Simon Young: Curriculum Vitae
Contact Details
Name: Simon Young
Address: Via Piana 54, Santa Brigida, Pontassieve (FI) 50065
Telephone: 055 8300399, 3284804195
Email: [email protected]
Qualifications
2003-2006
Istituto di Studi Umanistici di Firenze
Doctorate, Prolegomena to a Prosopography of the Western Exiles
given magna cum laude December 18th 2006
First in concorso
1992-1995
Clare College Cambridge
First cum laude in Part Two of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic
Tripos.
Awarded Chadwick Prize for Celtic Studies and Green Prize ‘for
learning’.
First in Part One of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic Tripos
1990-1992
Huddersfield New College
5 A Levels at level A: English Literature, History, Politics,
Ancient Civilisation, General Studies.
2 S levels at level one: English and History.
New College Prize for best student in History, Politics and
English Literature.
1989-1990
Rosalind High School, Alberta, Canada
1984-1989
Calder High School
6 GCSEs at level A: English language, English literature,
History, Geography, Home Economics and French.
2 GCSEs at level B: Maths and Integrated Science
Work Experience
2009
Lecturer at Palazzo Rucellai: Course on the History of Florence
2009-
Research Assistant at the European University Institute (Fiesole)
2
2009-
Lecturer at Umbra Institute in Perugia: Courses on Italian Food
History and the History and Politics of Modern Italy
2007-9
Television consultancy with TrueVision (London)
2006- 10
Lecturer at Fairfield University in Florence: Courses on
Renaissance Italy, the Second World War in Italy and the
History of Christianity.
1999-
Freelance journalist in publications ranging from the Guardian to
the Spectator and from History Today to the Fortean Times. Book
reviews in the Sunday Telegraph and the Independent.
1998-1999
Teacher in the Irish Refugee Association. Teaching to large
groups several times every week. Help with special needs
student.
1995-2002
English teaching in Ireland, Spain and Italy, both individually
and to classes
Academic Publications
2013
‘A History of the Fairy Investigation Society from 1927 to 1960’
Folklore (forthcoming)
‘Three Cornish Fairy Notes: (1) William Dunn and the Piskies,
1869, (2) The Brownie of Penzance, 1879, (3) Piskeys on the
Border, c. 1930’ Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries
(forthcoming)
‘Nineteenth-century Fairy Crimes in Ireland’, (Under second
review with Beascna)
‘Two Notes on Edmund Jones’s Relations of Apparitions: (1) A
Textual History of the Apparitions: A Phantom and a Missing
Edition and (2) An Overlooked Fairy Encounter with Jones, c.
1793’ (under review with Studi Celtici)
‘Against Taxonomy: The Fairy Families of Cornwall’ (under
review with Cornish Studies)
‘Six Notes on Nineteenth-Century Cornish Changelings: (1)
When Did the Cornish Stop Believing in Changelings?, (2) The
Missing Child of Treonike, c. 1835, and His Historical
Antecedents, (3) The Misunderstood 1843 Penzance Changeling
Case, (4) Evans-Wentz and Nineteenth-Century Cornish
Changelings, (5) Selena Moor, Changelings and Irish
3
2012
2010
2009
2007
2005
Chapbooks, (6) A Handlist of Cornish Changeling Stories’
(under review with Journal of the Royal Institute of Cornwall)
‘Fairies, Potatoes and Those Elusive Irish Foodways’ (written for
inclusion on a book on food and folklore)
‘Fairy Imposters in Longford during the Great Famine’ Studia
Hibernica (forthcoming)
‘Three Notes on West Yorkshire Fairies in the Nineteenth
Century’ Folklore 123, 223-230
‘Fairies and Railways: A Nineteenth-Century Topos and its
Origins’ Notes and Queries 59 (3): 401-403
‘Apocalypse Then, c. 410’, BBC History (March)
Celtic Revolution (Gibson Square, 2010 paperback). Sunday
Telegraph: ‘...a writer with the enviable ability to make even the
obscurest periods of history accessible and interesting...rare that
such evident learning is work with such lightness and
sprezzatura...a wonderfully written book’. Guardian: ‘Young
wears his considerable learning lightly – not many scholars can
describe 2,000 years of European history with authority – and
his style is light, witty and enjoyable’. Spectator: ‘Extrordinarily
ambitious’. Times Literary Supplement: ‘So good a book… up to
date scholarship’. BBC History Magazine: Diverting…
refreshingly contentious’. CARN ‘This book is just very
interesting, very good and very entertaining’. Church Times:
‘Fascinating, well paced’. Western Mail: ‘Witty informative and
enthralling’. Fortean Times: ‘Lively, well-written’ 2008 ‘Will the
Real King Arthur Please Stand Up?’, BBC History (Dec), 15-21
Farewell Britannia (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2008 paperback).
Sunday Telegraph: ‘For imaginative and thrilling engagement
with the history of those often shadowy and chaotic times,
Farwell Britannia will be very hard to beat.’ Spectator: ‘…fiction
as written by a careful and formidably knowledgeable scholar,
one who is concerned to ground all that he writes in scrupously
documented fact…a book that, garlanded as it is, with a whle
array of learned yet hugely entertaining notes, serves as a work
of much more than simply fiction.’
A.D. 500: A Journey Through the Dark Isles of Britain and Ireland
(Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2006 paperback). Financial Times:
‘Informative and entertaining, this is popular history at its best.’
Independent on Sunday: ‘What a joy to be able to recommend a
book about misery, bloodshed and grisly superstition for being
funny, compassionate and clear-eyed… The world is
wonderfully evoked… the hand behind these narrators guides
them with warmth and fluency.’ Ireland on Sunday: ‘Simon
4
Young offers nugget after nugget of fascinating detail… This
bawdy picaresque and high-spirited book wears its considerable
learning lightly and opens a window on a time long neglected.’
2004
‘Et Iterum Post: Dislocation in St Patrick’s Confessio?’, Studi
Celtici 2, 69-75
2003
‘The Bishops of the Early Medieval Spanish Diocese of Britonia’,
Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 45, 1-19
2003
‘A Briton in Twelfth-Century Santiago de Compostela’, Peritia
17-18, 507-8
2003
‘In gentibus dispersti nos: the British Diaspora in Patrick and
Gildas’, Peritia 17-18, 505-6
2002
‘On the Irish Peregrini in Italy’, Peritia 16, 250-55
2002
‘Iberian Addenda to Fleuriot’s Toponymes’, Peritia 16, 479-80
2002
‘St Patrick and Clovis’, Peritia 16, 478-9
2002
‘Celtic Myths, Celtic History’, History Today 52, 20-24
2001
Britonia: Camiños Novos [Galician](Toxosoutos translated into
Spanish in 2002)
2001
‘St. Brigit in a Medieval Welsh Poem’, Peritia 15, 279
2001
‘A note on St Patrick's Confessio: Gloria patris est’, Studia Celtica
35, 361-2
2001
‘Britones in Thirteenth-century Galicia’, Studia Celtica 35, 361-2
2001
‘The Forgotten Colony’, History Today 50, 5-6
2000
Review of García y García, Bretoña in electronic journal Heroic
Age 4,
1998
‘Brigit of Kildare in early Medieval Tuscany’, Studia Hibernica 30,
251-55
1998
‘Donatus Bishop of Fiesole 829-76, and the Cult of St Brigit in
Italy’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 35, 13-26
1998
‘San Donato, un vescovo irlandese nella Fiesolo del secolo IX’,
Corrispondenza 32, 3-5
1997
‘A Britto in Eighth-Century Tuscany’, Studia Celtica 3, 281-282
1995
The Celtic Sources for the Arthurian Legend (Llanerch) with Jon
Coe.
Talks and Congresses
20052006
2007
British?’
Over fifty appearances on British radio from 2005 onwards
including Excess Baggage and Women’s Hour.
Talk at the British Institute Florence on ‘the Irish Saints in Italy’.
Lecture at Aberdeen Conference on Souter: ‘Was Pelagius
Personal Details
5
Nationality: British
Date of Birth: 11th July 1973
Marital Status: Married with two daughters
Prizes: Runner up in the 2002 Premio Historia for Britonia (see publications)
Languages: English – native speaker; Italian – fluent; Spanish – fluent;
Gallego – intermediate; French – excellent reading; German – basic reading. I
read several dead languages.