✨ Call for Papers ✨ Are you a postgrad, ECR, independent scholar, or heritage professional researching any aspect of Midlands history? We'd love to hear about your work at our New Voices in Midland History Conference on Saturday 6 June at Newark Museum. CfP details below 👇 deadline 31 March.

Realised on Friday that I'd written lectures 2, 3, 4, and 5 of the 5-week course I'm launching next Monday, but somehow not lecture 1, which is alarming, so that's my priority for today. Thank goodness I checked!

I didn't know that hearing Ian McKellen reading from LOTR and shouting 'YOU SHALL NOT PASS!' was on my bucket list, but apparently it was and has been ticked off. Phenomenal afternoon.

It always amuses me how stylists working in the same salon interpret what to do with my hair so differently. Stylist in September: 'Let's add layers because that'll make the curls really pop'. Stylist today: 'I'll cut it on one layer because otherwise you'll have bits sticking out everywhere'.

Great to see this finally on its way. This was my first 'proper' job post-PhD back in 2019, and it certainly encountered some pandemic-related research challenges along the way!

After losing two solid work weeks to the flu before Christmas, the state of my to-do list for the next fortnight is the stuff nightmares are made of. I'm not sure how it's all going to get done, but I'm determined to try.

What a rare and beautiful sight to wake up to in London ❄️

December 25th. The day the Fellowship departs Rivendell to destroy the One Ring. Whatever you celebrate, may you have the courage to take the first steps to defy and endure against the dark, and rekindle light into the world.

After spending the last two weeks with it I can definitively rate the super flu 0/10. Would not recommend. Would not wish it on my worst enemy. Cannot remember the last time I've been this ill. Very grateful to be slowly getting better as we inch towards Christmas.

UK National Archives to raise fees and introduce new Request A Military Service Record service scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2025/12/uk-n... #genealogy #military #archives

Few things keep the spark of a marriage alive more than back to back dentist appointments, and comparing who got the highest dental hygiene score! What a thrilling Monday lunchtime.

I'm so sick of having to justify why I need a Covid jab and explain my entire medical history to a complete stranger. It happens every single time, but surely the fact that I've booked through the NHS because they've told me to should be enough. Grumble grumble.

I very much feel like I've reached the point in the term/year where my body decides 'Nope, you're done now - I've cooperated for 11 months, and it's time to give up'. I'm definitely ill, teaching today was achieved purely through adrenaline, and I've still got 2 more weeks until the end of term.

In highly important news from history today, it’s the 80th anniversary of the 21st birthday of Christopher Tolkien, notable now for the wording (especially the small print) of the invitation to the party

If there was any doubt, test match cricket is the greatest game that humans have invented, and possibly the high point of evolution.

As someone who grew up with no interest in sports whatsoever, there's certainly been a shift. My husband just said to me 'I can't believe YOU'RE the one streaming the cricket at your desk, and I'm not'. If you snooze you lose, my good man.

Definitely a few flurries of snow in north London this morning, much to the excitement of my American study abroad students!

I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight www.cityam.com/the-british-...

It's officially time for The Big Coat, and I couldn't be happier!

An absolutely outstanding signature on this commissioner's return for an Elizabethan Duchy Chamber case. TNA DL 1/42/K1b

This is a really shocking price increase for access to already digitised public records. www.thegazette.co.uk/wills-and-pr...

Apart from a slight re-write of one chapter and a couple of things to follow up on at TNA, I think my Bradshawe book might actually be done.

I spent a solid hour yesterday afternoon turning my office upside down looking for one very specific USB stick. I couldn't find it anywhere, and I was gutted because it contained research material. It was on my desk. Under my clear plastic phone stand. Right in front of me. The entire time.

We’re launching our new catalogue on Monday 8 December. To keep our collections safe while we do this, access and ordering will be suspended for a week before launch and all requests for 8 December onwards must be made on the new system when it launches. Find out more: bit.ly/CollectionSu...

I'm having a very Mary Lennox experience - this gorgeous robin has been watching me doing a spot of weeding and swoops down for insects every time I step away.

Of all the things on my bingo card for today, seeing the Old Royal Naval College masquerading as the US Capitol was not one of them. Very surreal and mildly disturbing.

The 'Marie Antoinette Style' exhibition at the V&A is a stunner and well worth seeing if in London. Beautiful clothes and diamonds somewhat juxtaposed by the guillotine said to have killed her, and a book containing her final words written on the morning of her death.

Thanks too to the fantastic voice actors, including many members of @englishcivilwar.bsky.social And especially those behind the scenes - the brilliant exec producer Lucie Ridout and historical consultant @charlie-l-y.bsky.social

Huge thanks to HistoryExtra and all the brilliant expert contributors @waseemahmed98.bsky.social @jonathanhealey.bsky.social Dr Miranda Malins, Dr Eryn White, Prof Andrew Hopper, Dr Andrew Lind & Prof Jane Ohlmeyer.

Hope you don’t mind me sharing this again. I’m just so excited to share this brand new podcast series produced by @histfest.bsky.social for @historyextra.bsky.social Listen wherever you get your podcasts (here’s the Spotify link spotify.link/hxH97mL4PXb )

*ANNOUNCEMENT* We are excited to announce a brand new podcast series: UPRISING: THE CIVIL WARS. A six-part series produced by HistFest Productions for the HistoryExtra podcast. 🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts!

News: Individual subscriptions for British History Online are now available again! £50 for a years access to 209 high quality transcriptions of volumes of state archives. Catalogue: www.british-history.ac.uk/premium-cont... Subscribe: www.british-history.ac.uk/subscribe

What a fun start to a Monday morning - having to organise an emergency change of front door locks because our spare key was stolen in what appears to be a targeted attack on the homes of two different friends in the same night, and we have no interest in being the third.

You never know what you'll find in Skoob! This one is coming with me to be added to my Champion bookcase (mostly books he owned, not wrote!)

Didn't get asked for ID in Sainsbury's whilst buying some whiskey. That hurt.

One of my students put her hand up today and asked 'Have you seen North and South?' GIRLY, I had every word of it memorised years ago. We shared our love of the series. I'm trying not to think about the fact that she hadn't been born yet when it aired. At least she has good taste!

Academia is a bloody stressful place to be at times, but I've spent all of today grading my students' first essays for my class and I'm blown away by how talented they all are. All of the stress is worth it when I see students thrive.

This may be my favourite postscript of all time. The author and his son-in-law were being investigated for plotting against Oliver Cromwell in 1656. 'I desire my daughter to send me a Cheese, for this my restraint hath forced me to eate them she sent before sooner then was intended'. #stresscheese

In memoriam...

Thank you SO much to past me for making the really useful action note in my Bradshawe manuscript of 'ADD THE OTHER ONE' without any indication of what the other one is. That's so helpful.

Freshers flu is hitting, and I'm about to spend 2 hours in here with my students. I have water and Strepsils, but I think this is going to be a bit of a mission.

Oxford's looking rather glorious today.

Reform are filth. They represent hatred, extremism, ignorance and irresponsibility. They'd make us a wretched vicious hateful little island. If people don't stand up to this, they won't stand up to anything.

Today's class on medieval monarchy was greatly improved by incorporating the Tyrants and Warriors Top Trumps deck. Universal agreement from the students that Richard III deserved a higher tyrant rating than 8/10, and King John's 10/10 was a bit harsh.

Glorious bit of shitposting by Khan here. Top man.

Excited to start the first day of autumn term teaching with my Wake Forest study abroad students today - even if getting to the office is proving a tad challenging!

One year of marriage officially completed ✅️

This is very much my kind of landscape. South London is not.

Pilgrimage. (He actually died in 1659)

I don't hate it at all, but even I will admit that Tesco getting the Christmas stuff out in August is a tiny bit premature...