New article! David Vessey @davidcvessey.bsky.social on ‘"Public Opinion in England Is Seriously Roused": Popular Attitudes and National Stereotypes during the Metropolitan-Vickers Crisis of 1933' academic.oup.com/ehr/advance-...

The most important event you’ve never heard of! Maybe not, but I’m really excited this is finally out as Metrovick is tremendously entertaining and says more about interwar Britain than you might think.

If students want to sue us for breaking ourselves to get you through your degree course in impossible circumstances, then feel free to mail back your degree certificates. Address on the website of the university you’re now pushing out of business.

Does anyone know what the acronym VSO meant in government parlance from the 1930s? It’s a Home Office file on a foreign national’s scientific research, so the latter part is possibly Science Officer. The report makes VSO out to be an individual rather than an organisation.

This is a problem of how we conflate engineering and science. Students using LLMs to write is like building a robot to lift weights for you at the gym. The point of lifting the weights is for your training, not because weights need lifting

Very, very late to this particular party (it’s not my field in fairness), but McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom is every bit as great as everyone says it is. A masterpiece.

The excitement when the metrics spot that someone has cited your article, only to find it was me in a subsequent piece indulging in flagrant self-promotion.

Very grateful to see so many new followers. On the off chance that you’re kicking your heels on Saturday evening, here’s some links to my recent work. This first piece is on the frankly bonkers Saturday Review in the 1930s: doi.org/10.1093/hisr...

Delighted to finally share this, and open-access too! Journal of Contemporary History, 'Speaking Truth to a Foreign Power: Anti-Bolshevism and Truth in the Early Cold War, 1945–53' - David Vessey, 2024 t.co/amDBE5Hv5f

The proportion of National Archives users who hit the vino at lunch is hugely impressive.

I’m not saying that my writing is becoming too prolix, but the one chapter I intended to write on this particular theme is currently four.

Bashed out over 2,500 words today. Some of it might even be printable. Taking the small wins where I can #booktravails

Starting my day by describing George Bernard Shaw as puerile. How’s your day going? 😎

In the latest predictable peer review is broken update, an article I submitted in October is still sat on its virtual shelf awaiting the appointment of reviewers. Every single journal is like this at the moment.

ProQuest now periodically checks if I’m a robot while using their databases. Robots, of course, being famous for trawling through the Manchester Guardian from May 1927.

Update: that are now four paragraphs. They’re either quite good or totally pants. I can’t decide. Depends on my mood. More to come.

Wrote what I hope will be the first line of my book today. It’s about the weather in May 1927 (the first line not the book). On current pace the second line should be good to go in six months 👍

Writing about a periodical called ‘Truth’. I open the folder titled ‘Truth’ every morning. It’s always a disappointment.

Reading Orwell this morning. It’s times like this that I can’t quite believe someone pays me to do this for a living.

Long shot but I wonder if anyone has / can point me to biographical info on Major Lewis Hastings? He was a commentator on military affairs for the BBC during WW2. @alanallport.bsky.social maybe?

I’m not saying it should be a decisive influence on library policy, but every time I spend a few hours reading an ebook it ends with me having a massive headache.

Reading something that cites Spartacus Educational in the footnotes rather than accessing the original. Why would you be that lazy?