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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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La Belle Dame sans Merci
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(1820) Short ballad by *Keats, using the title of a 15C French poem about a 'beautiful lady without mercy' but applying it to a quite different story. Keats's version is part of a medieval strain in the *Romantic movement which had a powerful appeal in Britain. His knight-at-arms, 'alone and palely loitering', was still a favourite type of subject for *Burne-Jones at the end of the century. The knight meets and lifts on to his 'pacing steed' a beautiful lady, a wild long-haired fairy's child, who tempts him into her elfin grotto. There he sees all her other victims before waking, incurable, from his vision.
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