On Thursday 8 December 1639 Sir William Calley wrote from Burderop House in the parish of Chiseldon, Wiltshire, to Richard Harvey, steward to the courtier Endymion Porter in London, sending gifts from his country kitchen.

This simple piece of correspondence – one of a sequence of letters that spanned a dozen years – provides entry into a world of memories, connections, friendship, and service linking provincial England and the capital. It allows a glimpse of private traffic as otherwise invisible commoners like Thomas Smith the Marlborough waggoner carried letters and packages along the Great West Road between Wiltshire and the metropolis.

In using heraldry to celebrate the Douglases in the Buke of the Howlat, I suggested that Richard Holland displays a concern with genealogy as a form of memory. While not a formal memory-training technique, genealogy functions as a commemorative strategy; as Lesley Coote argues, it is a discourse of memory. For Coote, the genealogical text functions both as a ‘site of memory’ and as ‘one of the materials of which memory is made’.1 Holland is far from alone in demonstrating an interest in the politics of lineage and its applicability to the dynastic affairs of medieval Scotland. Numerous king lists and genealogies in chronicles, literary works and other sources attest to this being a well-established feature of writing about kings and magnate families. In her assessment of the cultural productions of James IV's reign, Katherine Terrell has demonstrated that Scottish chroniclers and court poets favoured the genealogical mode and ‘jointly created a multifaceted nationalist discourse founded upon the construction of mythical genealogies’. While it assumed a renewed importance in the early sixteenth century, the connection between genealogy and the kingdom's identity in Scotland can be seen from at least the thirteenth century. Dauvit Broun has shown that John of Fordun synthesised ‘diverse sources into a chronologically coherent account of Scottish history’; this included what is known as Gesta Annalia I and the ‘Scottish Monmouth’ compiled by Richard Vairement.

Franziska's relations with the old countess now also grew warmer, if such a thing were possible, and any minor, half-joking differences of opinion had no effect on this, since both knew that in serious matters they were of one mind. This became clear on one of the very first days, when Countess Judith, overcoming her aversion to climbing stairs, had paid a call on Franziska—as dictated by good manners, but no doubt from curiosity as well—and had an hour's friendly chat with her. As soon as she came in, she had been pleasantly surprised to encounter again the Madonna she well remembered seeing in her childhood in this very spot. And indeed, the only new addition was the rosary hanging from the infant Jesus’ arm. Franziska, who quickly realized what was going through the old countess's mind, pushed up a comfortable chair, helped her be seated with due care, explaining then to her in a soft voice that she thought the countess would have especially fond memories of this Madonna; for a time she had even asked herself whether she ought not to take it down from its place and set it up in the countess's bedroom. But as she had to admit, she herself had not wished to part with it. For the image of the Madonna had been the first thing to greet her at Arpa Castle, even before Hannah; and though as a Protestant she had initially been surprised and almost startled by it, the very next day it seemed to her that the little arch of the niche were growing, to take her too under its protection.

And so anon was the coronacyon made, and ther was [Arthur] sworne unto his lordes and the comyns for to be a true kyng, to stand with true justyce fro thensforth the days of his lyf.

And the moste party of all Inglonde hylde wyth Sir Mordred, for the people were so new-fangill.

The phrase ‘Time of Pandemic’ in my title is deliberately expansive; I mean for it to encompass not only the social environment during the outbreak of Covid-19 (January 2020 through May 2023) but also the socio-political tensions which had already been causing significant levels of stress and anxiety before 2019 and which then burgeoned under the emotional stress of the pandemic and, most importantly, continue to increase even as the Covid-19 pandemic itself recedes. ‘Time of Pandemic’ is thus a touchstone phrase for the emotional strain and socio-political uncertainty that increasingly characterizes the last ten years. A study of the incidence of ‘politically-focussed intrusive thoughts’, for example (published in 2018), notes that overall stress levels in the U.S. population steadily decreased from 2006 to 2016 and then rapidly increased following the 2016 presidential election. In 2017, ‘more than half (57%) of Americans reported marked levels of stress when asked about the current political climate of the U.S., and nearly two-thirds (63–66%) of U.S. citizens surveyed provided a similar answer when asked about the future of the nation’.

This three-act opera by Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny (1729–1817) was revived on 30 October with new orchestration by Adolphe Adam (1803–56).

I could have bet on it! No sooner is Mina declared a success than along comes a counter-success which threatens to steal public attention from that charming score. Is it a good thing or a bad thing for the theatre? I don't know. In any case, it's extremely awkward for the composers.

There's no way round it, Le Déserteur has had a huge success; it has pleased everybody, the young, the old, the Germans, the French, and the Italians. I saw an Italian voice teacher, the man who normally hates French opéracomique more than anything else in the whole world, and he was moved, thrilled, and enthused by this old music which he’d never heard mentioned. He declared that all its charming melodies were so written that you couldn't adapt them to other words without barbarism, and that it really was the ideal of truth and expressivity. For a master of Italian singing, a modern one, to bend the knee before such qualities! It's enough to make one cry out with Molière's malade imaginaire: ‘O Nature! Nature …’

I believe indeed that in no musical work destined for the stage has the sense of dramatic structure and the expression of feelings and characters been taken to such lengths. Monsigny is as true to his genre as Gluck to his. He is as unsophisticated as Grétry, with musical forms that are more developed and spacious. What could be more touching than Louise's aria ‘Peut-on affliger ce qu’on aime?’ (‘Can one hurt what one loves?’)?

Joe Papp had a long-standing commitment to Wally's plays, and in 1983 he commissioned the two of us to produce a music theatre work that could be presented at the New York Public Theater. In the end, it seemed he had not been prepared for a work that was as close to “modern opera” as the piece turned out to be.

I don't remember the precise moment when Wally brought me the libretto of The Music Teacher, but I remember my reaction. It was rather similar to my response to Stravinsky's death: I went to bed for several days.

The structure of the libretto was innovative. One third of it consisted of spoken monologue and dialogue; the other two thirds consisted of vocal music. In the piece an aging music teacher, Mr. Smith, and his former student, Jane, separately tell the audience about a time years ago when they were together at a rural high school, co-wrote an opera that was performed at the school, and had a brief affair in an unnamed city.

In the piece the opera—a bizarrely tragic and mythic love triangle set in ancient Greece—is performed in its entirety, and there are scattered musicalized scenes from real life before and after it. As in many of Wally's plays, the scenes from real life are strange, dream-like, and obscene.

The libretto was challenging on every level; the story both poignant and disturbing.

Berlioz's immersion in the music of his own time and in its performance didn't prevent him from having strong views about its relationship with that of the past and the problems this presented to audiences.

At last we have something new! To be frank, it was about time! A repertoire intended for listeners who are always much the same has more need than any other of being renewed. It's not that I share in the slightest that viewpoint which tends to see music as a frivolous art, a pastime, a fashionable plaything, a flower whose scent and colours don't last beyond a day. Certainly not. Our idea of the art is far loftier; but our impressions, whatever their source may be, are they not always in the process of fading?

Enthusiasm wanes bit by bit. A warrior who, twenty-five years ago would have punished a slur on Napoleon's memory with death, today is content to shrug his shoulders and treat the blasphemer as an imbecile.

One day in 1830 I heard one of my friends say calmly that there are ‘some quite nice things’ in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride. ‘If you’d let slip such naivety six years ago’, I said, purple with shame and fury, ‘I wouldn't have spoken to you again in my life’. But if he said it again today, I’d go as far as biting my lower lip a bit, grinding my teeth quite quietly, and saying to him with a sideways smile, ‘Do shut up, you dilettante blockhead!’

If you announce public readings of a great poet's latest work, their success won't extend to the audience for the first reading turning up for the second, and the hall, full the first day, will be completely deserted by the weekend.

MS 111 is a composite manuscript comprising four independent blocks with diferent dates. There are nine text scribes, including Dyngley, as well as two capitular hands. The first block, Ambrose's Expositio euangelii secundum Lucam, is datable on the evidence of green in the sprays of the champ initial (1410–20). The initiating hand copied only the opening quire; two others completed the work. Hand 2 used a scroll for his frst catchword (fol. 16v); from folio 48v Hand 3 embellished half a dozen simple boxes with brackets. Block 1 concluded with well-formatted capitula. The fourth block was bespoke for Richard Bumpstede, who vacated Peterhouse c. 1441. Block 2, an independent gathering of six quires copied by Hand Zed, was originally designed for the frst block in MS 114. Zed is the one hand that appears elsewhere in the Dyngley corpus. Block 3 is an eight-quire gathering of three texts of Ambrose ad imperatorem, works that travelled together. The block was initiated by an otherwise unknown scribe writing textura, who stopped in the last quire near the conclusion of article 9 leaving a catchword for Dyngley's conclusion.

Introduction: From blocking to looting

This chapter assesses the destruction of the Metrorail in an orgy of looting during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020. The account focuses, as with other chapters, on Katlehong Township, though the Metrorail looting was widespread. As described in Chapter 7, by 2020 the service on the Kwesine– Germiston line, which runs from Katlehong to Germiston, was only used by those unable to afford more reliable transport. Yet while the value of the line was diminished, it remained important for those with low-paying jobs as well as job seekers.

In 2018, two years before the 2020 looting, the line was closed for several weeks due to a protest by township residents pursuing a local grievance. The result was that trains only ran to Katlehong Station at the northern end of the township some 7 kilometres north of Kwesine, the last station on the line. This resulted in many township residents using more expensive transport. The effect of the 2020 looting was a quantum leap in impact over the 2018 shutdown. The railway was not blocked in protest but taken in theft, the cessation of services was not a matter of weeks but years.

A key question the chapter grapples with is how the Metrorail could be looted in plain sight. This requires more than pointing to the incompetence and corruption of PRASA's management, outlined in Chapter 7. There were a range of actors who stood to gain from the looting, seizing the short-term monyetla presented, while others lost out in the longer term as cheap transport ended. A third category were those who, metaphorically, folded their arms while the looting proceeded.

The length and content of this open letter make clear Berlioz's respect and affection for Liszt without need of further commentary other than to mention that they met in 1830 and corresponded less formally over many years.

Paris, 6 August 1839

I should really like, my dear friend, to be able to tell you absolutely everything that's going on in our musical world, or at least everything I know about: the deals that are being done, the business that's being contracted, the underground passages and mines that people are digging, the platitudes being committed; but I doubt very much whether my tale would have any chance of interesting you. It would tell you nothing new: the study of Italian musical habits has made you blasé about all their delights, and what happens in Paris horribly resembles what you’ve seen going on in Milan. In any case you wouldn't have the heart to laugh about it. You’re not one of those people who find all the outrages suffered by the muse we serve to be subjects for joking, you who would prefer, at any price, to keep secret the besmirching of its virginal robe and the sad injuries done to its divine veil. So let's say nothing about horrors that would irritate you as well as me, and against which we cannot even protest freely, for reasons you know and which M. de Balzac's terrific recent novel would explain if necessary.

Opening the Prison Gates

The remaining hundreds of American seamen held in French prisons had to await the order for the release of all prisoners of war in France, which was not published by the provisional government until 13 April 1814. Britain and the coalition had conquered France, and Napoleon was on Elba, but the United States and Britain were still at war. From the declaration of the War of 1812 in June of that year to Napoleon's first abdication in April 1814, France and the United States were both at war with Great Britain and aided one another. Most importantly for American seamen, American vessels were allowed into French ports and American privateers could sail from and send their prizes in to French ports. From April 1814, those permissions were rescinded by the provisional and later the Bourbon government and France suddenly was declared neutral in the War of 1812. Orders went out to seize any American privateers that entered French ports. Thus, when the prison gates were opened and the prisoners walked out of the depots and headed for the Atlantic coast, though there were many ships to take British prisoners across the Channel, there were no American vessels in French ports to take the American seamen home.

By that time, William H. Crawford had arrived as Minister Plenipotentiary and had begun to get some control over the warring consuls. He dismissed David Bailie Warden and promoted Barnet from consul of Le Havre to consul general at Paris.

Occupying a substantial portion of Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Brogyntyn ii.1, The Siege of Jerusalem in Prose (item 45, hereafter Siege in Prose) presents a unique version of a narrative popular in the later Middle Ages, namely the fall of Jerusalem to Roman forces in 70 CE. Appearing on fols. 157v–184 and thus across three quires, Siege in Prose was produced entirely by Scribe O, one of the two scribes identified by Huws ‘who might stake a claim to have been prime movers in the enterprise’, the ‘organizer and tidier up’ of the manuscript as a whole. Scribe O is responsible for 153 pages of the miscellany in five stints; this hand also provided the rubrication for much of the manuscript (excluding the work of Scribe J, the other scribe-compiler, which J rubricated). Scribe O's role as potential organizer of the manuscript makes it all the more intriguing that, in placing Siege in Prose at this point in the manuscript, Scribe O seems to have deviated from a previous plan. Certainly, a compiler or scribe might change the ordering of works for a variety of reasons, such as the availability of new exemplars or the unavailability of others; yet the inclusion of a text spanning three quires and making up some 12% of the manuscript is a substantial change.

Norbert Lechner's film Ente gut! Mädchen allein zu Haus (Duck Good! Girls Home Alone; released in English as Fortune Favors the Brave, 2016) was part of an initiative called “Der besondere Kinderfilm” (Outstanding Films for Children), which was launched in 2013 by the German government and various media companies. The designation “Der besondere Kinderfilm” is significant for contextualizing the film in the German media landscape. It positions films such as Ente gut as alternatives to mainstream films within the overall genre of children's movies. Another characteristic of this series is that it invites original scripts and contemporary films rather than adaptations or fairy tales. This “originality” may be one reason why the initiative also welcomes narratives about migration, in this case, about Vietnamese Germans. In this chapter, I will address questions of race, class, citizenship, and cultural belonging in Ente gut while considering the generic specificity of children's film. The genre of children's film, like that of children's literature, is not easy to define. For instance, there are notable differences between films for children and films such as the Oscar-nominated Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi, 2020), which feature children as protagonists while deliberately appealing to adult audiences. Nonetheless, as Marah Gubar suggests, it may be productive to ask what distinguishes cultural texts for children from those for adults.