I’ve just finished a full translation of Neucrantz’s On Herrings (1654) - all but one or two of the 115 writers and 174 texts he references traced and footnoted… I’m going to get it looked over by someone who can actually read Renaissance Latin, but, nevertheless, hurrah!

45% off the encyclopaedia of your dreams!

What to do when a friend brings you a dinky little dried herring from Japan and you happen to have a dinky little fresh herring in the freezer… Has to be a sushi-rollmop roll-off!

A friend brings me nishin - dried herring - from Japan. Hurrah!

Good to meet up with the great Mike Smylie once more. Ullapool’s Lugger Fest is a tip top event - and I got to eat one of Mike’s truly excellent kippers. As the cap says Make Herrings Great Again!

Gosh, but I’m looking forward to being at Ullapool’s Lugger Fest this weekend! So many beautiful boats, so many lovers of the herring - including the great Mike Smilie (whose mobile smokehouse kippers I might even get to try this time…). www.luggerfest.wordpress.com

Looking forward to Monday’s event at Taigh Chearsabhagh in Lochmaddy - I think it’s the first time I’ve been introduced in Gaelic! Hurrah! Or maybe, Cabhaig!

Herrings declare independence. ‘Yes, we talk through our arses,’ they farted, ‘but we’d just like to register our disappointment.’

Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring: The Highlands & Islands Tour! All right, a couple of gigs, but what gigs! I could be rubbish and you’d still be glad you came! Sat 23 May, 2.45pm, Lugger Fest, Ullapool; Mon 25 May, 7pm, Taigh Chearsabhagh, Lochmaddy, North Uist. Hurrah!

All I want is a proper cup coffee, made in a proper copper coffee pot… Every time I hear (or sing) the song, I think of this coffee pot. And as a kid, before I’d heard the song, every time I thought about Aladdin…

A tasty-looking rye & spelt loaf if I say so myself… if only I’d pickled some herrings when I had the chance…

Newcastle’s great gift to humanity - the prospects of any day are improved with a kipper for breakfast! Hurrah!

Gosh! Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring is up for the Nach Waxman Prize for Food & Drink Scholarship. Honoured to be part of such a great shortlist! www.kitchenartsandletters.com/pages/the-na...

Hay erizos! There are sea urchins! In Asturias they’d be going crazy. Fresh from the North Sea - get yourselves down to Lindsay’s in Newcastle’s Grainger Market. At a quid a pop you can afford to go crazy.

When a grandchild bakes you cinnamon buns, it’s possible to order that Bath chair with confidence.

Got there in the end…

Eat more herrings at Easter and beyond - a little oiece wot I have wrote… www.hurstpublishers.com/eat-more-her...

Look what I’ve got! The out-today paperback of This Allotment, edited by Sarah Rigby and published by the excellent Elliott & Thompson. It includes a couple of the Newcastle Allotments interviews I did, working with my good friend the photographer Peter Fryer back in the days when I had more hair…

TOXIC HERRING SHOCK! Plankton-eating Spring herring in the North Sea reveal dangerously high accumulations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) reports respected French fishery science journal, Poison d’Avril.

Great stuff from @rachkelly_designs and Newcastle College’s @paperjam_ncl - herrings with legs! There are Sumerian and C15th/16th English precedents, trust me… and the hope inherent in a new generation of herringists…

Herring in oatmeal fried with bacon, served with cabbage, caraway & lentils and a mustard sauce, hurrah!

Fresh herrings at Lindsay’s on Thursday, great Opera North production of Peter Grimes at the Theatre Royal last night… Could’ve built a Newcastle Herring Festival round that… KipperFest: a Celebration of the Toon’s Greatest Gift to Mankind! How about it Newcastle City Council?

Hurrah! Get yourselves down to Lindsay’s in Newcastle’s Grainger Market while stocks last!

The Herring Era Museum in Siglufjördur is opening a Herring Café… selling herring dishes! Hurrah! May it be an inspiration to others! Worth an Icelandic pilgrimage!

🐟 Read a sample and pick up your copy here 👇 tinyurl.com/2berhpyc

Good to hear @Charles Clover of @Bluemarinef.bsky.social on the radio this morning advocating the eating of more herring. He’s right, you know. I’ve said the same myself once or twice (plenty of recipes in Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring, @hurstpublishers.bsky.social).

I’ve been worrying about the line of succession. Was Arbella Stuart the Lady Turbot in Nashes Lenten Stuffe, wooed by that cropshin smoked herring Henry Brooke and his mate Raleigh as a more flexibly religious candidate than James VI of Scotland? Andrew? Malmsey Wine…

LENTEN STUFF Then Jake-a-lent comes justlynge in, With the hedpeece of a herynge, And saythe, "repent yowe of yower syn,  For shame, syrs, leve yower swerynge." And to Palme Sonday doethe he ryde, With sprots and herryngs by hys syde, And makes an end of Lenton tyde. (William Elderton, C16th)

Pancake Day: 44 more days before you can have your hot cross buns. Whatever shall we eat? Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring (@HurstPublishers) has some suggestions…

Made some rye bread - the Felicity Cloake 5-day job. Gosh! A bread that brings something to the table: an equal partner to the salt herring and the chrane!

597 years ago today! Battle of the Herrings! What celebrations in 2029! French & Scots defeated by Fastolf (Falstaff) defending a wagon train of them. The French named it to mock English victory but we owned the joke. See Rigby’s Encyclopaedia for more!

A copy of "Rigby's Encyclopaedia of the Herring" (@hurstpublishers.bsky.social) arrived today. I'm keen to learn from it how to cut down the mightiest tree in the forest with one. 😉 In all serious, it looks to be filled with interesting information and I'm very much looking forward to reading it.

Haddock pickle (it begins with an H…). The recipe says cod, but I’ve also made it with herring and ling, coley, hake or gurnard would be fine too. From Harvey Day’s Complete Book of Curries, it’s an absolute cracker! Boxing Day sorted. How long does it keep? Never had to find out.

And the supermarket shelves shall be full of gwamegi! Lovers of semi-dried herring salute our Labour government for its historic trade deal with South Korea!

They’re not actually kippers. Or even herrings. But let each competitor take their cardboard bat, each creating the airflow to waft their fish forward in a space big enough for a race… Flipping the Kipper! The game which could yet save Christmas!

🐟 'Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring' is ‘A prodigious achievement, by turns erudite and great fun' @thespectator1828.bsky.social. It's out of stock with some retailers, but you can grab your copy at 50% off until midnight tonight directly from us ➡️ tinyurl.com/59kj4xxe

The Spectator: ‘a prodigious achievement, by turns erudite and great fun.’ I particularly like David Profumo’s ‘encyclupeidae’ and his ‘farctate with glistening details’ takes me happily back over 60yrs to excellent maths teacher Albert Knight’s school report comment, ‘loquacious, but inefficient.’

Today (Black Friday) to Mon 9th Dec all Hurst books from their website: 1/2 price + postage! Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring will only cost you £16.49. And there are lots more great titles too! www.hurstpublishers.com/book/rigbys-...

Great review of Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring in The Skipper!

Readings from Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herrings (@hurstpublishers.bsky.social) HERE, Clovelly Herring Festival, tomorrow afternoon (no rain forecast.

Box o’ books in the back o’ the car; phone now a card reader… Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring @hurstpublishers.bsky.social perfect present for anyone who likes herring; necessary one for those who don’t! Off to Clovelly Herring Festival in the morning. Stop me and buy one!

Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring on Tour! In striking distance of North Devon? This Sunday at 1.30 I’ll be reading stuff at Clovelly Herring Festival (picarooner territory - see Herring Boats). Also looking forward to trying a Mike Smylie Kipper. Thanks Jess @hurstpublishers.bsky.social.

@newbooksnetwork.bsky.social has just put up a podcast interview by the excellent Miranda Melcher on Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring (@HurstPublishers all good bookshops etc). Can a man talk for an hour just about herring? Well, basically… yes. newbooksnetwork.com/rigbys-encyc...

Book launch herring snacks: No 1, The Pie. Modelled on ones sent annually to kings & queens, Edward I to George III, based on complaints by Charles I; See Past(r)y. Raised crust, herrings, Parisian spice, orange zest, butter.

First of the tart fillings in production for the launch of Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring (available from all food bookshops) - based on a Trinidadian dumpling filling, it brings together red herring, Scotch bonnet, red pepper & chadon beni. Mmmmh hmmmh!

🐟🐟🐟Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring is out now! Congratulations @rigbysherrings.bsky.social!🐟🐟🐟 ‘This book is nothing short of a delight.’ — Richard Corrigan 🎣25% off w/code HERRING25➡️ tinyurl.com/4mdunzn4

Smells great and looks great! Hurrah! Out on Oct 2nd. Huge thanks to @HurstPublishers

‘Who can tell from whence these tall Okes came?’ (Thomas Heywood, praising the oaks in Charles I’s flagship). Chopwell bloody Woods, Tommy - never the same since (Sovereignty of the Seas, Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring, out soon). Reparations for a king’s hubris.

Books with sexual content are removed from some US libraries… Sadly, there’s explicit material in Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring (out from @HurstPublishers on Oct 2), most egregiously a photo of sea turned milky with clouds of sperm… AI lists the similarities to human.

Gosh! 25% off @Waterstones already and it isn’t even out yet! #WPreorder But you must order by 23.59, Thu 31 Jul and, having clicked on Add Promotion Code in the Checkout, enter SUMMER25 - someone up there wants you to know more about herrings! www.waterstones.com/book/rigbys-...