I think lecturers who have to provide captioned lecture recordings should hold a prize for most 'ums' in a lecture. I hit 178 in 50 minutes today!

I propose to make universal the old policy of the Blackfriars conference at the American Shakespeare Center: If you do not end your paper on time, you will be forced to exit, pursued by a bear. Literally, a bear will come take your paper from you.

This is now the only bit I'm committed to.

Such an essential part of my childhood, and how I learned to see the world. I'd find it genuinely shocking to see it go.

I, too, spent the weekend reading Wuthering Heights. It’s quite good, no? Someone should adapt it sometime!

Teaching Sunset Song in the morning, going to a Mogwai gig in the evening. You really do just repeat the things you did in your twenties for the rest of your life, apparently.

Lewis Grassic Gibbon on Aberdeen: 'far and near the gutters gurgled, eddied and swam, piercing down to a thousand drains, down through the latest Council diggings, down to dark spaces and forgotten pools...'. Truly the message is that it is not only the land, but Council roadworks, that endure.

Bleakness, not meanness or jollity, is the key to the Aberdonian character, not so much lack of the graces or graciousness of existence as lack of colour in either of these - Lewis Grassic Gibbon There never was a sun - Me, channelling C.S. Lewis

This makes me so happy!

Not just a university restructure but a coastal town losing its future. Rally tomorrow, 12–1pm, The Forum, Elmer Square, Southend (SS1 1NS). Be there.

It has rained every day for three weeks, and I have a bloody nose or cry every day, and I'm starting to feel like my life is an office-based reenactment of Our Wives Under the Sea, where gradually I am just merging with the watery world.

I get why people in the comments argue that disliking this process is just fetishising books, but there's something honestly really sucky about knowing that things I spent years writing were chopped up and discarded for... what? So a student could save ten minutes on an essay?

Delighted to receive the hard copy of Jimmy Packham’s fabulous Coastal Gothic, 1719-2020 from our Cambridge Elements in the Gothic @dalegothic96.bsky.social @jfpackham.bsky.social @universitypress.cambridge.org

In the most contemporary lit lecture that's ever happened, I started my Scottish Lit lecture today talking about Ali Smith's Glyph, three days before its publication date. (I mean, just the short text used in advertising, but still!)

Finally started Riot Women and as someone squarely in the 'sad middle-aged English teacher who still thinks Hole are cool' camp, yeah, I get the appeal.

Curious how many of us in the ScotLit world have taught Morgan's Glasgow Sonnets many times (to varying student reception) without juxtaposing them with the instamatic poems from the same year, which are radically making me rethink what the sonnets do.

I know the point of those terrible DJT/US military and penguin posts is that we all know it's wrong and so talk about it, but I'm wondering if the echo of 'Paddington Leads QEII to Heaven' imagery is intended, and if the Antarctic setting is meant to make us think of At the Mountains of Madness.

The past few weeks have shifted from 'must finish She-Ra before it leaves streaming' to 'must finish She-Ra before the end of the world', but you know what, She-Ra is great.

Queer Nostalgia & Island Time in JM Barrie & Compton Mackenzie SCOTTISH LITERARY REVIEW 16/1 (2024) @timothycbaker.bsky.social on Barrie’s MARY ROSE & Compton Mackenzie’s novels of queer life on Capri: VESTAL FIRE, & EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN via @projectmuse.bsky.social 3/4 muse.jhu.edu/pub/243/arti...

Making the most of my time in Boston by devising a SMAAHT action plan (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Aspirational, Hypothetical, Tentative).

The costs of sector/nations-wide mass redundancies.

I can't stop think about about this article (thanks @elizabethelliott.bsky.social). I increasingly wonder how many senior managers in HE see the sector as thriving in thirty or fifty years, or if this is all a process of phasing out. www.hepi.ac.uk/2026/01/10/w...

I read Charlotte's Shirley for the first time last summer, and it was the book that made me laugh hardest all year.

Starting the year as I mean to go on: reading Denise Levertov, cooking beans and rice, and watching The Sound of Music.

This year's Christmas service on Radio Scotland was the University of Aberdeen's annual lessons and carols, so you can hear lots of people I know! (You can't hear me in the congregation, obviously, as I was standing next to the organ.) www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

It's absolutely fine for academics to send e-mails on Christmas Eve when it's accepting a journal article that I submitted in May 2024.

Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths is a perfect movie to watch at Christmas if you’re me. Possibly not if you’re anyone else. But man, I love late-period Leigh.

“…desperately amusing and sad at once […] It’s a story I return to every year because it renders cynicism and sentiment equally ridiculous” —Dr @timothycbaker.bsky.social on Muriel Spark’s “The Leaf-Sweeper” #Christmas 💙📚 2/2 apersonalanthology.com/2020/12/21/t...

Not contrarian, just right: the best Christmas films are Lynne Ramsay’s Gasman (14 perfect minutes), Bill Forsyth’s Comfort and Joy, and Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan. (Also Todd Haynes’s Carol, but that’s for every day.)

14 two-year postdocs for academics of any nationality who cannot continue their research due to US politics. Do share if you know of such.

In the end credits for Barry Jenkins’s Medicine for Melancholy, the credit for each song on the soundtrack is illustrated with a still of the scene where it played. I love this passionately and think everyone should do it.

How can I be so young and hip and with-it and also buying-yourself-a-dehumidifier-for-Christmas years old?!

I know people have reservations about the religious accuracy of Wake Up, Dead Man, but let me tell you, if you grew up in a charismatic Catholic community, it REALLY tracks.

My favourite albums of 2025 are Alan Sparhawk and Trampled by Turtles' (almost) self-titled and Emma Pollock's Begging the Night to Take Hold - both artists I've been listening to for 25 years in slightly new guises, taking new challenges, and having some really funky song structures.

REALLY pleased that, as I hoped/predicted, the gig's been moved to Barrowland.

Faith (From Kevin Young's Night Watch) How do the small birds in the street know how not to die - that whatever they gather, hunger for, is never enough to keep them in the road when our wheels bear down upon them? They feast on what I cannot see then fly away & sing.

Already feeling emotional about this (and still desperately hoping that Glasgow demand is such that the gig is moved to any venue that's not SWG3), but also excited.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, because my book is out now, fresh off the press! Happy book birthday to “Literary Autobiography: Contemporary Novelists and their Self-Representations” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) 📕🎉! doi.org/10.1007/978-... @hss.springernature.com

The Bonne Maman advent calendar is truly one of the great joys of winter. (Today, apricot with honey!) It is truly frivolous, but makes getting out of bed so much more appealing.

Greater bravery hath no man than to watch an episode of All Creatures Great and Small and only cry six times.

Fondly remembering 25 years ago, when I went to see The Delgados (with pre-album opener Interpol) in New York and had to my way back to the train station on Thanksgiving morning through the Macy's parade.

Superchunk's No Hope popped up on my MP3 player just as I set foot on campus this morning, and honestly, it's put me in a very good mood. www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9-C...

This is going to be pretty useful for all of you and your students! Available for pre-order now! www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

"you'll be visited by three spirits" the three spirits:

Another plug for my BookWeek Scotland event on Friday, talking about Nan Shepherd's Aberdeen contemporaries and pals. (My name is Timothy Baker, not Barker, and it's Lyn, not Lynn, Irvine, but so it goes...) www.scottishbooktrust.com/book-week-sc...

These policies, where they aren't just reiterating ones which already exist in a differently worded form, are just plain idiotic. They show not only a complete disregard for people's lives, or basic humanity, but also reality. 1/ www.gov.uk/government/p...

I probably won't bother seeing the Fennell Wuthering Heights, when there's a very good Andrea Arnold version right there, but darned if this soundtrack isn't shaping up to my album of 2026.

Today on my run an older couple were calling their dog, whose name seemed to be either ‘Glasgow’ or ‘Costco’, and either way, a choice.

University of Vibes with Institutions of X, Y and Z 🫠

These Dundee students do a great job articulating how university staff cuts impact student experience - every HE Senior Manager should read this. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...