Important article by our friend, renowned human rights lawyer, Raji Sourani from PCHR Gaza. States, including Ireland, have legal obligations to prevent and punish genocide. Palestinians must be protected from apartheid Israel's genocide. #GazaGenocide www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Volume IV of the OUP edition of William Godwin’s letters, now at press, includes an extensive description of his 1816 visit to Abbotsford, together with four letters to Sir Walter Scott (d. OTD 1832), all written in 1824, the same year that Edwin Landseer painted this portrait of Scott at home.

Volume IV of the OUP edition of William Godwin’s letters, now at press, includes an extensive description of his 1816 visit to Abbotsford, together with four letters to Sir Walter Scott (d. OTD 1832), all written in 1824, the same year that Edwin Landseer painted this portrait of Scott at home.

Worrye not about 'being productive,' for thou art not a product. Thou art a star daunsinge yn a hopeful skye. A signal blinking across centuryes and worldes. Thou art a song performid just once and perfectlye.

I think about this poem by Ian Duhig — about Jo Cox, the Labour MP assassinated by a man shouting ‘Britain first’ — every day at the moment. No other contemporary poet has looked so clearly at the political reality of the far right as a minority who must always be appeased

New England is quite like old England

Truly remarkable, a hidden history of an idea expressed by such obscure, forgotten figures as Auguste Comte, Benjamin Constant and François Guizot…

4th September 2025 19.08

Anarchy in the UK: OUP hoists its standard for radical polymath #WilliamGodwin, author of Political Justice, 1793, & Caleb Williams, 1794; & (in timespan of this volume) Mandeville: A Tale of the Seventeenth Century, Of Population, History of the Commonwealth of England; & many more works. At press.

Volume IV of the OUP edition of William Godwin’s letters, now at press, includes an extensive description of his 1816 visit to Abbotsford, together with four letters to Sir Walter Scott (b. OTD 1771), all written in 1824, the same year that Edwin Landseer painted this portrait of Scott at home.

& harvest all but over, warmth of the dry in colour of stubble, in the lightness of bales that will inform the winter of what has passed; skies brood but do not break, corvids rustle themselves in groups to glean aftermath

All famines are man-made, all famines are political. Historians of empire and humanitarianism have known this forever. Gaza is not starving, Gaza is being starved, by Israel, and this starvation is enabled by our government and by every other government that does not step in to force food and aid.

Derwent Water, with Skiddaw in the distance, 1795-6, painting by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-97). #NorthernArt

#OTD 8 July 1822: Godwin’s son-in-law Percy Bysshe Shelley drowns in the Gulf of La Spezia, leaving many of his poems unpublished and his papers in disarray. What happened next? Read all about it in my piece for @thetls.bsky.social www.the-tls.com/literature/p...

A snippet from today's archival digs at @iisg-amsterdam.bsky.social. I'm getting increasingly lost in the documents, but this illustrated envelope, dated 30 nov. 1944 and addressed to Marie Louise Berneri and Vernon Richards, is a real standout.

The Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland. 👇 www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

'Here I am at York…If I went for Edinburgh by the mail this midnight...I should arrive on Thursday four o’clock in the morning. I prefer going by the High Flyer coach, which promises to set me down in Edinburgh at nine Thursday evening.' - William Godwin en route to Scotland, 9 Apr. 1816.

'Here I am at York…If I went for Edinburgh by the mail this midnight...I should arrive on Thursday four o’clock in the morning. I prefer going by the High Flyer coach, which promises to set me down in Edinburgh at nine Thursday evening.' - William Godwin en route to Scotland, 9 Apr. 1816.

Dolphins heading south Craster 19.40

Father's Day again. My father in 1992. It will always be your day, Dad.

'These are the times that try men’s souls … Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered: yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.' – Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1 (19 Dec. 1776)

At The Scottish Border. 15°C with sunshine and showers. Magpies.

#OTD 26 May 1794: publication of the radical polymath William Godwin's most celebrated novel, Things As They Are; or, the Adventures of Caleb Williams, a tale of flight & pursuit, & a searing analysis of all the truth-twisting deceptions by which authoritarian governments maintain power.

& at the river in sheeting rain a sandpiper makes for a spit & becomes stone, minutes later bright sun & petals of broom gold banks - elderflower begins to foam, there are chimneysweeper moths: small & flickering, windstirred soot

#OTD 26 May 1794: publication of the radical polymath William Godwin's most celebrated novel, Things As They Are; or, the Adventures of Caleb Williams, a tale of flight & pursuit, & a searing analysis of all the truth-twisting deceptions by which authoritarian governments maintain power.

Today is Linnaeus’s birthday and I have celebrated by visiting his house and garden in Uppsala as well as his grave in Uppsala cathedral. Tomorrow I’m speaking at the annual meeting of the Swedish Linnaeus Society. I’ve had a very warm welcome in Sweden so far!

Stop, What's That Sound @jowolff.bsky.social? Would you please repost that Muppets clip from a while back as I need to confirm the validity of my experience this past week?

13 May 1800, ‘With Cooper to Paradise’. Cambridge student Revett Sheppard (1779–1830) records wildflowers seen on a visit to what’s now the Paradise Nature Reserve in Cambridge. 225 years later, I retraced his steps … 1/2 @theul.bsky.social @theulspeccoll.bsky.social

🚨 Applications are now open for the Economic History Society's Residential Training Programme for PhD students. EHS is a broad church, so if you are working on any aspect of economic OR social history, have a look! Please share widely among your networks. ehs.org.uk/society/stud...

Carlo Ginzburg in Oxford! 'On mechanical traces: reflecting on connoisseurship, once again.' Annual Isaiah Berlin and Oxford Centre for European History Lecture, Tue 20 May, 5pm @tayoxford.bsky.social. oceh.history.ox.ac.uk/event/mechan...

First sunset in Ambleside

I have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans

More beautiful Germander #speedwell outside @theul.bsky.social. #WildflowerHour

To my newborn son: I am absent not out of apathy, but conviction | Mahmoud Khalil

& though the froth of hawthorn, the moon rising into peerless blue each evening (the barley coming slowly to antler) it is an unseasonable spring - no rain for weeks nor long-range forecast - & how long you wonder until this turns to threat

'Solvitur ambulando.' For #NationalWalkingMonth, here’s my piece in the #Idler on philosophical walking in the age of the French Revolution. #MagicOfWalking pamelaclemit.wordpress.com/2021/06/22/_...

EXC - 42 MPs have signed a letter to Keir Starmer saying the disability cuts are “impossible to support” PM is facing biggest rebellion of the parliament over welfare vote MPs call for pause and rethink until fuller impact assessments can be done in autumn and warn disabled people are frightened

Why did the English republican experiment fail? The radical polymath William Godwin wrote a book, History of the Commonwealth, 4 vols. (1824-8), to find out. He devoted an entire volume to an attempt to impartially examine the character and governance of Oliver Cromwell (d. OTD 3 Sept. 1658). 1/2

5 May 1949: Europe said never again. The Council of Europe was born – to defend human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Watch the video & hear Ernest Bevin’s powerful opening words. Happy Birthday, Council of Europe. Let’s keep moving forward.

Germander speedwell on The Backs in Cambridge. #WildflowerHour

"Call it a garden state: a cross-species ecology of astounding beauty and completeness, never static, always in motion, progressive and prolific. I want to live there, and the world won't survive much longer if we don't." Olivia Laing, The Garden Against Time

Can confirm that from William Morris's Kelmscott to John Clare's Northborough, the May / Hawthorn blooms are at full riot levels this very sunny golden day. Utterly extraordinary display for miles & miles.

Anarchy in the UK: OUP hoists its standard for radical polymath #WilliamGodwin, author of Political Justice, 1793, & Caleb Williams, 1794; & (in timespan of this volume) Mandeville: A Tale of the Seventeenth Century, Of Population, History of the Commonwealth of England; & many more works. At press.

The Greens now have nearly 200 more councillors than Reform. This is not something you'd be likely to guess from all the copiously salivating media coverage of Farage & his crew of billionaire-backed far-right chancers.

& last of April - Beltane eve - rowan flower opening & the light through new leaves is soft & fresh, the sun fiery & benign - amongst insects a chaffinchthroat pulses in song, you inhale pollen & dust & air is humid, it is another world from the beginning of the month

requiescat in pace

In 2015, we republished Pope Francis's second encyclical, in which he takes aim at the heart of the world’s problems: capitalism. It has been, and will remain, free to download.

From A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad (1896). Every time I read this poem, I hear the voice of the late, great Jon Stallworthy (1935-2014) reciting it from memory. #Easter2025