#OTD 11 February 1918, children at a military-run school close to the front line in Thann, Alsace, France meet a veteran. They have M2 gas masks but they swamp their faces, an airtight fit would have been impossible. Source: @lacontemporaine.bsky.social argonnaute.parisnanterre.fr/ark:/14707/d...

It turns out that I am also giving this talk on line TODAY 10 Febraury 2026 at 1930 GMT via Zoom (someone got their diary mixed up). I should be getting a link soon. DM me an email address if you'd like it.

#OTD 10 February 1918, a member of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps at a British Army bakery, Dieppe, France. Photo: David McLellan. Source: www.iwm.org.uk/collections/...

PLEASE REPOST 🥺🙏 The Canadian Letters & Images Project is an online digital archive of Canadians’ experience during wartime at home & in battle. It contains thousands of personal letters & photos that reveal people’s experience through their own words & eyes. www.canadianletters.ca/content/abou...

Come to Leamington Spa for my talk 'Gas! Protection against chemical weapons during the Great War'. This Wednesday, 11 February 2026, 7.30pm. All welcome, £5 donation requested. www.westernfrontassociation.com/branches/uni...

#OTD #WW1

The most perfect thread on Bluesky ever.

Something on Bluesky has just reminded me of the human haemorrhoid's greatest utterance.

Late surprise favourite to win the Winter Olympics biathlon in Bolzano.

Hello Noel and Vee, how have you been?

I’ve just read ‘Trilby’, George du Maurier’s hugely successful & influential novel of 1894, from which we get the term ‘Svengali’ for one who controls & manipulates the talent of another, & of course Svengali turns out to be a Jewish caricature & the whole concept of the book overtly anti-Semitic.

Here’s some excellent film of French tunnelling operations, apparently January 1916. It looks like the Argonne but I can’t identify the mine entrances on the French reverse slope, which is similar to Les Éparges or Vauquois. imagesdefense.gouv.fr/fr/la-guerre...

William Rider-Rider, Curling match held at 5th Infantry Brigade Headquarters, January 1919, Library and Archives Canada MIKAN 3385505.

Unattributed, Canadian soldiers admire the Canadian War Memorial at St. Julien, ca. 1944*, LAC MIKAN 4233269. *The date range given to this entire collection of WW2 photographs in colour is 1943-1965. Finding the midway point from 1943-1945 is our best guess.

In February 1919, a Canadian official photographer spent some time with the Canadian Forestry Corps. Here are the two best photographs (obviously I'm speaking objectively). They both belong to Library and Archives Canada and are MIKAN 3522528-9.

Just a reminder that @nationalarchives.gov.uk.web.brid.gy #HistNursing project on Nursing Service Records is still running and still taking online volunteers - so anyone can get involved www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/our-ro...

Original colour portrait of Lawren P. Harris serving as an official war artist. Harris was the eldest son of Group of Seven founding member Lawren Harris. Library and Archives Canada MIKAN 4232978.

Hey gang, don't forget: you have until February 12 to sign up if you'd like to receive some cool #warphotos stuff in your mailbox this month 🙌🏼 link is in my bio.

Am 5. Februar 1916 eröffnete während des Ersten Weltkriegs das dadaistische Cabaret Voltaire in der Spiegelgasse 1 im Haus der Beiz Meierei in Zürich. Nur wenige Häuser weiter sollte Lenin bald einziehen. 🧵

I rather cryptically posted last month that my next project was inspired, in part, by the Magic Lantern Slide. ✨ Drum Roll ✨ Starting in February 2026, I’m starting a snail mail club called the Magic Lantern Mail Club. Read on, or TL:DR - go follow me on the photo app!

Guys and gals, please do give my pal Carla-Jean a follow. She is a brilliant historian of First World War photography and a wonderful human being.

Today is #NationalSweaterDay so let's enjoy 'The Fair-Isle Jumper' painted by #Orkney-born artist Stanley Cursiter in 1923. Stanley Cursiter (1887-1976) was Keeper of the National Galleries of Scotland from 1930-1948 and was appointed the King's Painter and Limner in Scotland.

For families separated by deportations and flight, letters were often the only means of keeping in touch. Franz Kuhn wrote to his daughter’s guardian Millie Levy, 4 February 1943...

#OTD 4th February 1916, 18 men of 185th Tunnelling Company were killed 70ft beneath no man's land at La Boisselle on the Somme when the Germans detonated a mine charge. A month later, the 'Beeston Gazette and Echo' reported the death of miner Frederick Simpson.

A devastating blow to academics everywhere (me) winbuzzer.com/2026/01/28/g...

Today’s work distraction. A black Glaswegian among the women employed by the Corporation during the First World War. They are cleaning fire bricks at a gas works. (Unknown official photographer, c.1917-18.) Source: www.iwm.org.uk/collections/...

This is consensual, although I'm a little uncomfortable with it.

This beautiful original artwork by Adam Hook from my book The War Underground 1914-18 has finally come back from the framers.

The dendro shows the portrait was posthumous, as was presumably already known? But if the underdrawing had shown an extra finger, now that would have been exciting.

Delighted to have my second #cartoon appear recently in @airmail.news #stateofthenation #trump #thinskinned #prison

My breakfast coffee mug is trying to tell me something @theobserveruk.bsky.social

1/10. Tory peer Daniel Hannan has posted a potted history of slavery that demonstrates how historical understanding is being twisted by politicians. I’ll examine it in light of historians’ research.

Two clips from the amazing film 'A Day in the Life of a Munitions Worker', made in 1917 at the National Shell Filling Factory Chilwell, Nottingham. A massive explosion at the factory in 1918 killed 134 workers. Source: www.iwm.org.uk/collections/... 1/2

Good news.

Only Goya could invest a bullfighter with such a complexity of doubt/contempt/disgust. (Alt: 3/4 length head-and-shoulder oil painting of a man in 30s, long dark black-ribboned hair, white stock, black coat, gazing pensively at viewer.)

Marshal Foch aimerait dire un mot.

I always wondered why his nickname wasn't 'Dinger' Bell.

I've just downloaded a PhD thesis on Victorian bastardy and read its excellent epigraph: “Life's not about how hard of a hit you can give... it's about how many you can take, and still keep moving forward.” Sylvester Stallone: Rocky Balboa (kar.kent.ac.uk/62866/27/Bab...)

Similarly fatal failure to pay attention to the engineer: Letitia Chitty told to do calcs for Tarrant Tabor. She said the wood wasn't strong enough. It wasn't & 2 men died. More in ALTs

Intensely relieved.

some of my favorite snippets from newly released court docs in the Anthropic copyright book case. eye-opening stuff on Project Panama, their plan to "destructively scan all the books in the world" in order to train AI

Every day, this picture hanging on my stairs by Jewish-Polish artist Wiktoria Goryńska reminds me of the Holocaust. 'Self-portrait on the telephone' is signed by her and dated 1930. It is the fifth print that she made from the block which is now in the National Museum in Warsaw. 1/4

Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers. This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder. Auschwitz took time.

Waiting for tickets to go on general sale today for one particular concert @wigmore-hall.org.uk.

At Christmas, my wife buys everyone in our families a book from Oxfam as an extra present. This was mine. It's taken me about 47 years to like all of his symphonies. I may now listen to them in a different way, especially with an awareness of their profound irony.

So a range of UK archives that resist placing their public collections in the public domain are nevertheless making them available for commercial AI exploitation?

This badly-written article hurt my brain (but it quotes my friend Lesley). www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"We also would like to return their hospital crutch left in our vehicle that one of them with a previous leg injury had used on the ascent but again, sadly no replies to date."

Here in the south of England, it's the traditional cultural appropriation night.