Hundreds, perhaps thousands of the fallen of WWI were buried with epitaphs drawn from Shakespearean. A selection can be found here: www.epitaphsofthegreatwar.com/tag/shakespe... None more haunting than the inscription for Alfred Dunne (aged 17) O MONSTROUS WORLD TO BE DIRECT AND HONEST IS NOT SAFE

No more noble British tradition than resigning over some nonsense everyone is only pretending to be angry about rather than all of the actually bad things you've done.

President Trump threatens a military attack on Nigeria because of jihadi attacks on Christians — which are indeed a real problem. But Trump’s aid cuts are killing far, far more Nigerian Christians than jihadis are. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/o...

The website for the Shakespearean Graves project is now live -- check it out! shaxepitaphs.exeter.ac.uk #ShaxEpitaphs

I think our country sinks beneath the yoke. It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash Is added to her wounds. #Macbeth 4.3.49-51 #ShakespeareSunday

The frogs have made it to Exeter.

Very proud of Exeter today. Huge turn out to face off the far right. #ExeterIsForEveryone #RefugeesWelcome 🍉🌿🌈💚

📢This Sunday in #Exeter! Historical reenactment based on historical research, in a former priory, converted to a domestic dwelling during the reformation. 'my perfect Sunday ... ' #EarlyModern 🗃️

I've been watching what's going on in the UK with growing alarm; the immigration proposals are getting increasingly ridiculous. We're nearly at the point where the latest proposal will be that anyone who wants to move there must be apprenticed as a Morris Dancer for 5 years first.

Ah, it's Shakespeare's own infamous epitaph, 'Curst be he that moves my bones!' But no, this is Mary Caldwell (d. 1873), buried in Ipswich Massachusetts. The curse is surprisingly popular. And adding 'Shakespeare' at the bottom helps prove you're a literature lover, not some freak. #ShaxEpitaphs

This is really hard to read. And the thing that is sitting with me the most about it is that it has always legal and possible to do this for decades. The only thing preventing this from having been the norm was a sense of humanity. This is why we need structural reform. Not just a change in admin.

This means that it is now Labour’s official position that Israel is committing genocide. While at the same time, the Labour government continues to arm that genocide Absolutely extraordinary!

What an incredible poet, what a loss

📢NEW MAILING LIST FOR CEMS!📢 Exeter's Centre for #EarlyModern Studies recently switched to a JiscMail list to allow people to join/unsubscribe more easily. FYI: we often host hybrid 🗃️ events. Interested? Instructions on how to join the mailing list are here: www.exeter.ac.uk/research/cen...

Exeter folk will be familiar with the equestrian statue of Sir Redvers Buller. There's no Shakespearean epitaph on the monument, but at its unveiling in 1905, a celebratory bamboo arch bore the inscription: "A soldier firm and sound of heart and of buxom valor" (Henry V, 3.6.25). (1/4)

I'm itching to share the 29(!) variations on 'after life's fitful fever he sleeps well' we've discovered so far as #ShaxEpitaphs, but don't want to try your patience. Just three: AFTER LIFE'S TROUBLED JOURNEY SHE SLEEPS WELL AFTER LIFE'S SCARLET FEVER I SLEEP WELL LIFE'S FITFUL PLAY IS O'ER

Hamlet: Alexander the Great is DIRT now www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/slo... Three Hamlets, musing on the skull: Christopher Eccleston at the West Yorkshire Playhouse (2002); Alan Cumming at the Donmar (1993); Ben Kingsley, RSC (1975)

London authorities removed Banksy’s latest mural of a judge attacking a protester. What remains is a shadowy stain, eerily reminiscent of a hooded Grim Reaper wielding a scythe, capturing attention in its own right.

Shakespearean epitaphs don't always reek of Bardolatry. 'Friendly Ben' Dekle was ready to start (or continue) an argument with Shakespeare from beyond the grave. 'LIFE IS NOT A "TALE TOLD BY AN IDIOT," BUT RATHER AN ADVENTURE WRITTEN BY THE FINGERS OF GOD.' #ShaxEpitaphs

I see what you did there, Wichita Searchlight for January 13, 1906. #ShaxEpitaphs

The Shakespearean Graves project is up and running! Our social media game is a work in progress, but here's a short thread of #ShaxEpitaphs to whet your interest.

This is the Washington Post (yes, that one): names in Arabic and English, and ages, of all 18,500 children killed in Gaza, plus portraits and stories where available: www.washingtonpost.com/world/intera...

Here’s one for early modernists: what is Norwich holding in this 1622 map (from Drayton’s ‘Poly-Olbion’)? Yes, Norwich had a big cathedral spire, but not two (and these maps usually indicate spires in the figure’s headdress). I’ve been tossing this about, and asking experts, for months. Stuck!

The Trump admin has formally unveiled a program to illegally use money Congress passed for sheltering migrants released from immigration custody to instead detain them in state-run prison camps. They are calling this — no joke — "shelter in a detention environment." www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

Read this as 'futile endeavours'

The police (wrongly) inform a peaceful protestor that holding a Palestinian flag and signs deploring genocide is an offence under the Terrorism Act. This is the deranged policing environment the government has created.

Diolch to everyone who joined us in celebrating the launch of ‘Memory and Nation: Writing the History of Wales’ last Friday, a volume of essays published in honour of Professor Huw Pryce! The book is now available in your local bookshop! For more information, visit: 📚 uwp.co.uk/book/memory-...

Just received news that 27 people have been arrested in Parliament Square under the Terrorism Act 2000 for holding signs saying "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action". This is real police state behaviour.

"Well, I've never even heard the word 'shylock' before, so So go look it up. With your mouth closed.

Yes, it’s anti-Semitic. No, it’s not up for debate. No, he didn’t mean shyster. We’re good?

Job! Fixed-term, 1 year lecturer in Med/Ren Lit at UEA (covering the fellowship of @satyrane.bsky.social) ... it's a lovely, friendly School ... vacancies.uea.ac.uk/vacancies/16...

My book, "Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain" (or "True Britons and Celtic Empires", if you'd prefer) is now AVAILABLE FOR HARDBACK PREORDER Your library needs more about bardic antislavery, imperial complicity, and druids with telescopes, no? boydellandbrewer.com/978183765195...

Excellent letter from @mcraeandrew.bsky.social More on the #EnglishCreates campaign here: universityenglish.ac.uk/englishcreat... All resources free to use

Funded PhD studentship of €25,000/year for 4 years plus fees available @tcddublin.bsky.social to work with me on Irish women's life writing from the long 18th century! Please spread the word! @ecfjournal.bsky.social @cecs-york.bsky.social @clhlwr.bsky.social @oxfordlifewriting.bsky.social

Just got one of these and tried to listen. AI voice bot loved my article. The discussion of nostalgia in post-Reformation England reminded him/it of all the feels associated with his/its old high school sweater.

“Most of that grant money is appropriated by Congress for the National Institutes of Health to disburse to fund biomedical research after a lengthy application process by individual scientists, work that is not typically done at trade schools…” www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

FYI to media outlets, you're misleading your readers if you repeat this at face value. There's no lawful way for him to redirect these grants elsewhere. It's a lie to distract from how the GOP budget guts educational funding, including Pell Grants at trade schools.

This brings me joy. I like AI a lot better when I can think of it as digital Borges.

Delighted to share this article in PRj vol 23, 'Creating a Database for the Medieval March of Wales', @mappingthemarch.bsky.social edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/html5/reader...

This is the strangers' case; And this your mountainish inhumanity.

Funded PhD opportunity with me on medieval urbanism in Ireland 😍 link 👇 www.qub.ac.uk/courses/post...

This is grim, but surely not surprising. There are two powerful argts for unis to be treated differently to other austerity-ridden sectors: internatl students = import £s; & unis = engines of growth. But Labour has been ignoring those argts for quite a while. 1/2 www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05...

They say Trump knows nothing about economics, but isn't his tariff policy straight out of Thomas Smith's Discourse of the Commonweal? Here's Smith agonising about the treasure pouring out of the realm in exchange for "trifles" such as "puppets." "They don't need 30 dolls — they can have 2!”

Frantically learning all the wrong lessons. People who want Reform policies will vote Reform. People who want Labour policies ... well, perhaps they'll just have to vote Green. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Literally a judicious quotation

3 months as an apprentice typesetter 30 years ago left a mark … I just can’t get over the kerning

I'm happy to be co-supervising a funded PhD project on the Valleys archive at Ffotogallery Wales (especially at a moment when the funding landscape is so dire). Please share/consider applying: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

STOP TRYING TO TAKE THE ONION'S JOB