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Books

Oswald of Northumbria – an Anglo-Saxon saint-king of the north for our time

12 October 2019

9:00 AM

12 October 2019

9:00 AM

In Hamlet a gravedigger asks the riddle: ‘What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?’ Answer: ‘A grave-maker: the houses that he makes last till doomsday.’And yet they do not; this character has disturbed the bones of Yorick. ‘Doomsday’ is, of course, the archaic word for ‘judgment day’ and Hamlet is soon asking questions of the dead jester’s skull.

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