Look what we have here then.

On a whim I googled my grandmother’s name and found one of her paintings had been sold at auction. I wish I’d known. This is called The Rehearsal.

This, friends, is your new diary.

The National Archives is looking for an Early Modern Parliamentary Records Specialist. Pros: you'll get to work in the same department as me. Cons: you'll have to work in the same department as me. Details via the link. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOD893/r...

Finally saw this in person earlier this week at the NPG in London: a figure of EIC governor Joseph Collet (ca. 1716), made by the Chinese sculptor 'Amoy Chinqua' from unfired clay on bamboo. Collet sent it home to England to his daughters as an 'image of himself'. #skystorians #earlymodern

‘It was in itself a perverse choice for an artist in the 1960s to take up flower painting, so far out of fashion as to be invisible from the modernist avant-garde.’ Rosemary Hill on the artist Rory McEwen: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Popped into Magdalen library today and there was the Nuremberg Chronicle, surrounded by admirers. It’s pretty special. Here is a locust plague enjoying their moment in the sun…

Congratulations to alumna Blaise Metreweli CMG (Anthropology, 1995), who has been appointed the next Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). She will be the 18th Chief and the first woman to hold the position. www.pem.cam.ac.uk/college/news... Photo: UK Foreign Office/AP

Alexander Pope died #OTD in 1744. Heroes and Kings! your distance keep: In peace let one poor Poet sleep; Who never flatter’d folks like you: Let Horace blush, and Virgil too.

Alexander Pope was born #OTD in 1688 (OS). No poet has ever surpassed his ability to craft a line. To Lord Byron, Pope was ‘the most faultless of poets’. Eliot: ‘Unless we are able to enjoy the work of Pope, we cannot arrive at a full understanding of English poetry.’

Mary Anning, Lyme Regis fossil collector, whose finds advanced palaeontology, born #OTD 1799. Natural History Museum London | Cardiff Museum | Lyme Regis Museum

‘From the fifth-century legend of a mysterious peach blossom valley, the origin of the Western notion of Shangri­La, they began to conceive the idea of a treasure house hidden among mountains.’ Rosemary Hill visits the Miho Museum: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

❓Have you subscribed to our free emailing list yet ❓Subscribers get to hear all our news first and benefit from priority booking for our Open Days and other events! Sign up today via our website: popesgrotto.org.uk/subscribe/ #popesgrotto #support #alexanderpope #twickenham #londonluminaries

‘Here are the genial announcers saying “bitch” over and over: obedience bitch, limit bitch, postgraduate bitch, this magnificent young bitch from Venice, this famous bitch from America.’ Rosa Lyster goes to Crufts: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

A manuscript thread for birders in particular! Last year I wrote a post showcasing all the beautiful illuminated #birds in @bodleianlibraries.bsky.social MS Bodl.264, but there were many I couldn't identify. Maybe a group effort can help fill the gaps? 🧵 majnouna.substack.com/p/dawn-chorus

Ok

Eyes down, Conclave watchers! A few facts for your scorecards: - Shortest Conclave: 1503, three hours or so. - Longest Conclave: 1268, three years or so. - Last Conclave to elect someone from outside: 1378, Urban VI. - Last Pope to exhume his predecessor and put them on trial: Stephen VI, 897.

In seventeenth century Oxford, “the Boyes doe blow Cowshorns and hollow Canes all night; and on May-day the young maids of every parish carry about their parish Garlands of Flowers, which afterwards they hang up in their Churches.” Happy May Day!

I really wouldn’t advise it

Exciting recruitment news, we're now advertising for the role of Head of Collections (Library, Museum and Archives)! Closing date is 18 May. For all the details on the role and how to join our friendly team, please see the link. www.sal.org.uk/about-us/vac...

Portrait of a woman, 1435. Don't know what I love more: the eyes, the subtlety of the purple robe, the incredible headscarf (the layers! the folds!) or the pins. The pins! Robert Campin, you did well.

On the podcast: in an excerpt from orur Close Readings series ‘Novel Approaches’, Colin Burrow and Rosemary Hill join @moonjets.bsky.social to discuss William Thackeray’s ‘Vanity Fair’: clothes, curry and the Battle of Waterloo. Listen wherever you get podcasts or here: www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...

👀 St Mary the Virgin, #Newport #Essex 13th Century Portable Altar A chest, lid of which could form a reredos. Paintings of St Peter, St Mary, the Crucifixion, St John & St Paul. “Very early examples of oil painting on woodland #Pevsner @yalebooks.bsky.social #WoodcarvingWednesday #Woodensday

Still topical, sadly

Whitehall Palace in its eclectic glory, featuring especially the Banqueting House w/ ceiling decorated by me! As recorded in the 1670s by Hendrick Danckerts, whose day is today.

The reason for the season:

Thank goodness this guy is there to make sure we are not a force to be reckoned with.

I, for one, very firmly believe that we need more ridicule in the arts and society. Everywhere in the world, too! Dan Sperrin, State of Ridicule: A History of Satire in English Literature (@princetonupress.bsky.social, 2025; #skystorians) press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Today's artist w/out a (known) birthday: Joos van Craesbeeck, painter & baker of Antwerp. And smoker! Here, in first and last of these roles, 1635.

Spare a thought for the poor billionaires who backed Trump – and hate tariffs

Yikes! Advanced copies of my book have arrived. No unboxing video but here’s a box and the book. Released into the world on 24 April

I realised I’d never read Greer’s Female eunuch. I searched on Amazon but was frightened by their consumer advice and backed away.

College has burst into flower!

Finally the end to a...something week. Sharing one of my best photos, of Simpkin (Hertford cat) confronting Walter (Exeter) circa 2022, before the Exeter Library closed for renovation & when S regularly harrassed/visited W on his turf. Certainly one for the history books @catsofoxford.bsky.social

Historical hottie du jour: Jean de la Barre, drawn by Jean Clouet, whose day is today.

How to start a conversation with a cat in seven different countries... 7. Pss-pss-pss (England) 6. Kiss-kiss-kiss (Finland) 5. Pish-pish-pish (Iran) 4. Mee-mee-mee (Myanmar) 3. Minou-minou-minou (France) 2. Ming-ming-ming (Philippines) 1. What’s new pussycat, whoa, oh whoa (Wales)

At the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, Boston. A wonderful knight in prayer at the foot of the cross.

At the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, Boston. A wonderful knight in prayer at the foot of the cross.

‘A hare can be a prince. Or a hare can be a hare. The only rule of a tale is that everything gets used, even apparently superfluous details – though you’re allowed entirely superfluous ogres because ogres are cool.’ Colin Burrow on the Grimms’ folk tales: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘In Austen’s writing, humiliation can be shielded by comedy, and bruised feelings to some extent mollified, such that anger and grief can be transformed into a kind of sympathetic, knowing, female amusement.’ Freya Johnston on Austen and marriage: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

11 October 1660 Samuel Pepys saw Othello, at the Cockpit Theatre. Beforehand he, a friend, and his man Will had a good udder for dinner, at the Leg in King Street.

Born on this day in 1578, in Bologna, Francesco Albani. Painter of mythological scenes & religious histories. But here, a wonderfully frank portrayal of himself.