The naval battle of Lepanto, fought off the western Greek coast on 7 October 1571, was hailed as a victory against the Ottoman empire as much artistic as political. It was sung in hendecasyllables by the greatest poets of the time (Góngora
The first book in the Basque language was printed in Bordeaux as late as 1545. It is a collection of poems by the vicar of St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port, Bernat Etxepare, entitled Linguae Vasconum Primitiae (‘First fruits of the Basque language’).
The Greeks had two words for us: ekphrasis (the verbal description of a work of art) and topothesia (the description of an imagined place). As topothesia is the less common, look it up in your copy of Erasmus De copia: Quae si verae sint,
To coincide with the British Library's exhibition Paddington: The Story of a Bear, we've put together a series of blog posts about a few other bears (fictional and real) from the collections. Eleanor O’Kane in her collection of medieval Sp