Another good post-92 deciding that its students don’t deserve humanities.

NEW from me: many of our universities are now in a dying fall. A new global-national-regional-local split is opening up, which could choke off progress on almost all the Government's plans. Do they have a plan? Nope, nothing, not a clue. 👇 isrf.org/blog/whats-t...

Yessss! Listen to her talk about it just last week on my podcast 😁 vikingology.substack.com/p/the-saga-o...

Always good to see @reaktionbooks.bsky.social I’ve helped to publish in the window of my local bookshop The Book Hive: Treasures on Earth by Jeremy Harte, Antisemitisms by Sandor Gilman, Stories of the Stones by Paul Robichaud and—one I commissioned & edited—Michael Begnal’s Stooges opus Death Trip.

No platforming extremists works. Giving them airtime, meanwhile, gives oxygen to their worthless ideas. It helps shifts the Overton window of what constitutes acceptable discourse ever-rightward.

This has been on my mind today. It's where politics ends up when there is no sense of forward momentum, a society reaching towards a better thing. It just becomes me versus the world. And then politics mimics this mode and reinforces it. It's dysfunction basically and self-defeating.

Want to check out our articles and news about Greenland in the Middle Ages - follow this link: www.medievalists.net/tag/greenland/ #Greenland

The ruins of Godstow Abbey, Oxford, in the twilight. A 2019 study by historian Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis ascertained that for local benefactors, the prayers of the Godstow Benedictine nuns held equal value compared to that of the nearby male communities, and that in some cases, they were valued more.

This was a brilliant film. Deeply disturbing

D'oh! That's not an eagle! That's Lleu Llaw Gyffes in a brown study! That's no falcon, that's Freyja, oh no, it's Loki's borrowed her dress again. And that's no owl...

Today is UK publication day for STORIES OF THE STONES!

The witch in legend of the Rollright Stones megalith complex on the Oxfordshire/Warwickshire border turned herself into an elder tree. Local lore held that if the tree was cut it bled. #FolkloreSunday

The university in the Black Country directly employs 4500 people, virtually all in the area. Thousands more jobs are supported by it, such as the nurses who trained there, and spin-offs. Jobs are being cut, pay is being reduced, campuses are closing. Everyone benefits from its graduates. Help it.

Since we all like werewolves so much (Amiright?!), put this in your diary. @forteanlondon.bsky.social 26th May I'll be talking about werewolves in Hull. forteanlondon.blogspot.com

If you haven't read The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, you should. It came out 1 year before The Wind in the Willows, & somehow manages to contain: - more willows - more wind - more river boating - more barely repressed gay yearning - an equal amount of ancient gods www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1...

Happy Shakespeare’s birthday everyone! In VERY exciting news, I’ve been asked to adapt The Tempest for a 60-minute performance on The Golden Hinde, a floating museum moored on the Thames. If you’re in London this September, come and see a (shortened) Shakespeare play on an actual ship!

23 April is #StGeorgesDay, when England honours its dragon-slaying patron saint. It is also National Asparagus Day, marking the traditional opening of the English asparagus season, a brief six-week harvest that runs until Midsummer’s Day on 21 June. Image: Karyn Frances Gray.

Happy Saint George’s Day! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 St George, best known for the story of the dragon, appears in (and even on, in the case of the binding shown here) many manuscripts across the Bodleian’s collections. 🐉 Shelfmarks: MS. Add. A. 185, fol. 061v MS. Douce 112, fol. 157r MS. Bodl. 523, spine and front board

St George's Day -- and if you want to know all about his dragon, may I suggest this is a good day to read The Little Book of Dragons ....? This is emphatically NOT St George on the cover.

The last academic in the UK, please turn off the claude.

New Medieval Books: Medieval German Tales www.medievalists.net/2026/04/new-... #medievalliterature #medievalbooks #GermanLiterature

We all need to lodge an official complaint. It takes no time at all, and I've dropped a link to BBC Complaints in the comments. This is shocking.

my latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com

Just making sure Bluesky #BookSky #KidLitUK is all-a-buzzing with the news that “our” @michaelrosenyes.bsky.social has been awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award for writing. 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊 www.theguardian.com/books/2026/a... @ibbyuk.bsky.social (All in spite of #PassportWoes)

Perfect parrots, or popinjays as they were known in the early 14th century, when they were painted on this timber screen to a side chapel in wonderful St. Mary’s and All Saints Church, Willingham, Cambridgeshire 🤩

I would in essence vote for any political party that made this announcement and rule a legal requirement on all UK public transport.

The Holy Foreskin: The Story of Christianity’s Strangest Relic www.medievalists.net/2024/04/holy... #relics

Oysters and carbon capture: embarrassing that this combination comes as a surprise. If major media outlets all headlined one initiative like this each week we'd be a much better informed (and better) public.

Arctic seals have regained one of their most important legal protections. A federal appeals court in the US has reinstated nearly 160 million acres of critical habitat for bearded and ringed seals off Alaska’s Arctic coast, reversing a 2024 lower-court ruling. buff.ly/kB0iIYe #ShareGoodNewsToo

🎯 The exact location and size of William Shakespeare’s London house has been revealed after the discovery of a lost floorplan. The property, bought in Blackfriars three years prior to his death, was located on a 1660s plan. Read all about it in AWLOH! 📰 open.substack.com/pub/historyh...

“The wide panda” lolsob

We need more baby goats 🐐 ♥️

The eyepatch really makes it

For #worldcurlewday Curlews over Pentre Ifan. The haunting cry of this bird always feels to be a call from another land and when heard time always falls away and one is filled with melancholy and joy in equal measure. Do support @curlewaction who work tirelessly to save this bird.

Cheers Richard, I couldn't have written the Crowley chapter without your Perdurabo

Another reworked linocut print with a folk song theme. ‘One for sorrow, two for joy, Three for a girl and four for a boy. Five for silver, six for gold, Seven for a secret never told. Devil, devil, I defy thee.’

The Dragon of St. Leonards Forest, from "Old Speech And Manners In Sussex." By Mark Antony Lower in Sussex Archaeological Collections Vol.XIII, 1861. #FolkloreThursday

The Fairy tales exhibition at the @britishlibrary.bsky.social is immense fun. Lots for adults, lots for small children (less for medium children, but they might consider themselves too old for fairy tales anyway, even tho they're not). Came away with a book - @profcarolyne.bsky.social's on fairies

I have a couple of lit analysis books out on the influence/usage of medieval (or medieval-coded) history, tropes, imagery, etc. One on GOT/ASOIAF and one on N*il G*man (which I obviously don't promo very much anymore 🫠). The fiction is still a work in progress; I'm currently actively querying.

"has become"????

Saxon copper disc brooch intricately decorated with gold and garnets, AD 650-670. This must have been a treasured possession! From Floral Street, Covent Garden, once the heart of ‘Lundenwic’, the early Saxon town of London. Museum of London 📷 by me #Archaeology

A popular subject in medieval literature & art, the Harrowing of Hell shows Christ's soul liberating the lost from Hell's mouth & restoring them to bliss: "Michael, my pure angel, receive these souls unto yourself & I shall teach you to lead them to Paradise" York play 37 #BookWormSat #MedievalSky

Ahh, it’s another beautiful CaturDogDay

This is the production line uni ‘execs’ are pushing for across most of our sector. HE becomes a production line of employment training courses. Criticality and creativity; creation, discussion and debate of new knowledge aren’t even secondary for these people. They don’t see it as necessary at all.

Mine is indeed little, but it has THE best pictures.

This. It’s strange that Americans who haven’t studied, or have only briefly studied, German, find the lack of spaces so compelling.

Send your #runic queries to @vikingologypodcast.bsky.social for @jaztherunologist.bsky.social to decipher them on the podcast! Great idea: open.substack.com/pub/vikingol... #runology #runes

Publication day here for this louche character and private view day for British Library fairytales exhibition happily enough. On my way to the BL to celebrate

Important and knowledgeable