity sometimes gets the better of him and he’s easily tempted by food! In the early albums, Snowy is quite talkative, and Tintin and he discuss all manner of things, but in the later albums he becomes more visually expressive instead, perhaps because Tintin has other recurring characters to talk to instead.

The Secret of the Unicorn features one of the most popular characters of the Tintin family, Captain Archibald Haddock! Captain Haddock is a seafaring captain and sailor, hot-headed and infuriating at times, but in later life he retires, mellows, and we come to admire his true courage and heroism.

The Secret of the Unicorn begins in a market in Brussels. Tintin spots an old model ship that he buys as a gift for Captain Haddock. Tintin has no idea what he’s actually found. But there are others that do and to these nefarious characters, Tintin now has a target on his back! Despite, what the cover image suggests, you’ll have to wait until the following album, Red Rackham’s Treasure, for the thrilling maritime adventure as The Secret of the Unicorn (for the most part) keeps both feet on firm ground, but this is the first two-part album created by Hergé. Will Tintin and Snowy outsmart their assailants and figure out what secrets the model ship contains? What battle stories lie in Captain Haddock’s past and when faced, will he ever be the same again?

There are many visual clues throughout The Secret of the Unicorn that will leave you kicking yourself when all becomes clear in Red Rackham’s Treasure, and I loved this aspect to the tale. The best comics communicate different layers of meaning through a combination of text and image, and always offer more than it may seem on first glance.

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Taking inspiration from our childhood favourites, here are some recommendations for half-term reads. Enjoy!

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Welcome back to school on this #InternationalWomensDay! A perfect moment to celebrate the supportive, loving, understanding, inspiring women in our lives.

So much has changed since these first women marched in 1908 to call out gender bias and inequality, but the aim - to achieve full equality for women all over the world - has still not been realised. Moreover, global data released by @UNWomen suggests that the pandemic could put gender equality back by 25 years.

The theme for this year's International Women's Day is #ChooseToChallenge. We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women's achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world. Today is a day to champion all who take up the challenge and make a positive difference for women, because from challenge comes change.

Let's not forget the challenges faced by Black women, trans women, indigenous women, Muslim women, immigrant women, women of colour, queer women, undocumented women. Let's celebrate these women too.

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The last in our six-part series of short posts about building your fitness to study. This post explores four things you can do to build confidence. Find the audio version here: bit.ly/fit-to-work-6

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The fifth in a series of short posts about building your fitness to study. This post introduces four ways in which you can tame time. Find the audio version here: bit.ly/fit-to-work-5

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The fourth in a series of short posts about building your fitness to study. This post introduces four things to consider when defining success. Find the audio version here: bit.ly/fit-to-work-4

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The third in a series of short posts about building your fitness to study. Let's explore ways to improve self-awareness. Find the audio version here: bit.ly/fit-to-work-3

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The second in a series of short posts about building your fitness to study. This second post explores ways in which you can manage anxiety, be more present and find focus. Find the audio version here: bit.ly/fit-to-work-2

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The first in a series of short posts about building your fitness to study. This first post explores ways in which you can create the right conditions in which to succeed. Find the audio version here: bit.ly/get-fit-to-study

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Every year, School Librarian Helen Smith, from Eckington School produces a list of tv viewing based on books. This year there's over 40 pages of tv listings that were originally books. Plan your festive viewing/reading here!

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Christmas TV 2020 v2 This has surely been the very best thing to come out of 2020 - and it is a post which is eagerly anticipated year after year. Thanks as always to the huge effort that Helen Smith from Eckington School put into this. Please remember to credit her when passing this on!

Click on this link to download the pdf version of this wonderful document.
Christmas TV 2020 v2

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Christmas TV 2020 v2 This has surely been the very best thing to come out of 2020 - and it is a post which is eagerly anticipated year after year. Thanks as always to the huge effort that Helen Smith from Eckington School put into this.

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Our Shells have shared their favourite books to read at Christmas. So get cosy and take a look...

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So you want to learn about referencing and plagiarism? Here's a guide to the basic principles that you can apply to any style of referencing you choose. Ask a Librarian for more information.

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In the summer term (just before we locked down) our Librarian, Miss Rose, agreed to read a selection of books chosen by our Shells. It's an ongoing project due to how busy the library became during lockdown. Read her views on these books here: http://bit.ly/the-librarian-reads

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Find out what's changed this term, from our opening hours to how you borrow a book, and our new online resources.

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Follow us for info, book reviews, and more.

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Hi everyone! I wanted to direct you to our twitter feed. We post recommendations of websites and useful resources. Even if you're not on twitter yourself, you can browse our tweets and bookmark/favourite anything you think might be useful.

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Tweets by KingsSchoolLib