“look, no one expected this proven liar to lie to us.”

Three scholarships for PhD in Arthur Scargill Archive - quite the opportunity. Believe me when I say that I am sure that some of the stuff in here will be quite the eye-opener! (if the good stuff hasn't been already shredded or slapped with an embargo)

Always keen to explode the myth (and myth it is) that George I could not speak English! historyofparliament.com/2019/06/06/c...

my quality of life has just gone up immeasurably

actual dream job

In February 2026 @senatehouselib.bsky.social is seeking to appoint a Printer in Residence. This is to be an important part of the public engagement programme for the upcoming exhibition ‘The English Print Revolution: Caxton and Beyond’, and to provide a contemporary response to it in print. 1/3

afternoon reading: the OG centrist melt

#DIBBlog ‘Sé seo stáisiún 2RN Baile Átha Cliath ag triail’ (This is 2RN Dublin testing). Séamus Hughes' words, broadcast on 14 Nov. 1925, marked the dawn of Irish broadcasting. Read our new blog by Dr Finola Doyle-O'Neill, first published by @rtebrainstorm.bsky.social. www.dib.ie/blog/2rn-and...

So exciting! The first IMEMS Press publication of 2026. 🎉

We’re hiring a two-year DH postdoc for our HAVI project, to work on a new type of knowledge graph architecture for the humanities (and beyond). Deadline soon (18 Jan)! www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

Wikipedia uploaded the whole film to watch as soon as it entered the public domain: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:An...

In at number 2 of our countdown of our most popular articles of the year is a piece by Dr Robin Eagles of @georgianlords.bsky.social, who after the death of Pope Francis investigated the last member of the royal family to take part in a papal conclave: Henry Benedict, Cardinal York.

One thing about this (my mum was one of the “WI leaders“ consulted and was there for the speech) is that Blair’s advisers were right — an “old-fashioned values” speech would have gone down even worse. The WI *hate* being mistaken for the Mothers‘ Union. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Fell off a treadmill next to Liam Gallagher.

I know I’m a stuck record on this, but MMcS makes more sense if you place him within the history of Fine Gael, not the Labour Party.

i feel really conflicted about the people who insist that the Humanities needs to be a 100% technology free space. I get you - I am very analog in my daily life, with my piles of paper and pens - but AI is also doing a lot of things you actually like and enjoy having. R's thread is right on

travelling home and experiencing my usual Proustian cocktail of nausea at Cambridge and elation at Newmarket

I can only hope the new tv show about the dreadful, dreadful Mitfords includes a scene dramatising that time my great aunt tried to shove Diana into the traffic on Piccadilly.

Lads on tour

Welcome to MATER (Medievalists Against the Extreme Right), an offshoot of the @errnetwork.bsky.social at @uninorthampton.bsky.social. The network is run by @menysnoweballes.bsky.social. Get in touch for details of meetings and events.

📢 NEW 'Project Progress Update' Blog Post! 📢 We've recently reached a very significant project milestone, and thought this would be the perfect moment to provide a research update: sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult... Featuring @zooniverse.bsky.social news, and a sneak peek at our database! 📜✍️💻

Very sad news. Plenty of times in the early 90s he was the one batter England could rely on

Starting a campaign to bring back the On The Record crocodile

*small embarrassed voice* A little plug for my article on Devon book sales c. 1700, which has gone online open access. tl;dr book auctions weren't just a London/Oxbridge thing: a flourishing second-hand book market centred on Exeter included auctions from the 1680s. doi.org/10.1093/libr...

Alan Turing Institute staff decry ‘unjustified’ cuts to research Internal documents detail extent of changes to projects and personnel at national AI institute www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-c...

Budget day at last.

The guy here who starts by saying “a budget that’s good for the gilt market isn’t necessarily one that’s good for the UK economy” should be marched into the BBC newsroom and asked to repeat himself every time a political correspondent says “yield”. on.ft.com/4irx6Ww

one aspect of the "Great Wealth Transfer" is that a lot of what passes for the middle classes' financial planning is an ever-expanding terra incognita marked "here be inheritance" and that's where the real bubble is

📣 Really proud to announce the publication of Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship, an #OpenAccess collection of essays co-edited with @amsichani.bsky.social and published by @uolpress.bsky.social that examines the role of failure in #DH and research more broadly @sas-news.bsky.social

The UK's Supreme Court has ruled that the Christian religious education taught in schools in the North is unlawful. It added that to teach pupils to 'accept a set of beliefs without critical analysis amounts to evangelism, proselytising, and indoctrination'. jrnl.ie/6879415

Happy 60th birthday to Peter Kember and Jason Pierce who were both born in the same hospital on this day in 1965. Here they are together in Spacemen 3 performing Revolution youtu.be/qdQn7c62zHM

Hope the "thank goodness the Premier League is back!!" takes are kept to a minimum this week – the past few days has been football at its best & purest.

love to turn a distributed network into an oligopoly

is uh cloudflare all right

Here is a very cool object: a volume with stacked paper boards that have come apart, revealing a manuscript fragment between the print waste! (Rare Books PA2317 .E7 1546). The manuscript leaf is from a psalter 🌟 #midwestmss #medievalsky #medievalmss #manuscripts

One way to take some of the heat out of politics, which is within the BBC's control, is to drop phone-ins and vox pops.

At the risk of talking shop: there are just under 50 Government Bills before Parliament (including Employment Rights, English Devolution, Great British Energy) which aren’t getting the media attention that Coalition Bills at a similar point did. We’re missing proper scrutiny outside of Parliament.

honestly every time i read this i break again

Of course I don’t post selfies. Like normal people my age I grew up hating the way I looked

awww yeah

bless

I've written a new audio adaptation of one of Dickens' other Christmas books, The Cricket On The Hearth, and it's available now to buy as a bundle with The Haunted Man scripted by @jonnymorris.bsky.social. Mine stars Graham Fellows, his stars Paterson Joseph! averageromp.com/the-cricket-...

but it did mean I stopped by this lunchtime and I bought this excellent book by the excellent Brooke Palmieri, so hurrah

If there's anything more exciting than seeing a book you work on in an exhibition, it's surely being invited to talk about it. Very excited for this event next month! 📷 Lancelot Browne's annotated copy of Avicenna in Arabic at the @rcpmuseum.bsky.social exhibition, 'A body of knowledge'.

Mega excited that @awickenden.bsky.social and @samuscript.bsky.social are speaking on 9 December for @rcpmuseum.bsky.social winter lectures. Online, 6pm GMT, £5, book now: history.rcp.ac.uk/event/body-k... #LibraryHistory #GLAM📚

Born #OnThisDay 1650 King William III. He celebrated his 38th birthday (1688) by invading England and driving his father-in-law, James II, from the throne. 100 years on, politicians were convinced the event should be marked but couldn't agree how: for which, see our new blog this Thursday! #HistParl

Queer and Trans Pre-Modern Reading Group - Session 11 11 Nov 2-3:30pm with @ctlnkane.bsky.social The Queer and Trans Pre-Modern Reading Group is an informal discussion group exploring queer and trans themes in medieval and early modern texts. www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...

ARCHIVAL FUNDING: Ann Ball Bodley Visiting Fellowship in Women’s History, to use Bodleian Libraries collections to advance scholarship in women’s history, of any geographical area and historical period. Deadline 28th Nov. www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/fellowsh...

Well this is going to haunt my day

This is weirdly the politics of anti-whiggery, the Commons voting the Crown arbitrary power. The old Tory party has returned at last!