Sunday 8 October 2017

A good week - books and a course

This week the postman left two books and a DVD, all of which were purchased from Amazon traders.

First - following on from the holiday reading of the book on Saladin, this book covers the period of 1415 - 1575.


Second - this new volume from Osprey, my library of French history continues to grow


Third - I don't know how or why I have not seen this film before, I am a big fan of Ridley Scott and this was his first feature film. Something to look forward to one afternoon next week.



I always feel guilty about buying online from Amazon. The company has been accused of setting up an internal structure in Luxembourg with the aim of reducing its tax bill and I feel as though I am complicit in and encouraging their tax avoidance. To counter that, the pricing is very attractive, the Osprey book was 8.40 pounds, in a bookshop (if they stocked the book) it would have cost 11 pounds, so I saved around 25per cent. In itself, this is not a huge monetary saving, but over a year because of the number of books and films and CDs I buy, the saving is quite substantial. What a dilemma.

October is the start of the new academic year. This week I began a course with the University of York's Centre for Lifelong Learning, "The Spanish Civil War" for the Autumn Term, 10 Thursdays, 13.00 - 15.00 hrs, purely for the learning and for interesting discussions with fellow history geeks. This is the second year that David, the lecturer, has run the course. Last year I was too late with my booking, the course was already full. This year I booked as soon as I could to ensure my place. 

This is the lecture outline for week one.

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