Mark Brandon is an a retired wine-buyer with a life-long love of history. After retiring, he first worked for Salisbury Museum photographing objects in the Pitt-Rivers’ (the father of archaeology) collection and then transferred to Salisbury Cathedral where specialists in Magna Carta were being trained for its 800th anniversary. After a year he had the opportunity of adding research work in the Cathedral Archives and was put to work on the Chapter minutes dating from 1733, the point when they started to be written in English. There was so much of interest that he wrote up his notes, so far there are 298 pages, in a book form which he calls a ‘Capitular Concordance’. In order to disseminate his more interesting finds Mark publishes on a twice-monthly basis a newsletter called Jot & Tittle. The title refers to the scribe’s (Tironian) shorthand that was used in Magna Carta but today is just found in the dot on the letters i and j plus the cross on the t.

To find out how you can subscribe or if would like to donate to Jot & Tittle please click here: www.jot-and-tittle.com

The Marlborough History Society would like to send their thanks to Mark Brandon for kindly giving permission to post the Jot & Tittle on our website.