Senate House/British Museum poetry. Thanks to @stoussaint86.bsky.social (Faculty of Divinity, Camb.) for organising, with Rowan Williams, Mary Jean Chan, Camille Ralphs & other participating poets incl. winners of the Forward, Costa, & T.S. Eliot, reading newly commissioned poems and existing work.

Delighted Henry Tudor, the last king of England to win his throne on the field of battle, will be leading Spurs against Woolwich… I have got that right?

Pleased to see my poems feature in 'Theology'.

Back from a pre-new year jaunt to Dover Castle and its Roman lighthouse and Saxon church. #englishheritage

First off the blocks for reading in the new year (…already finished the first one!)

A couple of favourite images for Blake’s birthday! ‘The Sun at His Eastern Gate’ and ‘When the Morning Stars Sang Together’, discussed in my, ‘The Book of Angels: Seen and Unseen’ (Camb. Scholars Pub., 2019, reissued in paperback 2024). @blakesociety.bsky.social #BlakeFriday #BlakeSociety

I was there at the unveiling of Lida Cardoza’s gravestone for Blake at Bunhill Fields in 2018 & took this shot: I GIVE you the end of a golden string; Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate, Built in Jerusalem’s wall… @blakesociety.bsky.social #BlakeFriday #BlakeSociety

Pleased to see four of my poems (‘The first city’; ‘Dry stone wall’; ‘Scuba dive’ and ‘Kingfisher’) featured in the current issue of ‘Theology’ (Vol. 128, No. 6, Nov./Dec. 2025), accompanied by Victoria Ford’s splendid linoprint, ‘Kingfisher & Perch’. @kcltrs.bsky.social @kingsartshums.bsky.social

My latest book on the water horse now spotted at Watkins Books, WC2, in its folklore & mythology section! #watkinsbooks (…and in all other good book shops!)

Katherine Briggs Lecture (delivered by Prof. Terry Gunnell) and Book Award (won by Ann Schmiesing for ‘The Brothers Grimm: A Biography’, Yale Univ. Press), @swedenborghouse.bsky.social, Bloomsbury, this evening @folkloresociety.bsky.social @yalepress.bsky.social

Looking forward to giving this!

More fun and frolics with @englishheritage.bsky.social at Hastings yesterday, Abbey and battlefield re-enactment. The Saxon shield wall will be hoping for a different result in today’s renewal!

A great pleasure to attend yesterday’s responses to Prof. Susannah Ticciati’s wonderful inaugural lecture, Does God Play Hide and Seek? on Augustine and human fallibility, where we were reminded that God is not a thing and that no one has more access to God than others. @kcltrs.bsky.social

I’ve only just received the flyers and promotional material for my new book on the water horse. I’m pleased to able to offer a 25% discount when ordering directly from the publisher by using the discount code: PROMO25 @folkloresociety.bsky.social Web link: www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-...

The third of the quarter days and beginning of autumn, of darker nights and colder days. Happy Michaelmas! My goose has been fattened on the stubble from the fields after harvest: ‘Eat a goose on Michaelmas Day, want not for money all the year’, or so they say! #Michaelmas #AllAngels

‘Both an overarching historical and cultural survey and a handy reference source’. Thank you to Stephen Miller for a generous review of ‘Paganism Persisting’ in the latest number of ‘Folklore’ 📚 @robincdouglas.bsky.social

September’s Folklore (136:3) features two of my reviews on books about the social supernatural & the persistence of paganism. Both richly worth the doing. Some splendid other stuff too! 😉 @uexeterpress.bsky.social @robincdouglas.bsky.social @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social @folkloresociety.bsky.social

Mantua for the Palazzo Te and Palazzo Ducal (with its Mantegna frescoes).

Up close and personal with Jenny Saville at the National Portrait Gallery today.

Advance copies of my new book have arrived, featuring artworks from Victoria Ford, Stephen Cook & Herbert James Draper; epigraphs from Statius, Robert Burns & DBH; and endorsements from Francis Young @addhart.bsky.social Simon Young & Jeremy Harte. What’s not to like!? @folkloresociety.bsky.social

My new book is on its way… index complete, cover design set and carrying very welcome back-cover endorsements from luminaries in the fields of folklore, theology and the history of belief. @kcltrs.bsky.social ‬ @addhart.bsky.social @folkloresociety.bsky.social @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social

My poem ‘The Changeling’ (illustrated by Stephen Cook) appears in June’s FLS. @folkloresociety.bsky.social

As a devotee of her work for decades now, great to finally get to meet Emily Young, following the McDonald Agape Lecture in Theology & the Visual Arts at the Inner Temple Lecture Theatre and reception yesterday. As she has said of herself, a ‘servant of the stones stillness’. Inspirational work!

On the Feast Day of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (marking his birth rather than death), here is my snapshot of a panel from Pietro Lorenzetti’s Pieve Polyptych, featured at the very recent ‘Siena: The Rise of Painting’ show at the National Gallery, London.

Glorious day! Contracts signed, manuscript of latest book submitted! Time to slump and to introduce the sun’s rays to some pallid flesh (with copious G&Ts on the side!)… ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!’ […well the first bit anyway]. 👍

This landed on my doormat this morning, from Pwca Books. Good to see folk willing to take the trouble to collect the reports for this sort of case study. It is also a splendidly lively and entertaining read!

#StandingStoneSunday Avebury and Stonehenge.

Back from a couple of days visiting Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, the standing stones at Avebury (the largest megalithic stone circle in the world), the site of Wolf Hall, and the Seven Stars in Bottlesford! A fine excursion.

Journeying back from Ramsgate to North London today, stopping off at Saint Augustine’s Cross (Minster), All Saint’s, Tudeley (for the Chagall stained-glass, beautifully illuminated by today’s sunshine) and Down House (the home of Charles Darwin).

Attended preview for tomorrow’s reopening (at long last) of the £85m revamp and rehang of the NG's Sainsbury wing. They haven’t buggered it up as much as I feared they might. There is an austere elegance to the upper rooms and the rehang is well organised.

You wait an age for your book reviews to see the light of day, then behold two arrive together! @uexeterpress.bsky.social ‘Paganism Persisting’, by Robin Douglas & Francis Young @robincdouglas.bsky.social @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social @folkloresociety.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y7FWN...

My review of ‘The Exeter Companion to Fairies, Nereids…’ on the theme of the social supernatural is available online ahead of issue in ‘Folklore’. Ed. Simon Young & Davide Ermacora @uexeterpress.bsky.social @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social @folkloresociety.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/eprint/BTYAW...

My birthday lunch… sourced, hunted, harvested, prepared and eaten by me!

My latest Victoria Ford acquisition, back from the framer and hanging high in an unoccupied place on the stairs, which it fills splendidly (a picture of the unframed hand-coloured linocut is also included here as the reflections in the glass, in my photos, don’t do it justice).

Folklore has published my poem ‘The uninvited’ (illustrated by Stephen Cook), in February’s FLS News, about a crofter’s wife turning the tables on wild elves (in their blue petticoats!) @folkloresociety.bsky.social

Paperback edition: Received stock of the new 2024 paperback edition of my 2019 original hardback, ‘The Book of Angels’. Delighted that the paperback is just as vibrant and good looking as the original hardback (and at half the price!). @kcltrs.bsky.social @folkloresociety.bsky.social

Very pleased to see one of my recent poems, ‘Gull island’, which appeared in the poetry journal Acumen (110), featured as a ‘guest poem’ on the Acumen website: acumen-poetry.co.uk/stephen-mill... Big fan of the journal and would encourage others to subscribe to it. #Acumenpoetry

The new pbk. ed. of my 2019 ‘The Book of Angels’ is now available. Thanks to those generous in sharing/pointing to material, Aaron Rosen & Ben Quash & those that reviewed it, incl. David Brown & Ryan Haecker www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-... @kcltrs.bsky.social @folkloresociety.bsky.social

Very pleased to receive my newly-acquired large-scale linocut print (3/50) ‘kingfisher and perch’, by the fabulously gifted Victoria Ford, back from the framer. It is now hanging tough between a Cook and a Giacometti. #linocuts

At NG today to see Parmigianino’s Madonna & Child (with Saints) back on display, restored & in new frame. Wrote about it in Ch.4 (‘Witness to the Word made Flesh’) of my first book ‘The Word made Visible…’ (2016), an enlarged version of my #ChristianityandtheArts thesis at KCL @kclalumni.bsky.social

Delighted to see my poem ‘Gull Island’ in the current issue of Acumen (110). Grateful to the Editor and pleased to be included among an impressive array of fine writers.

Delighted to see my poem, ‘The water horse’, published by The Folklore Society in current issue of FLS News, alongside the splendid illustration of a water kelpie, by Stephen Cook. With thanks to FLS’s editor @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social for incorporating it in Nov. issue @folkloresociety.bsky.social

To test the waters for my inaugural post on Bluesky, here are the covers of my four books, all published in the past decade. Do consider following if of interest.