Oh My Gosh -- Is that Baldrick????

Is that ...? Is that ...?
It IS!!! Baldrick from Black Adder
(not that my mommy ever lets me watch that show!)

Through the Oxfordshire Home-Ed grapevine, we heard that the actor, Tony Robinson, was going to be giving a talk to primary-aged students in Oxford, sponsored by Blackwells, the local publisher and book shop.

Perhaps you know Tony Robinson as Blackadder's sidekick, Baldrick, or more recently, as the front-man for the documentary series about archeology, Time Team.

Tony Robinson explaining why we started a half-hour late:
it was a broken train!

Robinson has recently embarked on writing a series of Horrible-Histories-style books about the empires of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Great Britain, and is soon to release two books about the World Wars.

Although we have read the one about the Romans before and thought it was so-so (the highest marks went to the translation of "There's a banana in my ear" into Latin), we didn't want to miss a chance to hear an author talk about his work.

He was high-energy, interactive, entertaining. He finished off with a quick story about empires and their desire for gold, having the audience shout out "gold" whenever he held up the prompt on a placard.

It wasn't, however, like talks we've seen before at World Book Day such as those given by Chris Bradford (Young Samurai series) or Andy Cope (Spy Dog/Spy Pup) with their slide shows and demonstrations (Bradford showed us some ninja skills, and Cope brought his dog, who was the basis of the Spy Dog books).

Book Signing

Perhaps that was because Robinson was late, his train having been stuck behind a broken one, and couldn't set up anything all-singing and all-dancing.  Still, for about half-an-hour, the 100-plus kids were spell-bound and focused, and then there was the 15 minutes or so of obligatory book signing.

All in all, a good afternoon out, even if the event itself was rather short-lived. I suppose if the weather had been tipping with rain, I might think differently -- the sunshine meant we had a lovely walk in the ancient city of Oxford regardless.