All those pretty flags

**Eric** · 29-Aug-2011, 09:25

Someone joked on another thread about not being able to find a flag for the USSR. Actually, a lot of writers would qualify, because there are a lot of writers on this website where you have to choose a modern flag, when in fact they wrote as Soviet citizens, but in several languages, mostly Russian.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire must have had a flag, and many famous Modernists were still living in that multi-ethnic realm. Personally, without resorting to the Wiki or Google, I wouldn't have a clue what that flag looked like.

We can't blame Stewart for not getting rid of the all-green Libyan flag and replacing it with the stripy one with black in it. Because the fate of Libya still hangs in the balance.

Where, incidentally, does this little group of flag icons come from, and can flags be individually added or taken away? I'm always happy that the constituent flags of the UK and the one for Catalonia are present in the list. Because if someone is a Scottish or Catalan writer, it is nice to be able to mark that fact with a flag. I do think, however, that the Esperanto flag is used less often. Though the EU flag has its moments.

**Stewart** · 29-Aug-2011, 09:37

The flags came from a free set offered on a website. Any new ones would have to be created by myself. I see them more as a bit of fun and colour to the site rather than anything fully serious, so don't quite fancy creating new ones for every flag in history. You'll have me dropping stars from the US flag next, depending on a book's year of publication.

**Eric** · 29-Aug-2011, 10:01

I take the flags quite seriously, because they do instantly put a writer in a certain context. However, as I've indicated, there are dilemmas. And people like Conrad and Nabokov might merit two or three. But most writers are usually associated principally with one nation state or country.

**Eric** · 14-Jun-2012, 10:51

Sometimes, in the Recently Purchased / Borrowed or similar threads, you feel tempted to put more than one flag.

Take, for instance, the 18th century writer Laurence Sterne. He was born in Ireland, but his father was a British soldier and they moved to Halifax in Yorkshire. Then he studied in Cambridge, had connections with York, and so on. So you could give him a

and you would not be entirely right or wrong. Other Scottish, Welsh and Irish writers moved permanently to England, which again means you have to examine their subject matter and numbers of years in the various countries before flagging them.

**Stewart** · 14-Jun-2012, 13:27

It would be nice, but it's going to have to remain as it is. I'm sure when the forum software was designed, they expected a few icons to signify the general category of post...and didn't expect some guy to upload loads of flags for a niche purpose.

**Eric** · 14-Jun-2012, 14:33

I wasn't really referring to the sole flag at the beginning of the post, where one should suffice, but when people list books in that Recently Bought section, e.g.

Latest Purchase:

Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy (Wordsworth Classics).

**Stiffelio** · 15-Jun-2012, 05:11

Originally Posted by Eric

I wasn't really referring to the sole flag at the beginning of the post, where one should suffice, but when people list books in that Recently Bought section, e.g.

Latest Purchase:

Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy (Wordsworth Classics).

I think you can do what you want to achieve, by writing down the symbols embedded in each flag icon manually.