Middle Age…s.
Why the fascination with the Middle Ages?
It’s a question I was asked today and it’s something I’ve wondered about as well.
I think it began in secondary school. I fell in love with historical fiction the minute I had my own library card. At the same time, the beginning of the 60’s, TV had just begun in Australia and so I was beguiled by the black and white historical cinema of the time. I’ve just found a copious list of 300 movies online www.erasofelegance.com/entertainment/medievalmovies.html and went through to find the ones I remembered from my youth:
Whilst staying at my mother’s cottage by the sea this week, I was leafing through her bookshelves and found a delightful children’s version of Robin Hood from the 1930’s. It had been awarded to my father for a Sunday School prize. That was a surprise in itself, because he’d never mentioned anything about going to church in his youth, let alone Sunday School. He had apparently score 85% for something or other. Knowing Dad, that’s no surprise as he was something of a high-achieving intellectual, finishing his life with a qualification in Mandarin Chinese, both written and spoken!