William Godwin, the lion who roared twice, is now at large global.oup.com/academic/pro...

William Godwin, the lion who roared twice, is now at large global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Wishing you all - well many of you - a blessed writing day.

I'm told this will be out in early to mid December. Please forgive coming episodes of shameless self-promotion and make a note of launch dates in your diaries! UCC 19 February Boston College 11 March NYU Glucksman House 12 March Royal Irish Academy 25 March www.cambridge.org/ie/universit...

Autumnal hues – a day away from the writing desk to the mountainside woods and shrines of Nikkō

An excellent read; Keith Gildart’s review essay in The English Historical Review focusing on a collection of recent historical works on aspects of the 1984/5 British Miners Strike and remembering that 40years on. Incl. @nataliethomlinson.bsky.social FYI @ewangibbs.bsky.social @sslh.bsky.social

French artist Raymond Wintz specialised in marine and coastal views in Brittany. Here, almost 100 years ago, he looks through an open doorway to the harbour beyond (The Blue Door, 1927)

Clematis flowering by a door at Miss Minnie Pate’s Cambridge University Type-Writing Office, 33 Trinity Street, Cambridge. ‘Yard, until 1923’ (detail), from Minnie Pate’s Scrapbook. MS Add. 7637 @theul.bsky.social

The gentlest, firmest, weapon for us to use in the culture wars, from Goethe: "A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul."

Harebells still flowering in King’s Forest, near Bury St Edmunds. #WildflowerHour

First proofs have arrived (618 pages, excluding plates). Miles to go before I sleep ...

Always take sentences using “the Cloud” or “the Internet” and try replacing those phrases with “A shed in Virginia” to see how they hold up. “Our service is fully based in a shed in Virginia”; “All my files are in a shed in Virginia”; “A shed in Virginia was designed to survive a nuclear war”, etc.

John Nash painted 'The Viaduct,' (1916) just before he enlisted in the Artist's Rifles, it can be seen as a memorial to a way of life that was about to be lost forever. The picture is based on a watercolour Nash painted in Dorset and might depict the Cannington Viaduct.

Stunning day at Abbotsford, the house and estate of Sir Walter Scott in the Scottish Borders.

Did the postboy fall or was he pushed? Travelling from Berwick to Alnwick in the era of the Marcher Laws was a perilous undertaking. To get to Alnwick the postboy would have had to ford the river Aln, the heavily fortified border between the East March and the Middle March. 1/2

First proofs have arrived (618 pages, excluding plates). Miles to go before I sleep ...

Did the postboy fall or was he pushed? Travelling from Berwick to Alnwick in the era of the Marcher Laws was a perilous undertaking. To get to Alnwick the postboy would have had to ford the river Aln, the heavily fortified border between the East March and the Middle March. 1/2

The Bishop of Birmingham has written to the Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick about his comments about Handsworth

Thinking this morning about the importance of writing, reading, creative practice. Not only do the stories we tell have political power, writing allows us to reconnect with parts of ourselves and subverts the noise we've all gotten so used to. Wishing everyone a quiet moment this weekend.

It's #NationalPoetryDay! The perfect opportunity to share Robert Fergusson's translation of Horace's ode on the importance of seizing the day. In rich Scots, Fergusson gives us the keys to a good life: staying in the moment and surrounding ourselves with friends and conviviality. #RobertFergusson

R. S. Thomas, ‘The Bright Field’, from Laboratories of the Spirit (1975) #NationalPoetryDay

On Sunday, #Zürich residents voted 52.8% in favor of increasing parking fees for cars according to weight. The owner of a BMW X2 (Diesel), which weighs 1,675 kilograms, will now pay equivalent of €717 Euros per year to park on a public street. (Before, about €321.) Direct democracy!

Read our response to the Government’s announcement that university maintenance grants will be reintroduced for certain courses, funded through a levy on international student fees https://bit.ly/4gPz7uO

On the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway (#OTD 1825), here’s my memoir of growing up on the East Coast Main Line, where I witnessed of the demise of the steam age. #Railway200 pamelaclemit.wordpress.com/2024/10/25/n...

The poet Tony Harrison has died. For me, he was the most important poet of my lifetime. He gave speech to the tongue-tied and used the masks of classical theatre to amplify the voices of the working class.

On the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway (#OTD 1825), here’s my memoir of growing up on the East Coast Main Line, where I witnessed of the demise of the steam age. #Railway200 pamelaclemit.wordpress.com/2024/10/25/n...

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.

'Even when women were mentioned, the report found they were more often victims than protagonists, with the women murdered by Jack the Ripper more likely to be taught in lessons than the female code breakers at Bletchley Park during the second world war 1/2

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.

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

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.