Mermaids and Sirens

Hi, I’m Charlie,

The blog is called mermaids and Sirens because it all originated from a conversation with my mum. Despite the fact that she’s lived in the UK since 1991 and speaks English like a native, very rarely she gets a little confused. In English, sirens come from Greek mythology and were evil, ugly creatures who lured men away from their ships so that they would not return home (Book 10 of the Odyssey, great example) but mermaids are from Nordic mythology and tend to be more beautiful, mystical sea creatures. In Italian, there is not this distinction – all are ‘sirene’ (singular: sirena). Due to my undying love for mythology and my mum’s occasional slip-up, I had to have myth in the title.

I’m currently at Uni studying ‘Middle Eastern Studies and Politics’ with a little bit of Ancient History as my discovery module. I used to blog a lot pre-2015 but these were just generally about my life and books I had read. New posts from 2015 onward are catagorised.

You can follow this blog on here, or see more stories I share my following my Twitter account and liking my Facebook page. Occasionally I put videos on to my YouTube channel. I want to encourage debate over the issues I discuss, so please feel free to like, share, comment on any post.