One of the things I appreciate most about living in Norfolk is the fact that it induces a near-constant state of bewilderment. 1/4

📢 INEQUALITY GRAPHIC OF THE WEEK (No.24) 🔽 The UK is enduring its worst pay squeeze and associated cost of living crisis since the Napoleonic era… Source: Prof. Danny Dorling Shattered Nation: Inequality and the Geography of a Failing State www.dannydorling.org/books/shatte...

TUES 21 JULY, 7.30PM On my 2-hour evening walk ‘The Black Death and the Bodysnatchers: From St Paul's Cathedral to Charterhouse Priory’ we'll stop off at locations to consider two very dark periods of history. Meet in front of St Paul’s at 7.30pm. No need to book. £20 on the day

I visited the Wellington Arch today and was given an impromptu talk on the police station that was London's smallest by English Heritage's Clive, who was so welcoming and so well informed. And just look at that cat!

Goodnight

I don't really imagine anyone wants to pre-order my COVENT GARDEN book eight months ahead without even a cover image, but nonetheless it turns out that you can do so at the home of my books at Yale ... yalebooks.co.uk/author/lee-j...

Our 2026 publication, "The A-Z of Georgian London and Its Environs – John Rocque’s Maps, 1746- 1747", is now available. John Montague’s introduction tells the complex story of the development of the maps, incorporating new information on Rocque’s early life. londontopsoc.org/product/the-...

The best time to discover a great writer is before everyone else does. On 22 July we're hosting Lucy Apps & Liz Allan — two of the Observer's Best Debut Novelists of 2026 A rare chance to hear two exceptional new voices at the very start of their careers. 🎟️ bricklanebookshop.org/product/auth...

“Many and misty are people's notions of the East End and each is but the distorted shadow of a minor feature”: novelist Arthur Morrison, 1891. Explore the shadows with me on my 2-hour ‘East End in Fact & Fiction’ talk, Monday 10am, Mary Ward Centre, Stratford www.marywardcentre.ac.uk/course-detai...

📢 Once more for the people in the back: - Most [more than 95%] of archives have not been digitized. - Most of humanity's knowledge and memory is *not* reachable by LLMs. - Believing that AI can provid you with comprehensive, definitive, "intelligent" results is folly.

just noticed a decent version of my talk on Dickens's London and tourism is available from last year's Tower Hamlets book festival ... www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcdQ...

Part 2 of our blog series uncovering the untold stories of the families of the Swing Rioters is out now! Learn all about the family of Edmund Steele here: bit.ly/4p7BBIR 📷 D/EPG/O1/4/46

To be a historian is to speak ill of the dead and the rest of you should take more history classes and join us.

Daily Mail. Lest we forget.

wish I could find an Englishman to hold me that tenderly

Drunken shouting in the cul de sac.

I am convinced that we could head off 90% of this looksmaxxing/manosphere nonsense if we made GIRL SHY (1924) required viewing in the 4th or 5th grade (approx. ages 9-11)

Burning Man! Element of Fire, 1566, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo of Milan. His day is today.

With immeasurable sadness I must announce that Napoleon, our best boy, went missing a few nights back. if you see a small black kitty with two white toes around Boundary/Markhouse roads in #walthamstow do DM me. if i post no photos of him anymore, this will be why. he was my very best boy 💔

Transport of a balloon from Lake Neuchâtel to Lake Biel, 1915. Museum Burg Zug www.burgzug.ch

In one of his 'Night,' series of pictures, William Orpen has painted his wife Grace gazing out to a cobalt blue sky at Royal Hospital Road in Chelsea, though instead of silhouettes of buildings, Orpen has swapped in a wide river with a single sail cutting the horizon.

Rounding up some translations of Count Binface that have been appearing in foreign press 🇷🇴 Romanian: Contele Tomberonez 🇫🇷 French: Comte Tête-de-Poubelle (bin-head, more accurate than bin-face) 🇮🇹 Italian: Conte Faccia-da-Bidone 🇪🇸 Spanish: "un hombre con un cubo de basura en la cabeza" (!) Cont...

Applications are also invited for the Society's Associate Fellowship bit.ly/4vnZVb0 Associate Fellows include early career historians (post PhD) and history-related professionals in fields such as archives, museums, public history and schools education. Closing dates 27 July & 5 Oct #Skystorians

Looking forward to "AI-assisted" essays next year on 'The Bitter Cry of Outcast London' that confidently claim that Andrew Mearns was a Luxury car dealer convicted for fraud

More PUNCH cartoons of the 1851 Great Exhibition on its 175th anniversary by John Leech

It's the 175th anniversary of the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. But did you know that it was PUNCH magazine that 1st called Joseph Paxton's iconic structure the 'Crystal Palace' giving a name to a football club and an area of London! 'The Pound & the Shilling' by John Leech #cartoon

A Norway fan has gone viral for not taking part in their Row celebration after matches and won't do it if they win the World Cup "It’s factually wrong; they didn’t row, they sailed over the Atlantic”

Giovanni & Giovanna, swearing a vow & painted in 1434 by the incomparable Jan van Eyck. Today is his day.

youtube.com/watch?v=CnSG... Why Is Machynlleth so special? Robert Plant will tell you. #ledzeppelin #ledzep

Street art, London

This coming Sunday I’ll be talking about Charles Booth’s Poverty Maps (1889-1903) as part of Stanfords’ ‘Mapping Lost London’ mini-festival, at the Guinness Vaults, Mercer St, Covent Garden. 3pm, £12.50. (Should be cool) Tickets: londonmonthofthedead.com/tickets.html

Dear Auntie You will be surprised to hear that I am going to prison tomorrow.

Always liked Lukaku 😀😀😀. Top shithousery #worldcup

It's exhausting.

"I think for women in the culture the pendulum will come back again, and there'll be another renaissance to push back against the oppression of the cranky old rich white guys. I hope I am alive to see that next revolution." Nancy Wilson (of Heart)

"Emergency podcasts, sir. Thousands of 'em"

Any Clacton residents who want to nominate your friendly neighbourhood intergalactic space warrior, ping me a line!

THREE extremely unethical situations at the World Cup require more football stakeholders to challenge wrongs. 1. Banishment of the Somali referee 2. Balogun red card political interference 3. Treatment of Iran team Players/managers/officials/administrators. Pressure on FIFA should be unrelenting.

Hey all! Guess who's doing a talk on the history of sapphic romance this weekend!? ME! Come and join me at 10am or 7pm BST on Saturday 10 - www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fated-love... 7 - www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fated-love...

Tomorrow! Thankfully there'll be lots of shady spots en route

England red card.. So does the king call fifa now? Is that how this works?

Shocked to learn that FIFA, of all people, seem to be corrupt.

"I know it's not the sort of thing you usually do Mr Havelange but speaking as a nuclear power we'd appreciate Gascoigne's yellow being overturned and the match result annulled"

Murder at Mary Ward: at the end of July, the Mary Ward Centre, one of the places where I teach, is running two weeks of talks and walks about the dark side of history, presented by a variety of fab colleagues www.marywardcentre.ac.uk/courses/huma...

A hero’s welcome for the Cabo Verde team arriving home ❤️

#OtD 5 Jul 1934 in San Francisco was Bloody Thursday, when police killed two longshoreman strikers and a bystander and hospitalised 115 people. The strike was against casual hiring methods. Within 2 weeks the strike was general. More info here: stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/1052...

If you didn’t know that I live in the same part of Bury where Victoria Wood grew up, you could guess it from a sentence issued by a woman I’ve just been chatting to down the park. “I once saw down here, and I’ll never forget it because it was the day my friend had both thumbs off, two kingfishers.”