'Cat' by Kirsty Elson who creates art by upcycling driftwood and other found materials #WomensArt

I made a social media Christmas card for my awesome band Royal Spa Brass. We aren't on BlueSky so I'm sharing it here 🎺🎄❄️🎅

'For humanities departments to continue to matter, they must challenge the modern world rather than accommodate it. Indeed, the most useful lesson the humanities have to offer today is a profoundly countercultural one: Difficulty is good, an end in its own right.' 2/2

The Victorians loved their Spanish Christmas treats and I wrote about it for our department blog 🍷🌰🍊

Every year my brass band plays for the awesome Carols at Warwick Castle and last year they filmed us for a documentary called 'A Warwick Castle Christmas'. It's on ITV this Sunday at 7pm. Exciting!!! 🎄 🎺 🏰

Did you know Spanish food and drink was a central part of a Victorian Christmas? And what did a wine pig (pictured) have to do with it? Read the festive blog I wrote for Warwick SMLC to learn more! warwicklanguages.wordpress.com/2025/12/01/f...

As is now traditional at this time of year, we are pleased to announce our special Black Friday offer: One year’s membership of the the Society for #OnePlaceStudies, with all of its brilliant benefits, for the same bargain price that it has been ever since we launched – just £10! #OnePlaceWednesday

Today's #BirdOfTheDay asks for pairs of the same #bird, so here's one of this summer's house sparrow fledglings politely awaiting lunch. (I need to clean my windows!!)

NEW ARTICLE: 'Pirates, Slave Traders or Patriots? Imperial Exceptionalism, Maritime Tensions and the Emergence of the Spanish Sea Novel, c. 1830-1870' by @booksonspain.bsky.social @warwick-smlc.bsky.social Read it #OA online: bit.ly/MLO-Hooper

I saw that today's #BirdOfTheDay is the #heron so here's the beauty I met this summer at Barston Lake in #Warwickshire. What a poser!

New article klaxon! Find out about the origins of the Spanish sea novel - a response to C19 Spain's declining global influence & attachment to the slave trade. It's been nearly ten years in the works and now you can read it on @modlangopen.bsky.social @warwick-smlc.bsky.social tinyurl.com/3hv68ewz

In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.

Gorgeous writing, encouraging us to find meaning in the 'minuscule and mundane'

So, the plan is to cut English, the arts, and sociology - the degrees that actually study culture - while on another part of your platform claiming to “defend” British culture. It’s performance nationalism with a reading age of seven.

Happy Monday! After years of looking at probate inventories I have found my first female surveyor - Jane Davis was one of 3 people who valued an estate in Solihull in 1701. Not sure yet who she was - maybe a housekeeper or relative? Still, chuffed! #FamilyHistory #Genealogy #Warwickshire #Wills

Immersed in Spain's 18th-century Catastro de Ensenada land register and chuffed to see this clerk tested his pen in the corner of the page just like I do ✒️ (this entry is for the lugar d'A Torre in Panton, Galicia)

Just back from a wonderful second visit to glorious #Ardnamurchan. Of all the views, this is my favourite: Camas nan Geall (Bay of Pledges). 6000 years of human history beneath all that green.

It's a month since I checked in here, but I've been busy with my #OnePlaceStudy #Genealogy and #LocalHistory. I had fun recreating this Edwardian postcard of Meeting House Lane in #BalsallCommon #Berkswell #OldnallEnd. Amazing how much remains the same 120 years later!

Tonight! If you're feeling the English winter ❄️, come and hear about the Balearic sunshine 🌞

Free next Wednesday evening (12 Feb)? Come and hear my latest 'Encountering Spain' talk about pre-WWI British travellers in Spain for Instituto Cervantes. This time we are going to the Balearic Islands! The talk is free and online and you can sign up here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/encounteri...

Marking FINISHED* 🎉🎉🎉 * till the next batch, but I’m taking the win

👊

I haven't used my #OnePlaceStudy log books yet, but my dad did brilliant things at Redbourn School in the 80s, giving every kid an 'alter ego' from the log books a century earlier. The local paper did a story with a photo of him in Victorian costume and the headline "'Orrible Mr 'Ooper Larns 'Em"!!

I blogged! It's been an entire year since my last #OldnallEnd #Berkswell #OnePlaceStudies blog, so here is my two-year-one-place reflection on what I've learned in 2024 (hint: A LOT) #LocalHistory #Genealogy #Warwickshire oldnallend.uk/2025/01/27/a...

This 📚 🌎

I ❤️ court rolls. Today I learned there was a house in Berkswell in the 1650s called The Raven’s Nest 🐦‍⬛🪺 #OnePlaceStudies #LocalHistory #Warwickshire #Berkswell #OldnallEnd

If you see this post, quote with a bridge from your gallery

Really enjoyed this moving article by Joe Moran, reconstructing the life of his grandfather, an Irishman in the postwar Black Country. A thought-provoking reflection on how to write a life that’s left few tangible traces #FamilyHistory #genealogy academic.oup.com/hwj/article/...

I guess you at some point need to consider whether the simultaneous rise of "AI" & of a generation that simply does not know how to digest information critically will lead inexorably to a society which JUST DOES WHAT THE MACHINES TELL IT TO DO, & whether we really, really ought to mind about that.

4. I don’t say that left and right have no meaning (generally, people who make this claim have recently moved to the far right). But the real political divide is between those who grovel to capital (a group extending all the way from Starmer to Farage) and those who seek to resist.

It's a freezing morning in Warwickshire, but the hoarfrost is beautiful

No pressure 😬

The rather fabulous Ferrers family tomb in Tamworth. Jobe Lavender, one of my ##OnePlaceStudy folks from ##OldnallEnd #Berkswell was servant to Sir Humphrey c.1600 and got into a bit of trouble on his behalf 😬 #Warwickshire #Staffordshire ##LocalHistory

Fabulous evening playing with Royal Spa Brass at #Warwick Castle. How about this bands-eye view from the stage?! 🎺🎄🏰 #BrassBand #BrassChristmas

Very much enjoyed helping the excellent @puzzledoctor.bsky.social with tracking down the real identity of the mysterious mystery author James Sandys #FamilyHistory #Genealogy #MysteryFiction #CrimeFiction

Just spent a happy afternoon digging into my one and only line of gentry ancestors, including these two, John Milbourne & Elizabeth Devereux of #Herefordshire, whose family lines apparently go back to the Conquest. #FamilyHistory #Genealogy flic.kr/p/dgrGc7

It’s the time of year for mentioning one of my favourite ‘untranslatables’. ‘Poronkusema’, in Finnish, once denoted a distance of around 7.5km, which is roughly how long a reindeer can last before needing to urinate. ‘Poronkusema’ means ‘reindeer pee’.

All aboard the Holy Grace à Dieu ⚓️

Tonight's office was rather special (we were inside the church, fundraising for the marvellous local hospice) #nativity #BrassBand

A Christmas movie about #MilitaryHistory #FamilyHistory and #ArchivalResearch ?? Don't mind if I do 📚🎄 Bringing Christmas Home g.co/kgs/L5A13Rc

"The more you know about one district, the easier it becomes to perceive the past of any district through the confusing veil of the present." (I think this is why I love #OnePlaceStudies !) Rereading one of my favourite #LocalHistory books, Gillian Tindall's "The Fields Beneath".

It's the #BrassBand Christmas season so you're going to be seeing a lot of these... Today our #BrassQuintet got to play for the Mayor of Warwick and his impressive chain!! 🎺🎄

Rifles being handed out in working class Barcelona during the fighting against the rebel military. 19-20 July 1936

It’s a #BrassBand Christmas! Cornets-eye view of #Warwick Market Place last night 🎺🎄

I have #thanksgiving envy 🦃

This is an incredible read www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

For anyone who hasn't come across the extraordinarily beautiful work of Northumbrian needle felt artist, Simon Brown, aka 'The Gentleman Felter' I defy you not to be amazed! More wondrous creations on his instagram page, here: instagram.com/thegentleman... #felting #textiles #art

Experimenting today with creative ways of sharing a #HouseHistory using Canva. It's given me lots of ideas, but I'd love to hear more - what creative ways have you found to share #HouseHistory #LocalHistory and #Familyhistory?

Doing a wee Scottish #HouseHistory as a gift and loving getting to know the phenomenal #Falkirk #archive collections. This photo from 1877 shows Mrs Dobbie knitting at the door of her cottage by the ford in #Bonnybridge collections.falkirk.gov.uk/objects/9537...