‘Common culture’ followed by ‘English-Scots-Irish’ 😂

And what are one of the key engines of the ‘Manchester model’, according to this article? Universities.

Your reminder that Pepys kept a black child in his house as a slave. Does that not warrant like just a bit of shame?

‘Stumbled upon an important truth’

Away for the weekend on a little family trip, and cracking this open with a nice cuppa after a long drive.

NEW EPISODE!! 📯🥳 This week on You’re Dead To Me podcast we’re discussing the extraordinary Epic of Gilgamesh with expert Assyriologist @moudhy.bsky.social and comedian @marjoleinrobertson.bsky.social Listen now on BBC SOUNDS, or tomorrow at 10am on BBC RADIO 4

A court has ruled that the government's authoritarian ban on Palestine Action was unlawful. Time to stop criminalising the people protesting a genocide - and start ending the UK's complicity.

Bit of a flaw in demanding students have workplace ready skills like communication, analysis, creativity, and then telling them gen-AI use for planning, research, written expression, are all permissible. Like how the fuck will they learn to do these things themselves if they don’t have to???

Great conference on The Ulster Plantation today at PRONI, showcasing the relaunched 'People of the Ulster Plantation' online database, produced through a research collaboration of @ria.ie, @qubelfastofficial.bsky.social and @maynoothuniversity.ie. Access is via ulster-settlers.maynoothuniversity.ie

Not quite the Caribbean sunsets I’ve been used to lately, but it’s nice to see a pink sky in England in February.

My husband volunteers at St Joseph’s Hospice Bereavement Service in Hackney and he’s running the local Half Marathon to raise a little bit of cash for them. If you can spare something, it’s a very worthy cause: www.justgiving.com/page/mike-wi...

My new book, An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class, is now listed in Verso's trade catalogue for 2026. You can find it here: versobooks.com/en-gb/pages/...

more like the “MENguin history of europe” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pen... 🗃️

“Four of my children just evaporated,” Badran said, holding back tears. “I looked for them a million times. Not a piece was left. Where did they go?” There are no words to adequately describe the evil here.

Long day of teaching that finished at 6, but the bonus was going immediately to this fantastic talk hosted by @ystadaucymru.bsky.social from the fabulous Marian Gwyn on ‘TEXTILES AS EXPLOITATION: Clothing, commerce and control on the Penrhyn Jamaica plantations’.

Uhh you guys, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is pretty bloody good.

3/ The Digital Library of the Caribbean @dlocaribbean.bsky.social that works with partner institutions across the Caribbean and Latin America provides several good guides for digitization, digital curation, and training. dloc.domains.uflib.ufl.edu/technology/

A £240m defence contract without tender. Their fingerprints all over our health care data. A meeting in the USA but without any minutes. Everything around Palantir stinks. www.thenational.scot/news/2584192...

Friends, can I ask you to spread the word that we have a THREE-YEAR postdoc in American history at Cambridge up for grabs - ANY field, but applications are due March 1 so don't delay - apply, apply, apply! networks.h-net.org/jobs/69790/u...

Let me get this straight. The Royal Academy contemplated throwing Ai Wei Wei out for tweeting about genocide in Gaza. Meanwhile, back with the parqagons of virtue, @royalsociety.org is whistling on its way, refusing to throw out Elon Musk for overseeing the deaths of millions. Got it.

I’m beginning every panel I chair for the rest of my career with this frontal attack…

Hi we saw you from across the room and really dig your vibe. Would you like to come back to our jacuzzi?

Shots fired from Bangor students. Let’s see their peers across the country rise to the occasion.

Honestly couldn’t be more proud of my students at Bangor right now. Take your fascist shit and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.

"Government ministers, including former home secretary Yvette Cooper, lied to the public in an attempt to manufacture consent for the draconian ban"

I have just marked an MA dissertation where the student attached a 500 page appendix of her transcription of a late Tudor preacher’s entire Latin notebook and sermons. I am floored.

So, in the last 15 years, the % thinking immigration is bad for the economy has gone from 42 to 14 and back to 33. The % thinking it undermines culture [???] from 40 to 16 to 34. A nation of goldfish, led by Daily Mail headlines...

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f... follow the money

Attention west Wales! March 28th at Mwldan, Aberteifi. Two disgraced ex-Tories under one roof. We'll see you there! mwldan.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/...

On a packed commuter train and crying over the book I’m reading. Awks. But can’t help it goddamnit! The boy’s dog has died!!

Israel defenders: Israel has no genocidal intent Israeli media:

"Gives Itself More Control"

For half-term, next Tuesday I’m doing a fun kids’ event at @southbankcentre.bsky.social in London — I’ll be doing a funny talk on the history of Roman Britain, and my ace illustrator @rikinparekh.bsky.social will do a live draw-along tutorial Tix cheap! www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/tot...

Ten quid says he uses AI to write it.

Not forgetting St Helena under the English East India Company, or the very first sugar slave plantation colonies of Madeira Islands and Sao Tome under the Portuguese.

Hit 'reply all' and responded to an email to the entire University this morning, if you're wondering how I've readjusted to work after my overseas trip. The upside is I've been chatting over email with about 30 people I never met before, all with good advice about a grant proposal I'm writing.

48 hours ago I was walking on a beach in the Caribbean with swaying palm trees. This morning I'm in Tesco cafe waiting for my car to be serviced at Halfords as it pours of rain. Oh, and I stepped in dog-shit on the school run earlier.

Hard to overestimate the loss 800 university staff entails to society/economy/humanity. Thousands of combined years of skills and training vanishing, the hammer blows against fragile sources of knowledge and expertise, the dismemberment of entire disciplines. Remarkable self-destruction.

The UK government is proposing radical and punitive changes to settlement rules. This is settlement, not citizenship. The consultation is open until 12 February; please respond to it and oppose these evil proposals. Amnesty have a good guide: www.amnesty.org.uk/resources/gu...

Remember: this is a Labour MP. Vote Green, Liberal, or Your Party - the only progressive and humane politics left in this country.

A lot of people will think ‘good for them! But this is a gutless intervention that says nothing about Andrew and uses ‘focusing on the victims’ as a way to deflect how the institution they are primary beneficiaries of allows abuses of power like this to take place and remain beyond justice.

Bad Bunny has a consulting historian. news.wisc.edu/pop-star-bad...

"Awesome dinner" www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news...

A senior MoD official helps shape defence strategy, then joins Palantir. Months later, Palantir lands a £240m MoD contract without tender. No laws broken – just the revolving door doing what it does best.

A lot of the Church’s focus is on its historic financial entanglement with slavery. But in some ways this is the tip of the iceberg. The Anglican (and Catholic) Church was a major force within slave plantation societies, legitimising, normalising, and proselytising slavery.

I remember in the early 90s when my dad tapped the fax machine, leaned into me, and said: ‘son, soon, every house in the world will have a fax machine in it. And we’ll be able to send large amounts of information to one another in no time at all.’ Well, he wasn’t totally wrong. Just about fax.

Politics? No! War criminals? Yes!