New (old) treatise on elves just dropped, newly edited by Matthias Egeler

An interesting video from @andrewmarkhenry.bsky.social exploring Europe’s last pre-Christian religions inspired by my ‘Silence of the Gods’ m.youtube.com/watch?v=drA6...

😑 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A new review of my book 'Twilight of the Godlings' from John Kruse on his British Fairies website britishfairies.wordpress.com/2026/03/06/t...

Thank you to @unseenhistories.com for this introduction to ‘Fairies: A History’!

A moving service this evening at @stedscath.bsky.social to receive the Bury Psalter into our formal ownership, where the public will be able to view it in the cathedral treasury

This should probably be submitted to @fesshole.bsky.social rather than admitted in public but I just accidentally-on-purpose left a book behind on a cafe table because I don’t want to read it

Potato pierogi are called "ruskie" in Polish, and there's an Communist-era joke about the waiter coming out and asking "who ordered the ruskie?" and getting the reply "no-one, but they came anyway".

Reflecting on yesterday, I know St Casimir is an optional memorial but UK churches with thousands of Poles and Lithuanians in their parishes are losing the plot if they think they can get away with opting for a Feria in Lent

What’s your costume for World Book Day this year? I’m going as a Generative AI Subsidiary Content Aggregation Addendum to an already one-sided academic publishing contract

A special day at St Edmundsbury Cathedral today as we formally receive the Bury Psalter; later today I’ll be at Evensong at @stedscath.bsky.social where the Psalter will be on display

I love how this 2016 recording for World Youth Day 2016 makes it seem Polish yoof are all into Rorantist polyphony and Renaissance tablatures (I mean, maybe they are?). The recording is absolutely amazing by the way - best beatz I've yet heard this year

mood:

The Diocese of Telšiai has launched the cause for beatification of the Franciscan friar and pioneering Lithuanian botanist and geographer Jurgis Pabrėža (1771-1849). Pabrėža spent many years studying the flora of Samogitia

Because I understand basically nothing about money, I'm always scared of participating in auctions because I don't fully understand why everyone who bids doesn't have to pay up - after all, it's money you've promised to pay someone? I know only the winning bidder pays, but it still seems weird

Something nasty on the bookshelf: my review of @tanyakirk.bsky.social's collection of stories about books and libraries for @blpublishing.bsky.social, ‘The Haunted Library’ drfrancisyoung.com/2026/03/04/s... 📚👻

So no chance of Spanish-American War 2? This could be Spain's only chance to re-capture Puerto Rico in a generation, while the US military is distracted by Iran

I have discovered early Polish organ tablatures, omg where have you been all my life Jan z Lublina 😲

I'm cracking up at an author's attempt to stay polite as they explain why an earlier scholar's suggestion that a late medieval manuscript was made for the Diocese of Birmingham might be incorrect

Join us on Sunday 15 March at 5.00 pm for a meditative performance of Marcel Dupré’s Symphonie-Passion, played on the organ by Assistant Director of Music, Richard Cook, with spoken reflections. Free to attend with a retiring collection.

*Knowing where to find* information relevant to your field of study is a central pillar of academic competency, and one of the skills a PhD imparts (although by no means confined to those with PhDs). Academics aren't just people who know stuff and have written stuff - they know where to find stuff.

This sounds (geddit?) amazing!

1st Vespers for the Feast of St Casimir, Lily of the Jagiellonians, patron saint of the Lithuanian people 🇱🇹

To mark the opening of entries to the Folklore Society's Katharine Briggs Prize 2026 we are able to offer the chance to win a copy of last year's winner, 'The Brothers Grimm: A Biography' by Ann Schmiesing. Enter by Monday 9 March. Details: www.folklore-society.com/blog/post/co...

This looks absolutely terrific! A great contribution to #StFrancis800 www.bloomsbury.com/uk/radical-p...

BBC Radio 4’s The Long View - Cottingley Fairies mentioned! 🧚 bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0…#CottingleyTruthere#FrancesWasRighth#TheFifthPhotoIsRealal https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002s4cv

I now have what are probably the two most important books about fairies of the 1920s (both bloody hard to get hold of) 📚

Happy Birthday to Arthur Machen (3 March, 1863 – 15 December, 1947).

Stuff like this underlines how dishonest it is for publishers to lure authors into signing AI addendums to their contracts on the promise that doing so gives the publisher greater control over how AI companies use the work. The Government may say it’s fine for AI companies to take it anyway

The Folklore Society’s Katharine Briggs Prize 2026 has opened for entries! Open to books in English having their initial publication in the UK & Ireland in the period from 1 June 2025 to 31 May 2026. Deadline for entries 31 May 2026. More info and rules: www.folklore-society.com/awards/the-k...

Amazing what you can find in the depths of iTunes: Music of Soviet Belarus Volume 3, including 'Cantata about Lenin'. And the January 1992 release date is just 👌

Today in a new free post on ‘All Old Strange Things’ I delve into one of my perennial hobbies - which is trying to track down early Neo-Gothic architecture pre-dating Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill open.substack.com/pub/drfranci...

Should senior academics take special chair-names when they receive a full professorship? In these times of precarity it feels like a very exalted position, almost close to a god

So there’s already a GCSE in Polish, and now calls for a GCSE in Romanian, but somehow no-one is talking about the need for introducing a GCSE in Lithuanian?? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

One of our aims is the promotion of English Studies from Poland. You can find out what Poland has to offer in this respect from Wydawnictwa UW - University of Warsaw Presses as they have quite an impressive offer, partly available in Open Access. Check them out! www.wuw.pl/pol_m_Nauki-...

Join us this Sunday, 1 March, The Second Sunday of Lent for: 8.00 am Holy Communion (BCP) 9.00 am All-Ages Eucharist 10.30 am Choral Eucharist 3.10 pm Lent Organ Recital 3.30 pm Choral Evensong

Oooh 👀 This is really important, actually - when writing ‘Silence of the Gods’ I became very aware that a history of the Golden Horde in English was a key deficiency in our historiography of Eastern Europe/Central Asia, so thank you @romanhautala.bsky.social!

Reading about late c18th prelates who travelled around in great splendour and deployed ecclesiastical prestige and superior learning to browbeat provincial churches and libraries to give them their valuable books, amassing huge ill-gotten collections of mss and incunabula. I think I may try this? 🤔

Bernard Mees confirms the Lithuanian origins of Britain: open.substack.com/pub/ageofart...

"Baltic Sea, Bornholm, Denmark." 🙏🏼🌍🕊️ 📷 Photo by Rudy Hemmingsen©️

Logo for this year's celebration of the Feast of St Casimir in the Diocese of Vilnius (on 4 March), who died 542 years ago

Should people be held morally and/or legally responsible for crimes committed by tulpas they have created? If a tulpa is created collectively do we all share responsibility for its crimes?

from Tit-Bits magazine (1892)

Book launch event coming up at Treadwell's Books in London on 21 May! Francis Young and myself will be talking about the paperback edition of Paganism Persisting. www.treadwells-london.com/events-1/pag...

Wondering if there’s a small income stream from turning up at Anglican events and clergy parties as a Malcolm Guite impersonator, especially if I could memorise a couple of his poems

Wayland's Smithy from The Ridgeway

My article ‘Europe’s Last Pagan Nation’ appears in the next number of Lithuanian Heritage magazine www.draugas.org/lh/

The Gregorian calendrical reform is a good example of a deal you shouldn’t delay in accepting - by the time the English accepted it in the 18th century, temporal interest had added a whole extra day to the days they were forced to lose

Me and me ol' mucker Paul M. Chapman have a new project to publish beautiful facsimile manuscript editions of M.R. James' ghost stories in limited run hardbacks. So if that's your thing, follow @crumpledlinenpress.com and subscribe at www.crumpledlinenpress.com for updates. #MRJames #ghoststories

Imo the greatest giveaway of a bot on social media is that they’re polite and respectful. Humans don’t behave like that