An open letter, to readers, about Charity and Sylvia. I am very pained to feel the need to write this. #queerhistory #pride

A London weekend: yesterday I swam in the Ladies Pond which is also having a problem with algae. I felt very of the moment. Had to wash blue-green clots of it out of my bathers. 🤮

Come join our friendly team to do radical history online. History Workshop is recruiting one editorial fellowship this year, with specialism in pre-1800 history in any part of the globe.

But ... speaking of Regency tables & fragments . .. if anyone feels like buying something like this for me, I wouldn't say no! Note the trompe l'oeil tabletop simulating clutter, & supposed to allure you into trying to pick up a playing card or coin or leaf through that open book of "Select Poems."

Second most beautiful thing from Burford after Bertie the cat

The cooling system was installed by the village AC technician, Thermodynamix 😊

Hydration Break.

Dear American Friends, for an upcoming paper in the French press, I’m looking for testimonies about this year 4th of July celebrations (250) I’d love to receive your account at simon.grivet [a] univ-lille.fr Thank you so much for your help!

This exquisite cup in blue-green glass, attributed to Iran or Iraq, was made — mind-bogglingly — all the way back in the 9th or 10th centuries (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 🗃️

Houseboating: neighbour lowering herself in for a swim, with proper fluoro tow float, set upon by angry swans and hauled herself out just in time. She said very kindly that they had lost four babies this year and are now down to two, so she understood

Houseboat latest: there is a BOOK floating in the middle of the river. Ducks very disappointed it is not bread. I expect it's a love missive from someone further along, or something naming me queen, but I might have read too much early modern romance.

Ceci n'est pas une simulation. Nous vivons dans une dystopie. Même à plus de 40 degrés, certains continuent à nous vendre comme solution ce qui conduit l’humanité dans le mur. C’est quand même incroyablement inquiétant.

Today in house boating: these little squeakers tempted me into the water for a wallow. Hosed myself down after.

I am writing about rivers, wearing a wet T-shirt (no pictures), and a dragonfly just came and sat on me. Je suis moy-mesme la matière de mon livre!

Heatwave advice Belgian style: plenty of salt on those chips.

OMFG. It contains "a children’s book on so-called reverse racism and... a document that defends the country’s founding on the basis of slavery."

📣 People are understandably up in the arms about this (it is horrible). But just want to wave a hand out there 👋 as we're going through the same thing in Humanities at Northumbria (1 out of 5 staff need to go by end of July). 1/?

The proposals will mean that Exeter’s history, English, modern languages and politics courses could see up to 25 per cent of their staff cut, it said. 3/3

With hardly any media coverage one of Britain’s few world-leading sectors is, right now, being decimated. The university funding model does not work and anti-immigrant hysteria has deprived the country of the means by which we met the shortfall: international students.

Refreshing reading with La Bruyère: "cette longue levée qui borne et qui resserre le lit de la Seine, du côté où elle entre à Paris avec la Marne, qu’elle vient de recevoir : les hommes s’y baignent au pied pendant les chaleurs de la canicule...

Condolences to the coach.

Along with almost all of my colleagues in history, this afternoon I got an email telling me that I am at risk of redundancy. It looks like the University of Exeter sent this email to the vast majority of people in Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty. Bit hard to breath right now.

A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.

I have run away to my ancestral homelands: by the river, under the flight path

Exclusive: While MFL has been suffering a drop in GCSE entries, one group of subjects is bucking the trend, new analysis reveals. @ktorm-social1.bsky.social investigates the ‘untapped potential’ of ‘other modern languages’

Sweet little comic about being a trans dad (gift link)

Return of Martin Guerre musical (by the creators of Les Mis?!?!) coming to the Old Vic in October! Just when I don't have classrooms full of budding #earlymodern scholars to drag there. Still demanding a school trip though... (and blasting the cast album through the corridors)

One Christmas, mum + stepfather waiting in the living room, the Frenchman dropped a bouillon pot of fish carcasses all over the floor. We both took off our shoes; I called out merrily we’d bring another drink and we’d be ten minutes more. We set to cleaning. They had no idea (were already drunk).

Peter Grimes is on radio 3! turn it up loud and get yourself to the saddest seaside of all times! soooo refreshing.

What a cover! I mean, how could a child pick up this book and not want to read it?

📢 We are delighted to announce a new exhibition for 2027 📢 Renaissance Worlds: Art and the Senses will open in June 2027. Uncover a time shaped by global exchange and alive with colour, texture, music, spices, entertainment and fragrance.

Bertie hopes that this weekend you can all find a cool spot that also brings out the colour in your eyes.

This @theguardian.com article text/photo combo really captures the British establishment's attitude to the climate crisis

They’re calling it the quote on British politics that ended the need for all other quotes

This is a brilliant essay on Vauban Books, a small American press publishing far-right French books in translation souvenirmagazineparis.substack.com/p/the-great-...

Mammals the size of buses swimming around singing. How lucky we are to live on this planet. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Today for my actual absurd job I had to go visit a stone carver and I was very excited to meet the statue representing France(as a property of Queen Anne but let’s not go there). Really want to put this in my citizenship application.

I went to the Pets and their People exhibition (maybe it’s the other way round) at the Weston and they have a mechanized Bertie doll who purrs and miaows. Not clear if he jumps on the bed at 4.30 to be excited about things.

Was in a cafe with Famous Friend and then she had to go off and be famous. Later in the street a young woman came up to me and asked if I was the person who’d been with FF. I am a tertiary relic!

The book proposal as a portrait: unfinished business, with large parts yet unknown, and a few very detailed ideas staring back at you.

I can still remember a poem in (I think) the LRB in the 90s that ran “heureux ceux qui ont la clim / pendant la grande canicule / heureuse her and heureux him…” - i think of it increasingly often

if you read Judith Kerr’s Out of the Hitler Time trilogy and ever wondered about Mama’s piano-playing — “After searching in the archives […], he discovered Kerr’s handwritten scores, which had been incorrectly catalogued under her husband’s name, in the literature and drama section.“

Confiez vos traductions à des professionnels et pas à des machines: épisode 381935.

This is wonderful. #earlymodern

Je n'y croyais plus... Pourquoi il aura fallu si longtemps? Mystère et boule de gomme. www.leparisien.fr/info-paris-i...

Two-year early modern English job, at Oriel College and the Oxford English Faculty, starting October. Happy to field any questions! my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

2 #HPS faculty positions @ U of Sydney "We are particularly interested in candidates working in areas of early modern science, or science or medicine in Asia, or Indigenous knowledge systems. Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in History & Philosophy of Science" Sept 1st deadline #PhilJobs

Mashed potatoes are the devil’s work

“It’s a freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control.”