Delivering a paper on Louise Hollandine in Ghent tomorrow www.codart.nl/guide/agenda...

Do copies of such metal racked human eyes made for teaching anatomy survive somewhere in museums? #skystorians

Heron Encircled by a Snake, with a Worm in his Bill, c. 1701-10, by #DorotheaMariaGsell (#DorotheaMariaHenrietteGsell, #DorotheaGraff; German, 1678-1743), who was born #otd, May 13. Held by The Morgan Library & Museum, www.themorgan.org/drawings/ite... #womenartists #artherstory #hernaturalhistory

Daily Hortus stroll

A grebe riding on its parent’s back for protection. So cute.

Looking into 18th-century mermaids, as you do on a Saturday ... www.britishmuseum.org/collection/i...

This was so much fun to research and write! Coming your way this July, my “swashbuckling” Cambridge Element is a rallying cry for those intrepid theatre makers who dare to stage Shakespeare in the world beyond the theatre. 🎭🤺🏴‍☠️🍻 www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Last month I had the pleasure of recording a segment for this 10-part essay series on BBC Radio 3 with the one and only @jerrybrotton.bsky.social . 'The Death and Life of Christopher Marlowe' starts tonight - don’t miss it; it promises to be sensational. 🕵️

Books, music, & tea. A fine combination for #NationalTeaDay from Pieter van Roestraten, born on this day in 1630.

For those who are listening to ‘The Essay’ on BBC radio 3 this week, and want to know more about the gendered dimensions of early modern espionage, there is #InvisibleAgents (and #Spycraft )

Bravo @jerrybrotton.bsky.social and Melissa - the series is gripping from the first minute 👏

Last month I had the pleasure of recording a segment for this 10-part essay series on BBC Radio 3 with the one and only @jerrybrotton.bsky.social . 'The Death and Life of Christopher Marlowe' starts tonight - don’t miss it; it promises to be sensational. 🕵️

On a new research trail, visiting Tyburn’s Tree memorial, London’s main execution spot in the 16th-18th c. Thousands flocked to this site to gawp at the condemned. It saw the hangings of Elizabeth Sawyer, convicted as a witch in 1621, for instance, but also that of the disinterred Cromwell in 1661.

Sssh … don’t wake up the fairies. #CottageGarden #bluebells #witchesthimbles

Planned some cataloguing today, but didn’t expect to (re)discover this uncatalogued early 17th‑century specimen sheet comparing the same liturgical text in different type setting, with annotations noting the number of sheets required with that specific type and corresponding cost for printing!

👇 😍

👇 😍

Sunday

now reading

It's UNICORN Day! One of my favorite acquisitions for @newberrylibrary.bsky.social is this equal-opportunity lottery game for men, women, boys and girls, so why not bring it back annually in the nick of time? (Case PT1795.W7 K87 1671) i-share-nby.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01... #UnicornDay

Current nonfiction read. All about the "Qs" of the early modern spy master's!

What a morning. Happy Easter.

Blank pages invite use. In this 1578 print album by Philip Galle, published in collaboration with the Officina Plantiniana, a later reader used the flyleaves and leftover white space to sketch contemporary faces and figures. #bookhistory #rarebooks #earlymodern 💙📚📜

What if we just went back to reading a bunch of books and thinking about them together, and that was the class? With syllabi no longer than three pages.

Claxon 📣 for English lit. graduates: here's a fully funded 4-year PhD position at Leiden led by the fabulous Dr Lotte Fikkers, and co-supervised by yours truly, on literary representations of wardship in early modern English drama. bit.ly/4bEeH7a Apply by 31 May 2026; starting date 1 Jan. 2027

Claxon 📣 for English lit. graduates: here's a fully funded 4-year PhD position at Leiden led by the fabulous Dr Lotte Fikkers, and co-supervised by yours truly, on literary representations of wardship in early modern English drama. bit.ly/4bEeH7a Apply by 31 May 2026; starting date 1 Jan. 2027

Is that #Spycraft?! Oxford @blackwells.bsky.social Who else has spotted the paperback in the wild, amongst such esteemed company?

Celebrating the magnificent Ruben Verwaal’s fabulous book on bodily fluids at Oxford today 🥂#BloodSweatTears

To make things even more fun, if you go to the UK Yale website, and look up Spycraft, you'll see a little link called 'related content' where you can download some DIY cipher wheel blanks! yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...

Is that #Spycraft?! Oxford @blackwells.bsky.social Who else has spotted the paperback in the wild, amongst such esteemed company?

Congratulations, you have discovered the happiest owl ☺️ all curses are now lifted

the interior spiral staircase of the Torre dei Lamberti in Verona, Italy

My stroll through sunny Oxford this afternoon reminded me I still have a novel to finish

In stock at @blackwells.bsky.social Oxford: #InvisibleAgents & #Spycraft ! I’m missing #ElizabethStuart Queen of Hearts though. Stuart Britain is more than Charles I & the biography I wrote about his boar-spearing, witty sister, still mocked as the #WinterQueen , is a must-read #WomensHistoryMonth

In stock at @blackwells.bsky.social Oxford: #InvisibleAgents & #Spycraft ! I’m missing #ElizabethStuart Queen of Hearts though. Stuart Britain is more than Charles I & the biography I wrote about his boar-spearing, witty sister, still mocked as the #WinterQueen , is a must-read #WomensHistoryMonth

Tiny books!! youtu.be/faN_yEghseo?...

De Boekenbar op het Leidseplein is vandaag ingericht, morgen is er de Grote AB-show, met spookologen Tom Hofland & Pascal van Hulst, en Saskia de Coster & Teddy Tops over zwijgen & spreken, zichtbaarheid & verborgen levens, regie & herinterpretatie van het verleden. Kom ook! athenaeumscheltema.n...

Good morning for coffee and a book in the garden.

Look, I have a lot of time for OCR in modern digital databases, but I cannot help but enjoy having searched for 'Sodomy' in East India Company records and gotten ... 'Jeremy Prycke' as a hit. #skystorians

‘Give me to drink mandragora, that I might sleep out this great gap of time’. - Cleopatra (Act 1, Scene 5). Pics of the mandrake flourishing in the Hortus Botanicus Leiden taken after my lecture on early modern poisons

Still life minimalism: one single striped tulip in a glass vase, 1625, by Balthasar van der Ast of Middleburg. It's his day today.

Our Lavender Scallop has started blooming! #bloomscroll #flowers #photography #art #macro

Me when I'm talking to someone I don't like, thinking that I'm hiding it well.

Puzzle Binding! Tricky! These are almost as rare as hen's teeth, and we just... Had One??? And, it includes HOW Many Books? (Five from Germany c. 1601 and a blank one at last count...) #Vexierbuch #DosADos @newberrylibrary.bsky.social (Case C 823 .966)

For Alexander Glover in the @irishdailymail ‘the Elizabethan art of espionage was a sticky business’. In his joyous review of our #Spycraft @YaleBooks he notes that the Gunpowder Plotters may have used MARMALADE 🍋🍊as their invisible ink! pressreader.com/ireland/iris...

🤣😭 Dit is geniaal. Kijk, daarom houd ik dus van de 17de eeuw.

Margaret Cavendish has the best stage directions: The Convent of Pleasure, 1668. Act II. Scene I. Enter Monsieur Take-Pleasure, and his Man Dick.

Did I use the excuse that students read Richelieu's Political Testament to have him and his kittens on a slide? Maybe. Did I also take the opportunity to tell them to watch The Musketeers? Is the Pope Catholic?