"In this country, they drive on the wrong side of the road."

First Christmas at the in-laws without Angus. A photo from 2021 and Chichester dragon's teeth.

Mini-🧵 on Edward Bawden 👇

Tell me this isn't the true meaning of Christmas.

Quite interesting on useful work (and an advert for Findmypast). www.theguardian.com/education/20...

This detailed and nuanced account of the 1914 Christmas truces is well worth a read.

Christmas Day 1940. Free French soldiers attend a Mass at sunrise during the Siege of Bardia, Libya. Photo by Capt Geoffrey Keating. Source: www.iwm.org.uk/collections/...

I was on at about 8.40am, or an hour and 10 minutes in. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

An excellent Lee Miller gift.

110 years ago today, Clara Grice waited all day at Walsall railway station for her husband to return on leave from the front, unaware that he had been killed six days before and his body lost in tunnels beneath no man's land (Walsall Observer, 1/1/1916).

Our friend Joseph always makes beautiful cards. Words by Eleanor Farjeon.

#OTD 24 December 1943, Driver J Chalmers of Glasgow gives blood (& nicotine) at No. 2 Advanced Blood Bank in Lanciano, Italy. Lance Corporal A C King is in charge of the transfusion. Photo by Sgt C H Hewitt. Source: www.iwm.org.uk/collections/...

An ambulance driver with a German bomb that fell on her camp at Calais and failed to explode c1918. She has been identified as Sheila Mary Mason, who joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry after her husband died of wounds in 1917. An old postcard photo that I bought many years ago.

It is the 23rd Day of #HutVent2025 and today Taff is looking at some First World War Army welfare provision and the subject of 'French Leave'... youtu.be/S070052pOtY

Patrick Campbell of the British West Indies Regiment sent this photograph from Egypt as a Christmas greeting to Miss Nellie Palmer, sometime in the First World War. Sadly, I can’t identify him on the medal roll. A photo I bought many years ago.

Anyone out there planning a trip to IWM archive who would be able to photo part of an officer's memoir papers for me? Circa 40 pages. Just need this one item and can't really justify a trip just for that. Happy to pay. No rush. Any thoughts welcome. #ww1 #genealogy

I once managed to obtain a copy of an unreleased file only to be telephoned a couple of days later and asked to destroy it.

Tom Chadwick's 'The Christ Child'. Chadwick was killed at El Alamein in 1942, 2 days after his brother Hector. He'd set out to find Hector's grave when his scout car was hit by shell fire. @CWGC inscription: 'In Their Death They Were Not Divided' © @ashmoleanmuseum.bsky.social

In my early 20s, at the first museum I worked at, there were some documents recorded as ‘lent to author’ in 1959. I tracked down the most likely candidate & asked whether he had any research material that might be worth depositing with us ...

On the subject of unhinged warmongers, here’s a portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II in naval uniform.

Private L S Dunn of Poplar Bluffs, Missouri, 166th Infantry, 42nd Division, enjoying a bunch of celery from a German General’s garden. Frénois, Ardennes, France, November 9, 1918. Photo: Sgt. Mace. catalog.archives.gov/id/55221073

I saw the original film again at the BFI earlier this year and it's hard to know how or why they thought they could better it.

I grow old ... I grow old ... I refuse to carry a tote bag over my shoulder and instead carry it awkwardly with the straps bunched in my hand.

#OTD 20 December 1917. At the Menin Gate, later the site of the Memorial to the Missing, with the ruins of Ypres beyond, a group of soldiers warm themselves around a brazier. Photo by David McLellan. Source: www.iwm.org.uk/collections/...

A friend has sent me this photo from the website of the Sandringham Estate. That fireplace looks *remarkably* familiar, doesn't it? bsky.app/profile/jame...

British soldiers play football in gas helmets. A photo published today in 1916. Source Gallica gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/b...

Jane Austen used 'however' at the beginning of a sentence, and so can you.

Vet and nurse from Our Dumb Friends League work in candlelight to treat a dog injured in an air raid, apparently at the Blue Cross London Victoria hospital, 16 December 1941. The censor evidently didn't want the map of Kensington shown. (Fox Agency via IWM www.iwm.org.uk/collections/...)

Do you want to see Lyndsay fire a jam tin grenade with a trench catapult? Of course you do.💥

Five years ago today, Alan Bennett's diary, 15th December 2020.

I should probably point out that it was both my wife who booked the restaurant and also her who subsequently recognised it last night on Slow Horses. It seems that the scene where Lamb takes Moira Tregorian (Joanna Scanlan) to lunch/dinner was actually filmed inside.

Booked a nice looking Italian in Aldersgate Street to eat at before going to a thing at the Barbican tomorrow night. Then watched the first episode of the latest Slow Horses and...🤯

Day 14 of #HutVent2025… Lyndsay has a great gadget for you all today! youtu.be/VD4J88nVUk4

It's turns out it's #WorldMonkeyDay!

Thinking about the 130 or so British librarians killed in WW1. Their colleagues raised funds to create a lasting memorial to their sacrifice. Sadly, the tablet they commissioned is now displayed behind the scenes at the British Library, visible only to staff. #fwwhist #PubLibs 💙📚

#OTD 14 December 1941. A Christmas party in the Ward Room of HMS Westminster, Rosyth. Photo by Lt J H Smith. www.iwm.org.uk/collections/...

It's Day 12 of #HutVent2025 and it's time to hear about The Derby Scheme, and its distinctive armband, all explained by Taff... youtu.be/TVML6KdOWkw

Andrew Ronald Knox, 185th Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers, was killed on this day in 1915. He is buried in Albert, France, and is remembered on a family memorial in my hometown. His brother, Cecil, was awarded a Victoria Cross in 1918. 📍Nuneaton (Oaston Road) Cemetery 🇬🇧

Scottish soldiers with turkeys on a street in France, December 1915. A press photo I’ve not seen before, from the wonderful @gallicabnf.bsky.social. Source: gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/b...

A bit gobsmacked today reading Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five to find mention of this house that’s only 100m away from where I live in Windsor. Just before Christmas 1886, Annie Chapman walked from Whitechapel to visit her estranged husband here at 1 Richmond Villas. @hallierubenhold.bsky.social

Seems on brand: "Afterwards, I thought Ryanair might have said thank you to us, considering that we might have saved the lives of 130 of their passengers and an £85m aeroplane. I’m still waiting for that."

Surprised that my favourite Guildford Dragon's Teeth have not been listed before now (my mother says they didn't call them Dragon's Teeth in the war).

On Christmas Day morning I’m due to talk on BBC Radio Berkshire, Oxford, Solent, & the Isle of Wight about the 1914 Christmas Truce (provided the conversation I had with the researcher today about what the truce was really about hasn’t put them off). 🎄🎅⚽

This wonderful 1917 portrait, of an unknown soldier on sentry duty in the front line, is in the William Nicholson exhibition at Pallant House.

'Les Orphelins de la Guerre'. War orphans, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, France, 9 December 1915. (BNF Gallica Agence Rol gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/b...) #OTD #WW1

An interesting photo of the Germans occupying the famous Catacombs dugouts at Ploegsteert in 1918. The archive isn’t named but perhaps it’s the In Flanders Fields Kenniscentrum. industryqld.com.au/nq-mining-en...

These can't be genuine because we all know that we mustn't refer to the invasion beaches by the sector names.

I’m rather partial to breathing apparatus, so I’m very pleased with my new acquisition. It’s a 1917 manual for the German Army Dräger self-rescuer, used for protection against poison gas and in tunnelling operations.

'The museum's deputy administrator, Francis Steinbock, said between 300-400 works, mostly books, were affected by the leak [...] that the volumes are "those consulted by Egyptologists", but that "no precious books" were affected.' 😐

In The Observer, I’ve reviewed Songs Of Seven Dials: @tricksterprince.bsky.social’s fascinating, detailed history of the changing streets of Covent Garden through the early c20th. From race to jingoistic media to gentrification, a book full of resonances today observer.co.uk/culture/book...