May I emphasise that this is a personal initiative, not part of ARLT policy.

Every now and then I come across an example of wilful ignorance about the Classics, or conduct likely to cause grievous harm to the cause of Classics. It struck me that there ought to be some recognition of these.  Private Eye has its OBN - Order of the Brown Nose - for  lickspittle behaviour, so  I have instituted  my own  variation on the OBE,  the OBI, Order of  Barbaric  Ignorance. 

The first recipient, as seen on the home page of the ARLT site, was suggested by hearing Robin Birley at Vindolanda. Apparently the Birley family actually own the Vindolanda land, while English Heritage administers the excavated site of the fort.  Robin Birley has shown himself an expert in making parts of Hadrian's Wall attractive to visitors, with the reconstructions of a turret from the turf Wall and one from the stone Wall, and the Roman Army Museum, and he suggested to English Heritage that information plaques at various points in and around the fort could well feature text in English, German, Spanish - and Latin. Apparently the local English Heritage people were all in favour of this, but some wonderful committee down in Londinium (sorry, London) came up with the remarkable decision that for a Roman site, Latin would not be appropriate.

Fortunately for the visiting public, the Trust took on the expense of producing the information plaques themselves, including the Latin version, produced by Professor Anthony Birley - it must be useful to have a Professor of Classics in the family. You can see photos of the result in the Vindolanda folder of photos here.

I wonder if the folk who thought this inappropriate had heard of Newcastle's excellent scheme for interesting tourists in the Roman heritage by putting public signs in Latin in the metro.

So, to the London committee, the award of the OBI.

I have at least one other award winner up my sleeve. If you want to suggest  a worthy recipient, do let me know.