Retired historian (Ancient Greece) & oboist. Deracinated Nottinghamian. Widower. Grandfather. European. Loves dogs, humour, movies, orchestras, wine.
In my phrontistery
Joined June 2017
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Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
424 years ago today, the Bodleian Library opened its doors to scholars.
Sir Thomas Bodley funded the refurbishment of the old library, donated his own books and left money in his Will for more storage space.
His generosity helped shape the library we know today.
📸 DAE
ALT Historic stone building facade with tall gothic windows and ornate spires under a cloudy sky.
Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
Neither Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland use Palantir.
Just England.
There is absolutely no measurable benefits from using Palantir and no reason why England cannot stop using Palantir.
Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
I was asked to contribute a few sentences to OUP’s tribute to Simon Winchester, a condensed version of which has now gone live online: instagram.com/p/DfXgg2qlJKq/… Thinking about this prompted me to put together something a little longer of my own, so here goes. See below.
Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
Please support this important campaign: megaphone.org.uk/petitions/s… via @megaphoneuk
Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
Interesting to see that he’s diversifying. Much less money in modernist composition these days.
In 1502, Leonardo da Vinci drew a map showing a bird’s-eye view of the Italian city of Imola, centuries before humanity was able to view a city from above.
Through rigorous mathematical calculations and on-foot surveys of the terrain, he achieved astonishing precision with a margin of error of just 13 meters, predating the launch of the first GPS satellite by 476 years.
Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
Julius Caesar knocked down houses and temples to build a theatre here.
He laid the foundations, and never saw it finished.
Augustus did. And he gave it to the dead.
He named it after Marcellus, his nephew and son-in-law, widely seen as his heir, who died in 23 BC.
In his own words:
Theatrum ... feci, quod sub nomine M. Marcelli generi mei esset.
"I built the theatre, to bear the name of my son-in-law, Marcus Marcellus."
Augustus, Res Gestae.
The arches are his.
The windows above them are not. In the 1500s, the architect Baldassarre Peruzzi built a palace on top for the Savelli family.
Those upper floors are still lived in today. 🏛️
Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
Truth is stranger than fiction in politics now. Jamie Bryson - with just 167 votes in Bangor West 15 years ago - is more popular than the leader of unionism. Senior DUP figures are horrified at what they helped create. They have only themselves to blame.
belfasttelegraph.co.uk/comme…
Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
In Fahrenheit 451, the chief book-burner, Captain Beatty, describes how reading became obsolete because the public demanded increasingly fast-paced entertainments, and those entertainments slowly corroded their ability to think. “Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column … Many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed, ‘Now at last you can read all the classics.’ … School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches?”
In this passage Ray Bradbury foretells the intellectual hollowing out of the working class, the advent of AI-generated “summaries” of classic novels, the attention-frying culture of short-form video, the relaxation of educational standards into non-existence. All of this in a book published in 1953.
Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
Attic was the dialect of Athens, and it's the Ancient Greek most courses teach first.
The Attic Reading Room on Kevilex goes from beginner works like Moss's A First Greek Reader to easy authentic texts like Xenophon's Anabasis.
kevilex.com/library/attic
Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
Let's hope the custodial sentence is so long that literary scholars suspect James Joyce of writing it
Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
I mourn the passing of Simon Winchester, a remarkable man—and of course a great friend to the #OED—whom I was lucky enough to call a friend. RIP.
Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
Just got an email from a prospective PhD student containing the below. My response: I’m glad you enjoyed my work on [one short, genuine line]. It’s some of my best. As for supervising you, I think [polite refusal with an excuse - don’t mention the applicant’s AI use].
Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
The Pope, now restored to full health, shakes the Grim Reaper's hand and tells him to push off.
Prof David Whitehead MRIA 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 💙 💚 retweeted
🎶 This week, we look forward to Haydn’s Sinfonia concertante, featuring four soloists from the Berlin Phil, including principal oboe Jonathan Kelly and 1st concertmaster Noah Bendix-Balgley! digitalconcerthall.com/conce… Enjoy this excerpt from Bach's Double Concerto from 2020!
