Starmer isn’t brilliant at being PM. But turning against him plays right into the hands of Reform & RW influencers. Demonising the PM, rather than the govt, is surely a strategy to bring abt a change in leadership to legitimise populist clamour for general election.

Neither the left or right are prepared to face Britain's grave energy crisis. I've written for @theguardian.com on how decades of complacency cannot be magicked away by drilling in the North Sea – or even by hoping that renewables will quickly power everything.

Intrigued by this story. I still think of the Hal Hartley season from the mid-90s. Do they want to finally banish the pervasive smell of damp? Partly why we liked the place. www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

So much good work being published by P&P at the moment that it seems invidious to single anything out. Still, Amanda Zhang‘s wonderful piece will get China onto your gender and history reading list

So, the 1926 Irish census reveals that my maternal great grandfather worked as a labourer for the Pollexfens, W. B. Yeats’ maternal family. He served in the British Army during the First World War and, I think, was active in the anti-treaty IRA during the Civil War. I don’t know much more.

On advance access: "Out of the Rubble of the Second World War: Post-War Reconstruction in China" by ‪Toby Lincoln (University of Leicester) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...

On advance access: "Begging and lower-class giving in late Imperial Russia" by Felix Cowan (@utoronto.ca) and Sarah Badcock (@uonhumanities.bsky.social) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...

On advance access: "The purposeful workhouse of England's Old Poor Law" by Susannah Ottaway (Carleton College) doi.org/10.1093/past...

From the current issue: "Ships, Guns and Money: The Logistics of Revolution and Garibaldi’s Campaign of 1860" by @danielobanche.bsky.social (Scuola Superiore Meridionale Naples) doi.org/10.1093/past...

On advance access: "The Making and Unmaking of Religious Toleration in Spanish Manila, 1571-1755" by Adrian Masters (University of Trier) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...

On advance access: "Colonial world-making and global knowledges at the early modern Cape of Good Hope" by @gianamar97.bsky.social (@uvahumanities.bsky.social) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...

On advance access: "Housing and the Peripheralisation of Race Politics in Britain, 1948-1977" by @chrhilli.bsky.social (@sydney.edu.au) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...

On advance access: "The Revolutions that Consolidated Empire: A Reconsideration of 1830" by @beatricedegraaf.bsky.social and Erik de Lange (‪@utrechtuniversity.bsky.social‬) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...

From the current issue "Global Rumours: The Press, Telegraphy and the Boxer War in China, Summer 1900" by Thoralf Klein (@lborouniversity.bsky.social) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...

New on advance access "The Unmixing of Populations in Wartime Algeria, 1954–1962" by Laura Robson (@yale.edu) doi.org/10.1093/past...

Congratulations to @rowanthompson.bsky.social! Organised Militarism in Interwar Britain is an outstanding book and open access. One for your networks, @tricksterprince.bsky.social

@britishmuseum.bsky.social £42k. How can such a low salary be justified? You‘ll need a highly qualified person for an exceptionally high profile project that will bring 100,000s visitors to the BM. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQZ701/p...

But for the fact the main protagonists have sex, I don’t understand how this is adult fiction. Evocation of wartime London quite enjoyable but the plot reminds me of the sort of adventure story I read when 9 or 10. Why is so much contemporary adult fiction so infantilising?

The latest oil shock has led to a resurgence of North Sea petro nationalism. I’ve written for @the-breakdown.bsky.social on the illusion of plenty behind Reform, Tory and SNP claims that red-green wreckers are sabotaging our energy security by blocking drilling. www.break-down.org/north-sea-na...

My feature from last year on “swaling” on Dartmoor - in summary it does at lot more harm than good! (And please don’t go on about “fuel load” without reading the article or at least having a basic understanding of the ecology of moorland vegetation) www.dartmoornature.org.uk/post/swaling

Next week: the latest in the Society's 'New Historical Perspectives' book series is 'Organised Militarism in Interwar Britain. The Navy League and the Air League of the British Empire', by Rowan Thompson: bit.ly/474AbHq Published free OA & in p/back @uolpress.bsky.social on 9 April #Skystorians 1/2

On advance access: "Making sugar out of opium: A narco-plantation regime in early modern Southeast Asia" by Guanmian Xu (Peking University) and Shohei Okubo (Ryukoku University) doi.org/10.1093/past...

This is a pint of Tennent’s, possibly my first.

I’m going to a proper gig. There are excited young people.

This is probably the most serious site-based environmental problem in the UK today, but I’m not sure British environmentalists are that exercised about it. Choosing my geographical signifiers deliberately here… www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Waterlogged Oxfordshire.

Oxford buses have a reading light.

Not what we saw on the Beeb!

As laughs go, this ranks pretty high!

Our latest Newsletter, coinciding with the publication of Past & Present No. 270 (February 2026) went out to subscribers this morning If you are not currently signed up to he mailing list check it out, subscribe, and share with your networks: pastpresentsoc.substack.com/p/past-and-p...

@gabyhinsliff.bsky.social Agree with your argument, of course, but not sure about the claim universities have cut back on teaching. If anything, direction of travel opposite, & increasing under pressure from OfS.

I want to go on X so I can shout at @BBCSport But I won’t

Dear BBC, Team GB golds are great but all this waffle when live competition continues is really frustrating. Yours etc.

Indicative of a) how communities can come to rely on universities as provisioning community services b) how a prestige project can become a liability c) how positive heritage narratives don’t pay the bills d) abt what constitutes legit use of student fee income www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Joan Wallach Scott piece, historian friends

Full of entertaining excesses, thoroughly enjoyable essay about an author the literary heroes of my youth told me I should read, but I never really did. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

What is the BBC doing?!

Utter disgrace that 2012-2022 student cohort being shafted in this way. Other cohorts pay RPI on the loan (bad enough), they pay +3%. To think that all of us who work in the sector had a substantial proportion of our salaries financed through this system is deeply troubling.

Sitting by the window, arm and leg against the side of the train, can feel the flex in the structure of carriage as forces load and unload at 300 kmh. An expectedly physical experience.

Please share: Fully-funded PhD opportunity at @livunigeog.bsky.social, supervised by my wonderful colleagues Dr Heather Sangster and Prof. Briony McDonagh and moi: 'From Empire to Ecology: Environmental, Colonial and Industrial Legacies of the Manchester Ship Canal' www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Not all drystone walls are created equal.

Long wondered about the significance of the oak woods at Manaton Rocks. How much of Dartmoor was once like this?

When your Polish mother-in-law takes charge of Wigilia (Xmas eve meal), nothing left to chance. I’m sure she’ll be impressed by today’s M&S Xmas lunch… Alt text…?

;Eliminating funding for 3* research in the next Research Excellence Framework (REF) would benefit Russell Group institutions by about £50 million a year, suggests modelling into how potential changes to funding formulas may play out.' 1/3

Northumberland beaches massively overrated. Cold and bleak.

Blair was deeply unpopular in the Labour Party after Iraq but it was hard to imagine who would be better at the job. Starmer’s acute vulnerability reflects the basic fact that enough MPs and party members now think there are several people who would be better at the job than him.

Learning about a band through a Guardian end of year round up isn’t very hip, but it’s got me to Geese. The sound is New York in obvious ways, but they’re messing very nicely with those influences. Plus, they’re a bunch of mates from school playing instruments together. Proper.

Ongoing decimation of British universities part 252: Apx. 1000 academic staff at University of Essex just received formal ‘risk of redundancy’ letters via email. Please share @ucuessex.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk