🎭 Tiffany Watt Smith (@tiffwattsmith.bsky.social), historian of emotions at the Queen Mary University of London (@qmul.bsky.social), reflects on how theatre and emotions are connected and how performance helps us understand human experience. #Theatre #Emotions #PublicEngagement #PLPEXPeditions

What a treat! Just had a thoroughly enjoyable evening talking friendship with some extremely smart people including @drmatthewsweet.bsky.social @stephenshapiro.bsky.social @phuonghhle.com Alexander Douglas and Susie Orbach. Listen in! www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

I don't have many followers here, but...any suggestions for who could repair the mechanism on this beautiful old pinball machine? It belonged to my godfather, who recently died, and it brought joy to so many children (inc. me), and we want to repair it as a tribute to him. It is in SE London. 🙏

I agree, the Book of Human Emotions is an excellent heatwave read. Short entries = time for languid day-dreaming. Plus an entry on the feeling hot days do best: dolce far niente, or the sweet sweet pleasure of doing nothing much at all. Hope you enjoy @nicolecrust.bsky.social

@medhistoryman.bsky.social saw this and thought of your excellent-sounding project. Intrigued to know if the link between tobacco and palm reading was widely made.

At book events for BAD FRIEND, the cutest thing keeps happening. Pairs of women friends come up and buy a copy of the book to share and ask me to dedicate it to them both, and my heart is melting @faberbooks.bsky.social @smallcitybookshop.bsky.social 💓

And I'm even more happy because my brother just sent me this snap of BAD FRIEND as Pick of the Week in @theweek.com Thank you so much to all the wonderful historians and writers who gave it such generous recommendations and reviews, and to all of you who are buying it #friendship #theweek 😘

This Thursday I'll be talking about BAD FRIEND at the wonderful @smallcitybookshop.bsky.social in Bristol. I'm so excited because Bristol is one of my top-of-the-pops utter favourite cities in the UK. Please come and say hello. www.thesmallcitybookshop.co.uk/event-detail...

My nomination for “Best Information Sheet in a Parish Church”…

I wrote about friendship, perimenopause and boxing for Oprah Daily and i’d love for you to read it! x www.oprahdaily.com/life/relatio...

I wrote about learning a tough lesson, and how it made me a (I think) a better friend (ps: BAD FRIEND 26% off on Amazon right now) www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/art...

It's great to see Simeon Koole's wonderful and important book Intimate Subjects: Touch and Tangibility in Britain's Cerebral Age reviewed in @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4.... I really can't recommend Sim's book highly enough - it's a stunning piece of historical scholarship.

Been an exciting week for BAD FRIEND, since it was published last week in the UK I'm doing an event tomorrow night at The Wanstead Tap E7, and have a handful of free tickets. If you'd like to come, DM me! Tiff x www.newhambooks.co.uk/displaybook....

When crime strikes, the Cat signal will appear in the sky

'So many writers with fixes for the grips we need to get. No. Neither bother with reading like that. Both, by osmosis, staying well out of it, favouring wild worlds instead'. Eimear McBride on very cool form in her new book.

Does the phrase 'toxic friends' make you shudder? I hate it, and wrote about why in @theguardian.com

Very excited to be included in this month's books round-up in VOGUE, along with the brilliant @francesryan.bsky.social

We're so pleased to feature in this article by @tiffwattsmith.bsky.social which uses our material to consider what we should do about our 'toxic' friends www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m... (P.S. the heating at The Keep is now fixed! Hats and gloves can be left at home!)

Apparently, if you take a woman's pubic hair, mix it with menstrual blood, and put it on a dung heap, within a year, you'll have a whole army of 'wicked, venemous beasts' (according to the medieval Secreta mulierum). Just sayin...

Would you like to read BAD FRIEND: A CENTURY OF REVOLUTIONARY FRIENDSHIPS? There's 25% off pre-orders at Waterstones for this weekend only. And.... there's 25% off a TONNE of other amazing books coming out too 💫https://www.waterstones.com/book/bad-friend/tiffany-watt-smith/9780571376537

These final weeks before publication are the strangest times of being an author. Part of you wants to protect the book you’ve been quietly loving into being for so long. And then there’s the part which knows you have to take a deep breath and hoof it out the door open.substack.com/pub/thefutur...

'Fizzes with women navigating, testing, and redefining this most powerful and complex bond.' Katherine Angel To celebrate Galentine's Day, we're thrilled to reveal the cover for Bad Friend, a rebellious new history of female friendship by @tiffwattsmith.bsky.social. Out 24 April!

'From the stone’s perspective my lifetime was a flicker; less than a flicker ... I stretched out my hand, conscious that this would be the oldest object I would ever touch.' 'The Meteorites' author @helenlpgordon.bsky.social on her fascination with ancient, extra-terrestrial rocks: buff.ly/4hO5IAw

Very excited amidst all this grim news that tonight we are launching the first annual National Humanities Lecture, delivered by the splendid @davidolusoga.bsky.social, speaking of the urgent importance of public humanities and public history.

Extract from the The Meteorites running in the @theguardian.com today: www.theguardian.com/news/2025/fe...

Super excited about talking about trust and friendship at tomorrow's late event @britishacademy.bsky.social The Age of Mistrust? www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/the-a...

Super excited about talking about trust and friendship at tomorrow's late event at the British Academy, The Age of Mistrust? www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/the-a...

UK authors: what do you do with multiples of foreign language editions of your books? I remember once hearing about a charity that works with asylum seekers - does that still exist?

Husband and I are clearing out books (downsizing house move). We've put it off and put it off...it's so painful letting go of even the tiniest scraps of the history of our lives as readers and writers. But there are some moments of joy, like finding this

Congratulations Sally and Katie - this looks 😍

I'm looking forward to @smfleming.bsky.social's Crick Lecture (and prize-giving!) this evening at @royalsociety.org. Well done Steve! royalsociety.org/science-even...

Very excited for the launch for @writeback.bsky.social - a new quarterly events series at the British Library where writers speak about their niche interests, then interview each other. First event is 18th March. Tickets can be bought here www.seetickets.com/event/writeb...

Well, you gotta listen. It's just common sense, isn't it? In which the redoubtable Anne Widdecombe, the ingenious Rachael Wiseman, the brilliant Sarah Jilani (and me) talk about the bleedin' obvious with the superlative @drmatthewsweet.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

There's a very tender moment in the life of an author when the book you've been quietly working on for years suddenly goes out in to the world - and it makes my heart burst with happiness when I hear it resonates

Book cover reveal!!! So excited to see this 🌟🎉@reaktionbooks.bsky.social

I'm in the bizarro land of making an index for my new book 'Bad Friend'. And it reminded me of one of my proudest writing accomplishments: the index for my book 'Schadenfreude'

Hello #bskyhistorians (if this hashtag thing works here on Bluesky? does it?). Anyone read Old French? This is from a 16th c witch trial in Lorraine. Should the 'viens' be 'vient'? Vient diable, vient serpent, viens moy querir Thanks in advance for your expert help! Tiff

Are they....shackles? #barbie

Doubling the joy today! I'm thrilled that my local friend Danella Olsen joined me to dance together beside majestic, frozen Fish Lake in the Yukon wilderness at -20°C. When joy is multiplied through connection in nature's embrace, it creates a positive ripple effect. Happy Holidays! 🎄 Gurdeep.org

Can I just say? This. Looks. Amazing. @penguinbooksusa.bsky.social www.penguin.co.uk/books/453476...

For all you out there still doing your Christmas shopping, this one's for you open.substack.com/pub/thefutur...

Looks like a fantastic event 👇🏻

My friend gave me this for my birthday and I definitely exaggerated my scratchy throat into the flu so I could stay in bed and finish reading it. LOVED it!

I've got a nice little Obs story up my sleeve (by which I mean a devastating one, obviously, that being my general area) but that is going to wait because as an NUJ member I won't be crossing the picket line to pitch. I know it's a perilous time but I hope other freelancers do the same.

Wonderful to see #Rumbles by Elsa Richardson and #TheHouseDivided by Barnaby Rogerson chosen as @prospectmagazine.co.uk history books of the year ✨ www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/6871...

First book pimping on Bluesky (possibly). Anyway my latest novel is 99p on kindle which for the amount of editing it had makes it a real bargain! amzn.eu/d/iTIf0sF

A completed work of nonfiction. That landmark moment has just occurred when I have packed away 4 years of research notes in a plastic crate. My desk is now clear. The beginning of new writing adventures awaits…

Danced among the dinosaurs, at the Oxford Natural History Museum tonight

Joy can help us heal & feel better. It's not about ignoring life's problems or being uncaring. Instead, it's about accepting challenges & learning to face them with a right mindset. Joy can help us recover in a natural way that affects all parts of our lives. From the Yukon, I'm sending good vibes.❤️

She 'could not go to work and stand at the office printer and hold her face in a steady expression of interest while her colleague talked at length about the surprising importance of cheese in medieval theology'. *. (*NB: there's a chance I might have been that colleague, at one time or other...)