there’s a woman across the aisle on the bus crocheting a pocket onto a cardigan *that she’s wearing*, incredible, a thing of beauty

Thinking of trans rights in the UK specifically - we joke and say 'TERF Island', but think what it would have been like if we'd have slunk away into the shadows to die the way that they wanted - want - us to. It's not THE victory, but it's A victory. And the victories build on each other.

Thinking a lot today about the ways in which it's hard - in a shitty situation - to realise how much worse it would have been without all the exhausting work done to hold the line. There isn't a victory to celebrate - there's still so much to be done. But it would have been so, so much worse.

Hello fellow Canadians! Please sign this important petition supporting trans rights.

I'm so touched every year by how many people reread Sing for the Coming each winter solstice. It's such an honour to be part of your tradition. here is the Halsway Carol, the beautiful modern carol that inspired the story's title: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpww...

Recommending this to absolutely everyone! www.publicbooks.org/victorian-ma...

“Now here is the lake, and I still haven’t changed.”

My giant nephew-cat's favourite holiday activity is to shut himself inside a kitchen cupboard and curl up in, e.g. a frying pan or serving platter, and truly this is the only reasonable response to the season.

time for a reread of this lovely thing ❄️✨❤️

THREAD. My parents' cat Bridget vanished. As the weeks dragged on they became ever more worried, so to distract himself my dad began to paint Bridget's adventures, imagining her travelling through time and popping up at some of art & music's most important moments. I've collected his work here...

I wrote this post in recognition of the introduction of bereavement leave for pregnancy losses up to 24 weeks, which is long overdue and vital. Thanks to @almiddlemiss.bsky.social for her amazing book, which makes the case more strongly that I ever could. lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/why-not-ha...

“The historical record presents a more expansive category of woman that we might learn from, and the archives highlight solidarities between cis and trans women. It is my hope that trans and trans-inclusive feminists find something useful for the present in this history.” 🗃️

The BMA has come out swinging for the rights of all trans people in healthcare settings and beyond - both patients and healthcare providers. Genuinely brilliant news amongst the bad - please read it and share, and remember that we are NOT alone. Not by a long stretch.

Absolutely nobody asked for this BUT English Anglican cathedrals that have burned down, fallen over, and sank into the swamp: a thread.

I am so proud that my partner @samirabady.bsky.social was one of the journalists breaking this AI vending machine and making it order live fish www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anth...

Performance by my friend, composer and pianist Monica Chew www.monicachew.com

... but the third movement only exists here, in this unknown sonata. It's absolutely wonderful:

Queer ears for my queer peers! Thanks to @divamag.bsky.social for sharing some of my opinions! diva-magazine.com/2025/12/18/i...

One more new video for you this week: I think this is the world premiere performance/recording of Fanny Hensel's unfinished fourth piano sonata in E-flat (1829).

It's been a long time coming this year, but I'm very pleased to say the special issue of the journal English on poetry, representation and archives that I edited is now out. Featuring Bhanu Kapil, Gail McConnell, Will Harris and more! @englishassociation.bsky.social academic.oup.com/english/issu...

I would love it if literally all politicians just woke up one day having forgotten the words ‘economic growth’ and instead of Growth At All Costs actually gave any fucks about actual people and their lives.

On this day, 18 December 1759, the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy were printed in a small edition at York. #OTD #TristramShandy

Rare sighting of Hugh and Calum in 'real life'.

Criminalised for protesting against genocide, on hunger strike for 46 days. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

One of our @ucl.ac.uk students Qesser Zuhrah is at risk of death and was being denied medical help and hospitalization until very recently I've written to our Provost, David Lammy, and my local MP @stellacreasy.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

A wonderful write-up of the best exhibition I saw in 2025- AUSTEN & TURNER: A COUNTRY HOUSE ENCOUNTER at Harewood House. If you couldn’t make it to Leeds to see this extraordinary “what if…?” extravaganza in person, then reading this article is very much the next best thing.

Here's another Hensel fugue in E-flat for string quartet!

A break from Christmas content to enjoy this capybara eating a banana. From François Froger's 'A relation of a voyage ...' (London, 1698).

Call your representative. Protect our trans family.

I have a brand new, world-premiere video for you, how exciting: youtu.be/tuBiXCD5Mk8

Happy 250th birthday, Jane Austen! Why not celebrate by reading my hot-off-the-press lil piece which sheds new light on the composition process for JA's greatest novel (no questions, sit yo ass down) PERSUASION. It involved archival sleuthing, so was cracking fun to write. jasna.org/publications...

Outlandishly, I'll be discussing this research (& other things) on Front Row this evening with Samira Ahmed, Tessa Hadley, Kamila Shamsie, Harriet Walter, & John Mullan. Unless I end up on the cutting room floor, which given the company would be entirely understandable. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Book submissions for the George E. Haggerty Prize in LGBTQ+ Studies in 18th-Century Scholarship are now open—Jan 15 deadline. If you published a peer reviewed book in 2024 or 25, please submit! $500 cash prize. RT’s appreciated 🙏🏼 asecs.org/resources/ol...

sylvia townsend warner statue!!! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Do any Gothic people have access to a digital copy of the following text? Anon, _Phantoms of the cloister, or, The mysterious manuscript : a novel : in three volumes_, 1795. I'd be so grateful if anyone had this, and could email digital copies of the volumes to me.

The British Library have a searchable interim Archives & Manuscripts Catalogues up & running: searcharchives.bl.uk (posting for all the folks who, like me, had somehow managed to miss this important development)

this cold doesn’t want me sleeping, so reading poetry by Stephen Vincent Benét. turns out he could really write, who’d have guessed

Took my sadness outside yesterday - did it again today. Will probably do it again tomorrow. Hope you have a chance to do the same.

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When this guidance is published (given legal standing), as it almost certainly will be, as a trans man I will not be allowed to use non-unisex public toilets. Which is almost every public toilet. Just want that to sink in, there. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I was today years old when I learned that James Edward Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen's nephew & memoirist, was a practitioner of cut-paper silhouettes! (Attn: @catrionamac.bsky.social !) Here's one Austen-Leigh created as an illustration for his aunt's Sense and Sensibility. This is Barton Cottage:

L is for Lovelace, who Lost in a dueL.

it’s St Lucy’s day, so you know what that means — time for the best John Donne poem

Looks like we’ll have to make our own institutions. The ones that made us have been stolen, and gutted, and hollowed.

Chuffed for all the people who are posting saying they outsold Nuzzi but even Nuzzi numbers are all but unimaginable for small press poetry, buy my and Harry's new book, help us dream: veer2.org/Kit-Fryatt-H...

two tickets to see goblin band tonight going if anyone wants them. face value/best offer/probably free if nobody else wants them

'only 17 per cent of staff have been guaranteed the living wage' and yet the 'the interim CEO, Jeremy Silver, told the strike organisers that they ‘don’t live in a real world’?' Pathetic. The British Library is a wonder of the modern world - why can't its management act like it?