Hello, whoever you are.

My occasionally-charming university has said I need a personal website, at my own expense, and not on their system. They don't seem to care what I put on it as long as there is some stuff that is useful to students. And because I don't want to be sacked and don't see the use of boring people with ordinariness, the name of the university is not attached to the website in any way, nor is my curriculum vitae.

If you know who I am, you will find all my courses and the standard teaching garbage and a complete list of my publications and conference papers and other exciting words I have written on the Department of History's main page and you will know where I work. If you don't, I have included just enough here so that you won't be angry with me for making you come here, but you are better off going to the boring page.

This page reflects the best things about university life. And it reflects me. If you find anything on this page dull, we are not fated to be close friends. Sorry about that.

I am learning the Internet (at last - I am not a technical person - an American friend is actually putting this webpage together for me) so there are lots of references to sites I have just found out about and that I find exciting. But there is nothing for beginners here. If you want the Middle Ages and you want a book and you don't have much background, I can recommend a book by a couple of friends (one of whom is the web page putter-togetherer - there must be a technical term for that, but I don't know it). It is called Medieval Essentials. I don't know when it is being published, but I am sure that there is info on the web somewhere. There appears to be everything on the web but a decent edition of the Gospel of Nicodemus. And I have a friend who is working on that. So if the books isn't anywhere on the Web, I suppose my friends are still working on it. Or it hasn't found a publisher yet. Which would be a crying shame because I am entirely tired of people saying to me "You are a Medievalist - is it true that ..." and coming up with the most amazingly strange ideas. Like chastity belts and flat earths and burning witches. Gillian (one of the co-writers) says she has found true and definitive proof of Medieval paperclips.

I am working on lots of lovely things right now. But my family have stepped in and said that if I am not giving you anything technical and historical, then I can't give you a list of publications. I can't see their logic, myself. What is boring about a list of books? But Phil and Louise are capable of all sorts of terrible things if I don't listen to them, so just take it from me that I am working on all sorts of exciting things right now. And they are all Medieval and absorbing and brilliant and fun. Even if Bill (my boyfriend) doesn't much like them. Dad says just do an academic site, and Mum says to follow my heart. So I am ignoring them all and you get a few fun things and a bit of chatter.

PS If I can't give you a decent bibliography, at least I can give you my working notes for a paper on the Gospel of Nicodemus. It is such a wonderful work! Hell gets harrowed. Bills' roses probably need harrowing, now I come to think of it.