I want to wish all our readers a healthy and productive 2009 and the impossible – peace for us all.

 

Just to whet your appetite for knowledge, I recently had a letter published in the BBC History Magazine, regarding some Islamic coins found in a Viking treasure trove. It was stated that these had come ‘to Orkney from the Middle East via Russia and Scandinavia’. I asked if there was any evidence for this route. After all, they could have come from Muslim-ruled Iberia.

 

In an article I recently found (History Today March 1951) on ‘the Household Roll of Eleanor de Montfort, 1265’. In April of that year she sent a ‘parcel of dates, raisins, spices and sugar to her brother, the Earl of Cornwall, prisoner in Kenilworth’. Form where were these goodies imported, I wonder; and by whom?

 

(The article also reminded me of just how long it took, and how many wars were fought to achieve this ‘United Kingdom’. Look at what is going in Africa – and elsewhere - from this perspective.)