Crusades | Adrian Boas musings on crusader history and other things

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3 days ago
3 min

On Too Little of a Good Thing

After failing in numerous attempts at opening an external drive (the tiny white light on the side lit up and flickered like a distant...

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Adrian J. Boas

Apr 1
2 min

On Selflessness and Gain

The concept of selfless love is a fine one perhaps, but how often is love genuinely selfless? How often do people do purely altruistic...

32 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Mar 24
3 min

On a Beautiful Surviver

Stripped of almost all forms of embellishment, the convent church of St Anne has been recompensed for its losses, particularly in the...

52 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Mar 17
4 min

On a Necessary Vulnerability

Several years ago, I obtained a dried lotus flower, and through a bit of research on the internet managed to find out how to geminate the...

75 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Mar 10
4 min

Copy of On Locating the Stables

A large part of the appeal of archaeology lies in the fact that one never knows what one is going to uncover. It is perhaps one of the...

115 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Mar 10
4 min

On Locating the Stables

A large part of the appeal of archaeology lies in the fact that one never knows what one is going to uncover. It is perhaps one of the...

59 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Feb 24
3 min

On the Unluckiest Man

Recent excavations in the city of Pompeii uncovered the skeleton of a man who appeared to have been decapitated by a large stone. He was...

74 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Feb 16
3 min

On Ecocide - an Arboreal War Crime

“All is fair in love and war” is an aphorism attributed to the sixteenth century English wit, poet and playwright, John Lyly. Basically,...

64 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Feb 8
3 min

On Defying Gravity

We should be very pleased that there is gravity holding us onto the world. Gravity is essential for the existence of life on the planet,...

50 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Feb 1
3 min

On Fact and Fiction. A Novel Experience

For those interested in the subject matter of my upcoming book The Sulphur Priest, and without giving too much away and leaving the title...

57 views0 comments

On Short and Fairly Inconsequential Reigns

Adrian J. Boas

Jan 25
3 min

On Short and Fairly Inconsequential Reigns

Every family has its more colourful characters. In mine there is an interesting mix of the illustrious and the dubious, among them...

78 views1 comment

Adrian J. Boas

Jan 18
1 min

A word to my readers

I have been writing this blog on crusader related topics for two and a half years, and at no time have written less than two posts a...

142 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Jan 14
3 min

On a Manifestation of Monastic Poverty

Poverty as an ideal is not unique to Christian monasticism. It is found in the teachings of the Stoics such as Seneca and Epictetus and...

75 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Jan 10
2 min

On the Farming Life

Of the many important contributions Ronnie Ellenblum made in crusading studies, one of the most substantial is his shattering of the old...

121 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Jan 7
2 min

On a Brilliant Mind

For three years in the 1990s I co-directed excavations at the Templar fortress Vadum Iacob (Jacob's Ford), a project initiated and...

270 views0 comments

On Fire and Brimstone - The Uses of Sulphur, Real and Imagined

Adrian J. Boas

Jan 6
4 min

On Fire and Brimstone - The Uses of Sulphur, Real and Imagined

Among the objects discovered by the Metropolitan Museum of Art expedition to Montfort Castle in 1926 were a number of pieces of sulphur....

98 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Jan 4
4 min

On the Return of the Native

Recent history has shown us just how detrimental to wildlife the human presence is. In an extreme example, after the deadly nuclear...

94 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Dec 31, 2020
2 min

On Sandcastles

Whenever I think of a country house, a Wodehouseian vision comes to mind, a rather grand ivy-covered Palladian or Neo-Gothic mansion with...

43 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Dec 28, 2020
4 min

On a Sometime Safe Haven

Two occasions driving through this village might have ended badly for me. Once, having just passed the turnoff leading to the ruins and...

74 views0 comments

Adrian J. Boas

Dec 25, 2020
3 min

On Seeking a Likeness

The thing about castles is that no two are quite the same. T.E. Lawrence knew that when, on trying to deal with how they evolved in form...

96 views0 comments

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ADRIAN J BOAS