Karen George – författare

My friend Mr Mornington has always lived next door to us. His favourite things are gardening and eating cherry cake and playing his saxophone. He's not the best rememberer, though.A little girl lives next door to Mr Mornington, who has played saxophone all over the world. These days, he's a bit tired of all that travelling, so now he plays it just for her. Together, they have a favourite song: one that conjures up memories of all their favourite things. But when Mr Mornington moves into a care home, his young friend wonders if he'll be able to remember her – or any of his favourite things at all... perhaps there's something she can do to help?This heartfelt and gently humorous picture book explores the subject of dementia in an original way. Drawing on themes of music therapy and the value of community and intergenerational friendship, it has a warm yet realistic ending that will help readers to process their own feelings of loss.Includes Mr Mornington's famous cherry cake recipe at the back of the book, so you can try one of his favourite things.

A study of a contemporary witness to the transformation of post-Roman Britain into Anglo-Saxon England.Gildas's De excidio Britonum is a rare surviving contemporary source for the period which saw the beginning of the transformation of post-Roman Britain into Anglo-Saxon England. However, although the De excidio has received much scholarly attention over the last forty years, the value of the text as a primary source for this fascinating if obscure period of British history has been limited by our lack of knowledge concerning its historical and cultural context. In this new study the author challenges the assumption that the British Church was isolated from its Continental counterpart by Germanic settlement in Britain and seeks to establish a theological context for the De excidio within the framework of doctrinal controversy in the early Continental Church. The vexed question of the place of Pelagianism in the early British Church is re-investigated and a case is put forward for a radical new interpretation of Gildas's own theological stance. In addition, this study presents a detailed investigation of the literary structure of the De excidio and Gildas's use of verbal patterns, and argues that his use ofthe Bible as a literary model is at least as significant as his well-documented use of the literary techniques of Classical Latin.Dr KAREN GEORGE is currently a tutor at the Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education.