Literature and history listeners, two or three times a decade, I send a podcast recommendation your way. I don't do it

because anybody pays me. I do it because I think the show that I'm recommending is surpassingly

awesome and that you guys will enjoy it. The podcast I wanted to recommend is Kevin Stroud's

The History of English. The History of English is something that your host has been listening to since before

he ever started literature and history, and one of the programs that inspired me to start this

one. The history of English traces the English language's development way back to its

Indo-European roots through early Greek, the Phoenician alphabet, and then Latin, the beginning of German,

and the fragmentation of Latin in the former Roman world during late antiquity.

After exploring how the Gothic language found its way into former Roman provinces and the linguistic

mishmash that existed in northern Europe, among angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians,

Kevin arrives at the Anglo-Saxon invasion around his 30th episode,

and then goes on to offer what is, in my opinion, the finest and most detailed summary

of the Old English language and Old English literature out there in the world of educational

audio.

It only gets better from there.

From the Northumbrian Renaissance to Beowulf, Kenowulf, King Alfred, the impact of Old Norse,

the end of the Anglo-Saxon Golden Age, and the Norman conquest of 1066, Kevin moves forward through the Anglo-Norman

hegemony and the slow emergence of Middle English, the impact of the black death on

anglophone culture, Pierce Plowman, Chaucer, the Gawain or Gawain poet, the great vowel shift,

the history of the 17th century, Shakespeare, the globalization of English,

and how globalization affected the development of the language.

With 185 episodes out, more to come, centuries of history covered and dozens of linguistic confluences explored,

...