Unthinkable Wings

Why do I always forget that the BL ordering system only works in office hours?

Ah well. At any rate, it looks like I'm going to have to pop up to London next Saturday. (Tuesday, the only other day that would have suited - indeed, would have been better, is too soon for the 48 hour ordering thing to work). Bother, that probably amounts to missing Doctor Who.

Such are the vissicitudes of life! It's less annoying than having to inter-library loan journals from Germany, which I'm also about to have to do...

I hate authors who modernise or anglicise names. Fair enough, substituting 'of' for 'von' or 'de' is useful, because it removes the possible confusion with the Adelsprädikat, or whatever you call indicators of noble rank in English. And substiting 'Geneva' for 'Genf' is defensible.

But why, oh why, does John Coakley -writing in 2006 - find it encumbent upon him to transform Heinrich of Nördlingen into a Henry, or Dorothea of Montau into Dorothy (particularly daft, given that I've encountered Dorotheas in English. Not a Swallows and Amazons fan, it seems). On the other hand, Elisabeth of Schönau stays Elisabeth, which is inconsistent, really (Elisabeth of Thuringia, for instance, being invariably transformed into Elizabeth of Hungary in English texts).