Publishers, publicity peeps, take note, I'm back in the saddle for Wigtown Book Festival 2026. Please send catalogues, AI sheets, proofs. Using [email protected] email again (after a year off). Writers, please have publishers get in touch! www.wigtownbookfestival.com/blog/welcome...

This is what a New Era looks like.

Found my frock for the grand opening of the East Wing Ballroom

Who's going to tell him that Anglo Saxons were part Danish, part German?

You know you're getting old when your favourite pre-teen magazine you read as a kid is now available through the Social History Archive

Bloody foreigners coming over here and saving peoples lives.

Interested in the history of Seven Dials or London or the 1920s and 1930s? I'm doing some walking tours of the Dials with @stanfordstravel.bsky.social on Sat 15 Nov. There's loads to see, but Seven Dials is so small you don't need to walk far. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/events/songs...

Spellbinding evening last night with Nature's Ghosts author Sophie Yeo, thanks to the Richard Jefferies Soc. We must reset our relationship with nature and welcome the wild back into our minds before it's too late. Unforgettable audio of how the wildwood sounded in the days of our distant ancestors

This speech from Rachel Reeves is kind of frustrating because it shows that the Government can command the airwaves when it wants That's something it has almost totally failed to do so far - over challenging racism, boosting the laws it has passed, tackling Reform, rebutting Tory ILR plans, etc etc

November, Snowdonia: nature and art

Will the RW media remember the driver and conductor of the Huntingdon attack, and how many lives they saved, the next time train companies try to eliminate staff and they strike, citing passenger safety?

#plants #history #botany #art 🌱 Erythroxylum coca - Coca (shrub) 🧵/1 And so here's the plant that's making my eye surgery possible. It gets a bad name but it's where most modern local anaesthetics originate. I've posted it before but I've a special interest this week. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca

Dappled Light - by American artist, Kathleen Dunphy, who captures so beautifully the Autumn colours of her home in the Sierra Nevada Mountains #autumn #art

Let's just take a moment to reflect on the self-sacrifice and hope this person embodies - not the evil, hateful monsters thirsting for violence.

Shanawdithit's canoe and map, a short🧵: Shanawdithit was the last Newfoundland Beothuk, after Europeans hunted her people to extinction. Captured in 1823 and knowing she was dying ofTB, she spent her last years making artefacts to memorialise her people. I revisited her exquisite model canoe today 1

“As a non-climber I was surprised how much I enjoyed the vivid descriptions, cliff-hangers and humour as Andy leads the reader through his life’s ups and downs both in relationship with the mountains and personal ones too … a gem of a book” #AYearOnTheEthels:ALifeInTheHills

1850. The Public Libraries Act means councils in England & Wales can now spend local taxes on libraries. Some London regions are VERY slow to adopt the act. St Pancras rate-payers object to “wasting” money on “showy luxuries”. Fifty years pass before a free library opens in the district #PubLibs 💙📚

🗃️ Busy writing book2 about the American Library in Paris, and all the ways that #library workers inform and shape democracy. Amazing #archives, fabulous heroines, and…oui! A few spies. Coming soon via #OUP. 🕵🏻‍♀️ 📚 ✍️ 🇫🇷 🇺🇸

Two sleeps.

Greenwich by moonlight

I'm lucky enough to walk often in my local woods. I record the changing seasons with a smartphone snap each time and have decided to post these here, rather than on Instagram, to add a bit of nature's beauty to the mix. Enjoy your day.

This is a fantastic piece of journalism. Please support the Birmingham Dispatch if you can.

With #NovellasInNovember in mind, I’ve written about ten excellent novellas I highly recommend. Featuring books by Nella Larsen, Alfred Hayes, Anne de Marcken, Irmgard Keun (tr. Kathie von Ankum) & more! #NovNov #Novella #BookSky #Books #Novellas 📚💙 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/10/30/t...

Worth remembering we are a nation of immigrants...Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Romans, Frisians, Huguenots...Belgian (WW1) and Jewish (WW2) refugees, Jamaicans (Windrush), Ugandan Asians fleeing Amin...no one group has the right to say "this is my country, keep out." We are its current custodians

Happy Halloween

Did anyone else feel their heart leap with the news that the British Library are aiming to relaunch their archives and manuscript catalogue in early December? Can't wait to see you old friend 😭

I'm running a webinar on adaptive teaching on 5th November. Loads of practical advice about inclusive approaches to teaching. Pay what you can to attend. Very grateful for any shares. Thank you! #EduSky www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-ultima...

Some seasonal fungi I've met on my walks recently. My favourite is the Turkey Tail bracket fungus, which reminds me of schoolday pencil sharpening

Amazing how quickly TV newsreaders have adopted the name"Mr Mountbatten Windsor" without so much as a moment's hesitation. How far and fast the fall. Will he go to to jail though?

Other countries have safety nets. The US has women. Their labor creates the illusion of a DIY society, making it seem like we don't need a net. Writing HOLDING IT TOGETHER was a labor of love and fury and I'm so grateful to share it with you all #PubDay www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/697130...

Everyone deserves joy. And it's pretty ironic for the capitalist class to complain that Gen-Z is finding what joy they can afford--given how little they're paid and how much debt they've been forced to carry--in a store-bought pastry or coffee cup.

My favourite beechwood, in autumn (left) and spring. There's something about their austere yet also gentle serried verticality, that I love. Being among them is overwhelming in a good way.

This picture reminds me, painfully, of when my mother did my hair before school. Not with love and gentleness but a certain anger that left me mystified and hurt, literally. The angrier she was, the tighter she pulled and the harder she brushed. As soon as I could I cut it short.

Yes, I know it's another nasty campaign against a prominent Labour woman by the right wing press. But for pity's sake, please seek correct advice on housing and legal matters like the rest of us have to. Otherwise, it just looks like you think rules are for just for us little people. #rachelreeves

10/10 for effort. Just hope the postie isn't an arachnophobe

10/10 for effort. Just hope the postie isn't an arachnophobe

This is very good and @jamesbowes01.bsky.social is a must follow on UK immigration numbers.

About 40% of those arrested in the Farage riots had previously been reported for domestic abuse. If the far-right want to protect British women and children, they should start by looking at their own ranks. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Maria Nordin "Act of Comfort" (Sweden, 2022), depicting a woman carrying an impossibly large pile of linen for the laundry. Nordin likes to portray women's unpaid labour in the home, but in beautiful shapes and colours. #womensart

A golden day; sadly spent much of it indoors reading up on the history of the BBC World Service, "Britain's greatest gift to the world in the C20" - Kofi Annan. But snuck out for a gilded (and guilty) walk.

A lone sleigh and reindeer travel through the endless Northern winter night. Gorgeous print by indigenous Sami artist Britta Marakatt-Labba. The traveller is watched over by 3 Sami goddesses (right) whose red horned headdresses had them 'banned' by Christian Swedes. Modern Sami are reclaiming them.

"Hair" by Eva Löfdhal (1989) #womensart

Asylum seekers, housed in hotels in Manchester, are reaching out in their own words to address the concerns of the local community. Please take a minute to read their letter, & share it with the people in your life who need to hear the truth about the people they are protesting.

I absolutely love Vibeke Slyngstad's water colours of the flora of her native Norway. But in this painting, Shuafat II (2023), she depicts the wildflowers on a patch of wasteland in a Palestinian neighbourhood of East Jerusalem. The fragility is there, but so is hope for new life and regeneration /1

It's not only the shingles and measles vaccines that have astoundingly positive effects besides just preventing one illness, this TB vaccine is basically magic.

A very good Monday morning. No I'm not in the tropics, nor Kew Gardens. This is my back garden in Kent. I've never grown anything quite so beautiful. 🍌

Why Evelyn Cheesman, from Westwell, near Ashford, could be the bravest and most inspirational Kent woman you’ve never heard of www.kentonline.co.uk/ashford/news...

Off to Italy for a month of research in Trento (3 days) and Rome (3,5 weeks) for my biography of #AvisWaterman, the London Times' only female war correspondent during WWI, reporting from the Italian front 1915-1917.

Having made it into the Head Teacher of South Hampstead High School's blog, I feel my work is done. #booksky Wildly Different | Head’s Blog | News | South Hampstead High School share.google/dYHMx2u86Wyi...

Once again, mainstream media leaves it to Teen Vogue to actually practice journalism.