John Ball (priest) - John Ball in Popular Culture

John Ball in Popular Culture

Ball made a star appearance in the Newbery Medal-winning novel, Crispin: The Cross of Lead. He was a priest, as he usually is, and was assisting a character by the name of Bear in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

William Morris wrote a short story called 'Two extracts from a dream of John Ball', which was serialised in the Commonweal between November 1886 and February 1887. It was published in book form in 1888.

English songwriter Sydney Carter wrote an eponymously-titled song about Ball which has been recorded by a number of artists.

There is a steep hill on the A5199 in Leicestershire, between Shearsby and Husbands Bosworth, which is colloquially called 'John Ball Hill'.

The Bedfordshire on Sunday, a free local newspaper based in Bedford, runs a weekly column by a fictional journalist called John Ball's Diary, which features behind the scenes life in the office of the newspaper. The column is written by all the members of the editorial staff.

Ball appears as a character in the anonymous play "Jack Straw," published in London in 1593, which deals with the events of the Peasants' Revolt.

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Famous quotes containing the words john, ball, popular and/or culture:

    Whither goest thou?
    Bible: New Testament Peter, in John, 13:36.

    The words, which are repeated in John 16:5, are best known in the Latin form in which they appear in the Vulgate: Quo vadis? Jesus replies, “Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.”

    But the ball is lost and the mallet slipped long since from the hands
    Under the running tap that are not the hands of a child.
    Louis MacNeice (1907–1963)

    If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work
    C. John Sommerville (20th century)

    Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.
    —Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)