'Responding to the decision, Devine, 80, said: “In principle I am opposed to changing historic artefacts to suit ­today’s tastes. To do so is presentism, imposing 20th-century values on those of the distant past.' '20th-century'? Bit of an own goal Sir T.

Very excited indeed to be speaking at this tomorrow. Do come by if you are in Cambridge at 5pm. I'll be rioting with Austen (and sure, obliquely with Dickens, too), at the English Faculty. @universitypress.cambridge.org, @cam.ac.uk, @bsecs.bsky.social

📣Our UofG Library Visiting Research Fellowships are now open for applications! We’re delighted to invite scholars from across the globe to apply to work with our internationally significant collections. Apply at: www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/li... 📆Closing date: 5 January 2026 #UofGLibraryFellows

@drbibliomane.bsky.social More exciting than new Pynchon? Possibly?

So delighted that this long-gestated brain child is now out and in the real world. I'll be talking about it at the English Faculty in Cambridge, @cam.ac.uk on Thursday of next week at 5pm. Do please come along if you're in town!

@sophiecoulombeau.bsky.social Saw this and thought of you :)

It's not fair I mean when was the last time a white male novelist won a Booker. You'd have to go all the way back to 2023

Cambridge people! I’m going to be giving a talk on TJ Wise, detritus, stolen leaves, and made-up books on Thursday at 5pm. Do come along! www.english.cam.ac.uk/cmt/?cat=6

Check out our upcoming April titles, including "Unruly Comparison" by Alvin K. Wong, "Hemispheric Blackface" by Danielle Roper, and "The Future of Futurity" by Purnima Mankekar and Akhil Gupta. buff.ly/0pkTAfs

Certainly another stimulating BBCFreeThinking from @drmatthewsweet.bsky.social & guests. Though I have my ‘Yes, but-s’ from the start for the guests inc @askwilliamblake.bsky.social @ljpowell.bsky.social Kathleen Burk, Jim Hoare, Catherine Coldstream www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

On tonight’s BBC Free Thinking on BBC Radio 4 right now we go into isolation (and isolationism) with Carmelite nuns, North Koreans and Covid citizens. bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…

Returning to The Prelude today, and finding there a lovely dismissal of AI and discovering too a new spot of time: a magical Roman restaurant with excellent isecs colleagues...

At CECS, 2025 is a big year for us because 1775 was, too. We’ve been co-curating a 250th exhibition on Jane Austen and JMW Turner at Harewood House. More info in the coming weeks, so watch this space. #AustenTurner #18thC #JaneAusten Ticket info: harewood.org/events/auste...

To repeat: "A country so stupid it actively trashes one of things it's good at and famous for."

We're delighted to welcome Barney Ronay @barneyronay.bsky.social, Chief Sports Writer for The Guardian, to the English Faculty on 3 March. He'll be in conversation w/ Prof David Taylor discussing everything from the politics of sport to the changing nature of Britain’s media landscape. All welcome!

Desperate to visit the new Byron museum in Ravenna, I read that: "one of the rooms contains tokens of love kept by the countess, including letters, jewellery, locks of the poet's curly hair and shards of his sunburned skin." Shards of what now? Shards of his burned skin? kept as tokens of ... love?!

Hello Bluesky! Did you know that we have 17 bursaries available for the BSECS Annual Conference? To find out more and apply, please use this form: (forms.office.com/e/ZJAmgxRHLd Applications close at midnight UK time on 20th November @bsecs.bsky.social @asecsoffice.bsky.social #18thC

Trust TJ Clark to immediately notice that Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, which he'd never read, begins with (another) fall of Icarus... ... ...

pls. RT Global Equiano opens fresh conversations about enslaved & free Black people as they navigated spaces dominated by violent, colonial forces, & considers the Black Atlantic futures they imagined. 20-21 Sept #18thc #romanticism earlycaribbeansociety.org/events/globa...

🔔 Please share widely! A call for contributions for an edited collection _Reading the Queer Eighteenth Century_ which will be published by De Gruyter in early 2026. Submit a proposal or pass on to interested scholars! #Skystorians #18C #Queer #Disability #Ecocriticism #trans #transnational

The more involved I get with administrative work, the more I empathize with Francis Douce's absolute banger of a resignation letter.

You know how we suffer psychologically when people deny our reality and keep making up stuff; how disorientating that is? That, but on university-level. Our finances are fine. The urgency and crisis mode is not needed. (sure, let's think how we do this thing, but we don't need the STRESS & lies)

Applications now open for our @BSECS-Northumbria Fellowship. £4000 available to support a visiting scholar researching the culture, history, and identity of the North East of England and the Scottish Borders in the #18thC. DEADLINE 31 May. www.bsecs.org.uk/news-and-eve...

If you edit a UK Humanities book series, publish UK Humanities books, represent/belong to a Humanities scholarly society or hold a research advocacy role at your UK university, it's time to engage with REF 2029 Open Access Consultation - UK Research and Innovation - Citizen Space (ukri.org)

60s futurists: everything will be great, technology will help all humanity live in dignity and equality current state of things:

Opening in London on Tuesday, the Linnean Society Library's 'Lovely as a Tree': An exhibition on the culture of trees explored through our collections. www.linnean.org

Please share - New Prize for non-fiction for black women writers, amplifying us as knowledge-makers and critical thinkers. Global scope with a $20,000 award for exceptional work by black cis, trans and genderqueer women. Details here. Judged by Bernadine Evaristo.

URGENT: Please oppose House amendment to eliminate funding for the NEH: p2a.co/WJ0QckF

Congratulations to Nandini Das as her book 'Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire' wins the £25,000 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding 2023 www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/courtin...

The Florentine Codex, the oldest Indigenous encyclopedia, a manuscript that documents the language, culture, politics, natural science, and the History of the Mexica and other Indigenous People of Mesoamérica is online, after seven years of work! Start exploring: florentinecodex.getty.edu

The Financial Times editorial board calls for a humanitarian ceasefire. This is significant. “Israel’s collective punishment of the 2.3mn people trapped in Gaza — almost half of them children — must stop.”

A Very British 2023...

Have just discovered that the treatment of duck feathers for commercial use in coats, duvets, pillows etc is called... ... ... "ennoblement". Why, then, do the ducks complain so? Does this not mean in duck what it means in plain English? Are the ducks republicans?

so vastly exciting to finally! see Jane Parminter's signature and sassy as heck seal on these docs pertaining to the purchase of A la Ronde. Almost everything with her name on it has disappeared from the archives.

"Ballads, Ballrooms, and Burlesque: Political Participation in Georgian England", hybrid seminar & Q&A, 11 October 2023, at the slightly later than usual starting time of 5:45 PM (IHR London & online) #c18th All welcome: register in advance here: www.history.ac.uk/events/balla...

Stuck, stuck, stuck on a piece of writing, I got out the really big paper and the best colouring pencils and lo! Progress! Can highly recommend to anyone else unable to see a blinking cursor as anything other than a blinkin' curse...

So sure that Locke is the most sensible old man of enlightenment letters, until you get to the bit about detachable body parts, walking off with a man's mind...

Joseph Wright of Derby review – a master of light and shadow www.theguardian.com/artanddesign... #c18th 🗃

Day 6 of covid. The child has now come down with it and will not go to school therefore. Am increasingly irked by the universalising dicta of Adam Smith.

Am holed up with covid. Last time, I read The Man of Feeling and shed real tears, which was pretty rad. Am reading Theory of Moral Sentiments this time, to see what happens. Here, meanwhile is what my tea bag wld like you all to take into account, today ...

Let's Read ECF this Monday morning: "Satire and Embodiment: Allegorical Romance on Stage and Page in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain," by Ros Ballaster muse.jhu.edu/article/584628 #18thCentury #C18th #18thC Thank you for reading the journal at Project MUSE.