Coventry Cathedral memorials

Previous experience from only Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog had incompletely prepared me to visit Coventry Cathedral. (And inaccurately, for there were no time-travelling historians to be found. I looked.)

The destruction wreaked by the bombing and fires was accurate, though.

What remains is a memorial of and to World War II. The Cathedral was a real thing before it was a destroyed monument, and so it itself contained memorials like this one for World War I.

This post's theme word is intromit, "to enter, send, admit." Coventry Cathedral now intromits sunlight and the elements, as well as tourists and the religious.

Shakespeare's birthplace

This picturesque half-timbered building, subject to such immaculate preservation and dense precision gardening, is the birthplace of Shakespeare. Its preservation, picturesqueness, and landscaping are all the result of this fact; for now is the heyday of our fanatical devotion to Shakespeare's work, and everything associated with him can earn valuable tourist income.

Well, almost everything. I did not pay to take this photo. I did not buy any of the many beautiful editions of his plays for sale in the adjacent Shakespeare store. They are all available free in searchable electronic version, which is how I prefer to consume my ancient texts. Parchment and clay tablets are so burdensome.


This post's theme word is parnassian, "of or relating to poetry." Shakespeare's parnassian fame is the bane of many schoolchildren.