The late-antique Roman poet Claudian has enjoyed an upsurge of interest in his work for some thirty years. In spite of increasing appreciation for his artistry, Claudian's position within the history of Latin literature has not been clearly defined. This volume presents the results of the first symposium ever devoted to Claudian and Latin literature. Well-known scholars such as Franca Ela Consolino, Manfred Fuhrmann, Siegmar Doouml;pp, Isabella Gualandri, Jacqueline Long, and Peter Lebrecht Schmidt join several younger scholars to cast new light on the literary and cultural context of...

December 1211. After thirty years as abbot of Saint Edmund's, Samson is dying. Before he takes his last breath, however, he calls Brother Walter to his bedside in order to recite the tale of the Green Children of Woolpit. This is a well-known local legend about two children who were found wandering in a Suffolk field half a century earlier. Samson also reveals he has recently been visited by a mysterious woman who claims a murder is about to take place. But Walter cannot find out who the woman is or anyone else who has seen her. Did she really exist or was she, like the green children, just...

Summer 1206. Before it was renamed, Bury St Edmunds was known as Bedricksworth after the ancient family who lived there. Now the last surviving member of the Bedrick clan, Arnulf, wants an heir to carry on the family name. Marrying for a fifth time, this is his last chance to achieve it. But Arnulf has a secret. Jump forward seven hundred years to New Year's Day 1903. The antiquarian and celebrated writer of ghost stories, M. R. James, is excavating the graves of five medieval abbots of Bury. But in one of the graves he discovers something that shouldn't be there. How are the two events...