Frances Hughes

Frances Hughes

Frances is a recent History of Art graduate from the University of Cambridge, living in Hay-on-Wye. Her final thesis provided a fresh iconographical interpretation of an Anglo-Saxon sculpted shaft in Rothley, Leicestershire. Her main areas of interest are the visual culture of early medieval and early modern Britain. She likes to spend her time filling notebooks with incoherent ideas about objects that she has encountered, and is a firm believer in the value of local history. She is happiest when long-distance rambling, with just a rucksack to recommend her.

Toads breeding
Nature 11 April, 2016

An Orgy of Toads

Soon after the clocks have gone forward and April Fools has passed, a spring event occurs which has yet to capture the popular imagination in quite the same way as…

Euclid's First Definition
Writing 18 January, 2016

Euclid’s First Definition

    Cover image: Euclid, Stoicheia (Elements). Manuscript, Constantinople, September 888. MS. D’Orville 301, fols. 113v-114r © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford (via Alain R. Truong)    

Thinking 20 December, 2015

The Couple on the Corner

On the corner of St Michael’s Church, Bryngwyn, a couple are fixed together in mortar. They are lying horizontally, one on the east wall, one on the south. Their heads…