Different significations

 

 

 Samuel Johnson Tercentenary 2009 

‘This Month will be publifhed, in Two large VOLUMES in FOLIO (Price bound Four Pounds Ten Shillings) A DICTIONARY of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE ; In which the Words are deducted from their Originals and illuftrated in their different Significations, by Examples from the beft Writers.  To which are prefixed, a GRAMMAR and a HISTORY of the LANGUAGE by SAMUEL JOHNSON A.M. ‘

Public Advertiser (London, England), Saturday, March 1, 1755; Issue 6346

Creating and publishing dictionaries had been popular by Johnson’s time,  when previously the idea of looking up information in a book, using the front and middle and end of a book, A-Z , had been a relative novelty.

Johnson was an extraordinary writer, always strapped for cash, and the dictionary became a great challege for him to compile over many years, sifting out words and descriptions suitable for his readers from those he felt were not suitable  [every language has ... its improprieties and absurdities, which it is the duty of the lexicographer to correct or proscribe..  ' Preface to the Dictionary]

It is interesting to note that Johnson was well aware that despite the publishing of a list of words and their meanings, the English language would still grow and develop.  In the preface of the the Dictionary he tells his reader that ’sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints….Those who have much leisure to think, will always be enlarging the stock of ideas, and every increase of knowledge, whether real or fancied, will produce new words, or combinations of words.’

Johnson’s friends were perhaps rightly aggreived to see the poor send off the author received at Westminster Abbey when Johnson died in 1784.    Wax candles had been ordered, along with the playing of the organ, however one person observed  that ‘not a key of the organ was ftruck, or a fingle taper was lighted up on the occaifon.  The fervice, the mutilated fervice, was mumbled over …in the moft unfkilful and unfeeling manner….’ Public Advertiser (London, England), Tuesday, December 28, 1784; Issue 15785

 

If you would like to learn more about Dr Samuel John and his time, please see the resources below.

Domestick privacies :Samuel Johnson and the art of biography /edited by David Wheeler  shelved on Level 2 at 828.6 JOH/DOM

The political writings of Dr. Johnson /edited by J.P. Hardy shelved on Level 2 at 942.07/JOH

The life of Samuel Johnson /James Boswell ; edited, abridged and annotated by John Canning shelved on Level 2 at 828.6 JOH/BOS

BBC Stoke and Stafforshire

Icons – a portrait of England

Johnson Collection

Dr Johnson’s House

Samuel Johnson Tercentenary

Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum

Defra – making the most of packaging

 

 Snowfall before 2009   -  photo Steve Keys

Defra has published  a new strategy for managing waste packaging: New Packaging Strategy, Making the most of packaging,

Defra writes that the new publication ’ outlines packaging policy’s direction for the next decade. The Strategy’s overall aim is to minimise the environmental impact of packaging, without compromising its ability to protect the product and also sets out plans to improve the recycling of packaging waste.’

‘In 2008 the UK disposed of an estimated 10.7 million tonnes of packaging waste, of which around 65 % (Source NPWD) was recovered.  This is a significant achievement when compared to the fact that only 27% of packaging waste was recovered in 1998 (Source publication: e-Digest of Environmental Statistics, March 2006). However, more still needs to be done and Defra will continue working to:

• minimise the amount of packaging used and so the amount of packaging waste, and
• ensure that a high proportion of packaging materials are recovered and recycled

The management of packaging and packaging waste is enforced by EC directive 2004/12/EC which seeks to reduce the impact of packaging and packaging waste on the environment by introducing recovery and recycling targets for packaging waste and by encouraging minimisation and reuse.‘

Loughborough University subscribes to several  online journals which cover packaging and the environemt,  such as  Packaging Magazine,    Paperboard Packaging,   Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management and Waste News etc,  which can be accessed via MetaLib.  [Athens username and password required for off campus access.]. 

The University Library also has a comprehensive collection of books on packaging design, graphic design and  aesthetics of packaging, innovation, sustainability,  structure  and environmental issues.

If you would like to learn more about UK packaging and waste mangement, please see the links below.

 Packaging & Packaging Waste – recycling and recovery targets

EU directive 2004/12/EC

 WRAP

The Advisory Committee on Packaging (ACP)

Department of Design and Technology, Loughborough University

 

Sea of Tranquillity

 

 Apollo 40th Anniversary

 

 ‘Apollo 11 makes its thunderous, fiery exit at tea time on July 16th with its three man crew: Mr. Neil Armstrong, a civilian who is destined to be the first on the moon, Lieutenant-Colonel Edwin Aldrin, who will walk the surface with him, and Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Collins who will stay in the orbiting command module………Perhaps the greatest prize awaited from the journey is the 50lb. of lunar rock and soil the astronauts are expected to gather ……… ‘The Times Tuesday, Jun 03, 1969; pg. III; Issue 57576; col A

The lunar rock samples brought by the Apollo missions show us that the moon contains familiar material such as iron, aluminium, potassium, magnesium, feldspar, basalt, ranging in form from fine dust to rugged rocks and boulders.  

Samples were distributed to a selection of  scientific institutions throughout the world,  and lunar rock samples went on public display at the Museum and Institute of Geological Sciences, London, in September 1969 [Edinburgh University's sample is said to have 'arrived in a tiny phial wrapped in a pair of pyjamas .... Five grams of  greyish brown dust ... estimated to be worth more than £1m.'   The Times Saturday, Sep 20, 1969; pg. 1; Issue 57670; col A]

Loughborough University subscribes to over 40 aeronautical and astronolical journals online, such as Acta astronautica,  Astronomy & geophysics,  Astrophysics and Space Science  and Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy , all of which can be accessed via MetaLib.   [ATHENS username and password required for off campus access]

Image collections are available also in MetaLib, giving a wide range of pictures of the moon, footage from  NASA space missions, interviews with former astronauts, audio tracks of the moon landings, – for audio visual material you can use  Newsfilm online  [ some 3,000 hours of footage; c. 60,000 stories] and  BBC Motion Gallery [which contains over 30,000 clips are available, spanning 70 years].   [ATHENS username and password required for access].

If you would like to learn more about the Apollo missions, please see the links below.

Google Moon

Film of Apollo 11

Audio Apollo 11 landing

NASA – Celebrating the ‘giant leap’

Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering at Loughborough University.

Department of Geography at Loughborough University

BBC to launch political webcasting service

Swifter, Isis, Swifter flow

 

 Henry Purcell 1659 – 1695

350th anniversary of Henry Purcell’s birth

‘Swifter, Isis, swifter flow, Muster all your streams together, Then in a full body go, And guard Great Britain’s monarch hither. Charles, lord of the exhaustless main, From whose fountain every tide Your dead low waters are supplied, Land him safely on her shore, Who his long absence does deplore…’ 

While working as musician of the Chapel Royal and organist at Westminster Abbey, Henry Purcell was comissioned to composed annual odes for the return Charles II from his summer travels, back to London for the autumn and winter.  

‘Swifter, Isis, Swifter flow’  was the second such ‘welcome back’ odes which Purcell composed in 1681 – and as well as composing serveral operas, keyboard music, sonatas, and anthems Purcell also found time to write birthday odes to other monarchs in his lifetime, such as the king’s brother James II, after his accession to the throne, and later for William and Mary [see also links to the funeral march of 1694 below].

You can find out more about the impact of Purcell’s music through the Library resources, both paper and online.

Loughborough University Library subscribes to over 80 online journals on music and music history, such as Musical Quarterly which are available via MetaLib.

There are also books available on the composer’s life and work, available on Level 2,  shelved at 780.92 PUR and 780.84/PUR.

For more information on the life and music of Purcell, please see the links below…

 Henry Purcell – Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary

Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell 1659-1695, the glory of the temple and the stage

Henry Purcell timeline

The restoration anthems of Henry Purcell and their political implications during the reign of Charles II by Linda Carol Chelf

The masque in Timon of Athens

Henry Purcell 1659-1695 Essays On His Music

BBC Composer of the Year

Rock’s Backpages

 

 Loughborough University Library now subscribes to the new database Rock’s Backpages.

Rock’s Backpages is an online database of rock music writing, with material dating from the late 1950’s to the present day.

The library of articles includes reviews, interviews and features, which are fully searchable and presented in full-text.

The database also includes Mp3 audio files of original artist interviews, which are available for the first time.

There are now over fourteen thousand articles on the site, featuring over two thousand artists with up to fifty new articles added each week.

You can access the database from on-campus via MetaLib

For off-campus access please login to the Library pages via the Remote Working Portal .

Loughborough University Department of Social Sciences.

Loughborough University Department of Politics, International Relations and European Studies

 

BBC to launch political webcasting service : Democracy Live

Motorway sign on M6 7/7/2005. Copyright David Wulff www.flickr.com

The above photograph was taken on July 7th 2005, the day when the London tube bombings took place. On this date the BBC received a thousand stills and videos, 3,000 texts and 20,000 e-mails. According to the director of BBC News, Helen Boaden, this was the day that news gathering in Britain changed forever – ‘it introduced citizen journalism on an unprecedented scale fuelled by the use of mobile camera and video phones’.

In response to the growth in this new kind of  journalism the BBC is to launch a political webcasting platform in the autumn known as ‘Democracy Live’ . The site will offer ‘live and on-demand video from all the main UK institutions and the European Parliament’. Users will be able to search the site for video footage of officials and the topics that are of interest to them.

They will be then be able to follow the contributions of elected representatives in the various parliaments and find out more about their backgrounds.

As well as providing an important resource for current affairs, the site will also include information on the workings of the institutions of the UK government and their powers .

The aim is to make ‘Democracy Live’ a resource that is to be shared with its users who will be able download video and text content and place it on their own blogs and sites.

 

 

Diamonds in the landscape

 

 

 Photograph: Great Gable View by Alan Cleaver

British national parks celebrate 60 years of protecting the British landscape, providing public access to the countryside, protecting areas of outstanding natural beauty and biodiversity, and helping local economies.  Earlier this year the go-ahead was given for a new national park in the South Downs to be established in 2010.

The new national park will join the 15 other areas of Britain designated as national parks such as  The Cairngorms,  Snowdonia  and Brtiain’s first national park created in the Peak District in 1951.

In 1947 the Hobhouse Committee on National Parks of England and Wales built on the work of the Addison Committee of 1931 and ‘conceived of the National Park …suited to British conditions, as a large, beautiful, and relatively wild area in which “for the nation’s benefit” and by appropriate “national decision and action” the landscape is preserved, access and facilties for open-air enjoyment are provided, wild life and fine or historic places and buildings are protected, and established agriculture is maintained and developed’   The Times, Saturday, July 19, 1947;pg. 5; Issue 50817; col B.

Threats to the national parks such as quarrying,  new roads, vandalism, military activity, building developers, removal of stone from limestone pavements, overgrazing of upland commons, congestion, erosion, etc means that Government has to be constantly reviewing  possible improvements in policy, funding and practice of all the agencies involved in maintaining Britain’s national parks and areas of Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs).

It is estimated that over 110 million people visit  British national parks each year,  generating millions of pounds to local economies, illustrating the national importance of parks and recreation the the economy as a whole.    For more information on the role of tourism in the British economy Loughborough University Library subscribes to a number of e-journals such as National Parks ,  Parks & Recreation,  Park Science.   Authentication: Athens username and password required for off campus access.  

If you would like to find out more about Britain’s national parks, please see the links below….

Publications from the Association of National Parks Authorities

History of the National Parks

Command Papers (HM Government), available from The Stationery Office (TSO) (was HMSO until 1997):
‘Report of the National Parks Committee (England and Wales) (Hobhouse Report), Cmnd. 7121, 1947 ;  shelved at serial 328/COM on Level 2 of the Loughborough University Library

English national parks

Countryside Act 1968 

Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 

Habitats Regulations 1994 

Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 

Hedgerows Regulations 1997 

The Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) (Amendment) (Wales) Regulations 2008

CPRE – Campaign to Protect Rural England

Handel bars

 

 

The year 1749.  The scene – London

‘Thurfday Orders were iffued to the Officers of the Horfe and Foot Guards, for their feveral Difpofitions on the Night of the Fireworks are to be exhibited.   Monday the Musik compos’d by Mr Handel for the Firework in the Green Park, was rehears’d  at his Houfe in Brook Street, Grofvenor Square.  The Band confifts of upward of 100 Trumpets,  Baffoons, Hautboys, French Horns, Kettle Drums, and other Inftruments.   We hear that 3672 Tickets for the Fireworks are to be given to the Nobility, Gentry and Citizens, 1800 of which, we are affured,  are for the latter.  The Building for playing off the Fireworks is near finifhed, some of the Statues, and feveral of the Paintings  being already fix’d. ’ Old England (London, England), Saturday, April 22, 1749; Issue 260

After returning to London in 1712, and settling to stay,  Georg Friedrich Händel’s music was always in great demand for state occasions, for concerts, opera and the theatre, for sacred and private performances.   Händel’s music was so popular that when the second rehearsal for the Fireworks music took place in 1749 it developed into something like a free concert for passers-by and daily traffic, who are said to have stopped and jammed London Bridge for up to three hours.  

 

Händel lived through unquiet times.  He had been born the same year as Charles II died, the Nine Years War started two years later, in 1702 the War of the Spannish Succession began, later in 1715 the first Jacobite Rebellion started, 1718 saw the War of the “Quadruple Alliance”, 1740 War of the Austrian Succession, 1745 the second Jacobite Rebellion started.  Händel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks turned out to be the last music he wrote as a royal ceremonial commission.   The music was writtent to celebrate the Peace Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended to War of the Austrian Succession in 1749, which had been raging for around eight years.

 

Like today, fireworks were a popular form of entertainment in the 18th century.  In one piece of music Händel used the theme of fireworks in a composition entitled ‘Celebrated Fire Musick”, originally written for Atalanta, performed in Dublin in 1741 before using the idea in the Music for the Royal Fireworks.  A contempory account of the event has come down to us from the newpaper Old England…

 

‘On Thurfday Night, the Fireworks, on Account of the Peace, were exhibited from the Building, erected in the Green Park, St James’s, for the Purpofe.  They were mighty fine,  &c.  and gave more than general satisfaction .  The Sun diffufed it’s Glory a very confiderable Time,  near Fifty-Seconds.  The whole was conducted with great Skill and Dexterity, and the right Side of the Machine, increafing the Illumination, would have concluded the Night  with a Bonfire of the whole Building, not withftanding the Playing of the three Engines to extinuifth it , had not the Grenadiers not intercepted the Flames by pulling down part of the Edifice to fave the reft.    We hear of no Mifcheif done among the Mob, except a lufty Man who, having the Folly to think himfelf a Climber,  fell down from a Tree, and pretty much bruifed himfelf…’   Old England (London, England), Saturday, April 29, 1749; Issue

 

Johann Sebastian Bach is reported to have said ”[Handel] is the only person I would wish to see before I die, and the only person I would wish to be, were I not Bach.”

 

If you would like to find out more about the life, times and music of Georg Friedrich Händel, please see the links below.

 

 

Handel: Music for the Royal Fireworks 1/2 (Ouverture)

 

G.F. Handel Home Page

 

The Handel Institute

 

The Foundling Hospital

 

Handel House Museum

 

 

Music scores are avaiable for borrowing from Loughborough University Library, on Level 2, for example…

 

The Musick for the Royal Fireworks. Shelved at 780.84/HAN 

Keyboard works / Klavierwerke Second set of 1733.  Shelved at 786.405/HAN 

Twelve concerti grossi for string instruments , op. 6, no 1-12  Shelved at 786.405/HAN 

The Water music.  Shelved at 780.84/HAN

 

Books avaiable for borrowing from Loughborough University Library, on Level 2, for example…

Music in eighteenth-century England :essays in memory of Charles Cudworth /edited by Christopher Hogwood and Richard Luckett     Shelved at 780.942/HOG

Handel and his world by Howard Chandler Robbins    Shelved at 780.92 HAN/LAN
The Possessor and the possessed :Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and the idea of musical genius  by Peter Kivy  Shelved at 780.92/KIV

 

Online journals available for research from Loughborough University Library, available form MetaLib, for example…

 

Early Music

Leonardo Music Journal

Eighteenth-Century Music

 

[Off campus access available using Athens username and password or by logging in to the Remote Working Portal]

 

Books available on the web

 

Water music ; and, Music for the royal fireworks  By George Frideric Handel [score]

 

Handel  By Christopher Hogwood 

 

Henry VIII

 

 

Sir Walter Raleigh wrote: “If all the patterns and pictures of a merciless Prince were lost in the world, they might all again be painted to life, out of the story of this king.”

Henry VIII came to the English throne  in April 1509 and during his life and after his death in 1547 there have been may representation of the king in the portraits, theatre, in film and in television.   Shakespeare’s play Henry VIII was not first performed until around 1612, safely after both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I had died, however the Prologue still informs the audience right at the start ‘How soon this mightiness meets misery’.

The residual character of Henry VIII comes down to us as a powerful and dreadful ruler, marrying six women, divorcing two [telling his first queen Katherine, during the divorce  '...to settle the whole matter in such a way that it would be satisfactory to God and her own conscience, to the glory and fame of her own name ...rather than risk the danger of a sentence....considering how great her grief and trouble ' and beheading two, one of which he constantly wrote to as  'Mine own sweethart',  calling her 'Darling', 'My mistress and my friend'  in letters 'Written by the hand of his that longeth to be yours...'. Even his close friends and advisers felt his wrath - Cardinal Wolsey once received many letters from a king who signed them '...with the hand of your loving Soverign and Friend, Henry R', only to find himself some years later out of the king's favour, deprived of the Great Seal, and reduced from once being Chancellor to a broken man signing letters written to Mr Crumwell  [Thomas Cromwell]  ’Thus, with wepyng terys, I byd [you] … [Sou]thwell, with [the trembling hand of] …”

Later representations in film follow the king’s charcter a similar pattern.  Ingnoring the difficulties and intricacies of  renaissance foreign and domestic politics, religious reform, the flourishing of renaissance music and literture at Henry VIII’s court,  Alexander Korda cast Charles Laughton in 1933 with a more boisterous approach in The Private Lives of Henry VIII .  In 1966 A Man for all Seasons starred Robert Shaw as a more dangerous Henry VIII, with Paul Scholfield as memorable Thomas Moore in the film version of Robert Bolt’s play by the same name,  and in 1972 came the portrait of the king  Henry the VIII and his Six Wives, starring Keith Michell, looking back over his life from his death bed.

More  modern screen productions have been Henry VIII  powerfully realised in 2003 by Ray Winston, with a less historical Henry VIII by Jonathan Rhys Meyers in 2007.  The ulitmate parody has to be Sid James and his Carry On team in Carry On Henry  from 1971.

If you would like to find out more about Henry VIII, please see the links below…

 

Henry VIII - J.J.Scarisbrick

Political Identities in Changing Polities – Charles Tilly

The matrimonial trials of Henry VIII   -  by Henry Ansgar Kelly

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII

The Letters Of King Henry Viii

Henry VIII exhibtion  at the Royal Collection

Henry VIII at the National Archives

Henry VIII; Man and Monarch

 

Loughborough University Library also has access to many journals and e-resources which contain information about the life of and times of Henry VIII and the time of the Tudors.

Renaissance quarterly

The medieval review

Fifteenth century studies

European history quarterly

The English historical review

The medieval history journal

Renaissance studies

Journal of Medievel and Early Modern Studies

Early English Books Online

The Journal of Medieval History