This is what passes for a Labour-friendly assessment in the Guardian. It is basically soft-left delusion. Starmer & co won't change course because the aim all along has been to marginalise the left and the Greens make a perfectly serviceable vehicle for doing that.

Sociology regularly reveals this paradox: that people will vote for rightwing disruptors not because they share their politics but because they are fed up with the system. It's almost as if the system generates its own opposition in a guise that ensures no actual disruption.

This week in 1882 Sylvia Pankhurst was born in Old Trafford. Arrested demanding Votes for Women, she went on hunger strike and was force-fed. Rejecting arson tactics of her mother Emmeline’s WSPU, she formed East London Federation of Suffragettes, focused on rights for working class women.

"One thing that has really spooked European leaders in recent months is the International Criminal Court judges who were sanctioned by the US because they issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netenyahu."

I'm *wildly* excited to announce that my new book, 'Setting the Land Free – Visions of a Rewilded Ireland', will be published by Hachette on 27 August. We have a stark choice re our collapsing nature: the usual timid, token gestures, or real, gutsy ambition. This book makes the case for the latter.

Lebanon's health ministry has said 13 people have been killed in Israeli strikes in the south, including in a town where Israel's army had issued an evacuation order despite a ceasefire.

We are delighted to announce that registration for our Annual Conference 2026 is now open. 'Intimacies in nineteenth-century Ireland' takes place @maynoothuniversity.ie 18-19 June 2026. See shop.maynoothuniversity.ie/index.php?ap... More information to follow soon!

www.ft.com/content/3c05... THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR SACKING THE RACISTS WHO HAVE JUST BEEN SACKED, HAVE BEEN RACIST AND SACKED.

The Dáíl heard that just over 1% of Irish heavy goods vehicles are zero emissions, compared to 4.5% across Europe and up to 25% in China. www.rte.ie/news/2026/04...

I see the idea of pre-election purdah period that should be relatively shenanigans-free has collapsed so thoroughly, that the police are now publicising a sternly worded ticking off to a party leader, a week before elections

Every now and again I’m reminded that a lot of people see following back anyone who follows you and a point of good online etiquette and, like, no wonder people think social media is unbearable. You do not have to do this.

Delighted that Prof. William Whyte will be giving the Pimlott Memorial Lecture on 6 Oct 2026. Hosted by @mbhjournal.bsky.social, KCL, and OUP, the lecture is on 'The Future of National Biography' and will be published in MBH shortly after. Join us! Tickets: www.tickettailor.com/events/kings...

This goes big on the new Oxford Humanities hub being an accessible merging of town and gown unlike those stuffy quads, but it's actually made it much more difficult to attend research seminars as a non uni member. All the lifts, escalators, and internal doors above ground require keycard access

8. The stuff that Stock complains was silenced was actually on the reading list. You couldn’t make this up:

The starving of Famine Ireland would at last enter the Workhouse so that they would be provided with a coffin when they died.

These are extraordinary findings for the High Court to make. Hard to see how the so-called Office for Students can survive in its current form.

Israeli authorities are systematically depriving people in Gaza of the water they need to live, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) warned, decrying a campaign of "collective punishment" against Palestinians

Edward Senior, Poor-Law Inspector for north-east Ireland, telling a Famine-era Select Committee (1849) that, really, if you think about it, a starving peasant is no more tragic than a landlord losing status.

Here's something I produced for a lecture on the socialism of the Second International period.

The changing of the seasons is marked by ancient rituals: I’m searching for freelance/consultancy/ research work. I’m a social historian by profession, a very experienced researcher and oral history interviewer. I’m also a published writer and a public history journalist. Surely, I am employable…

This -- a report on Relief Works from County May in February 1847, the very depths of the Famine -- deserves notice.

USIHS talk this Thursday at 6pm - Prof David Dickson (TCD) ‘The Foyle, the Chesapeake, and a fifty-year transatlantic conversation: Getting the measure of the Moore family archive, 1798-1847′. In-person at QUB or online via the link at usihs36.com/2026/03/23/u... All welcome!

Dr. Peter Hession will deliver the inaugural O'Malley Fellowship Lecture next Monday, 27 April, from 5:30 pm in the Kemmy Business School, UL (with live streaming). All are welcome, but please register to attend. Link to register: tinyurl.com/58he94t6.

I've used AI to construct a graph of morality rates in workhouses during the famine: probably the best proxy we have for overall death-rates. It really begins late 1846 with a huge surge and drags on into 1851. December to April are the killing months.

Looking at a free state census record image, and then the transcription. It has mistaken Do (short for Ditto) for N/A so only one person per page in the household has any religion. How did.this get past?

We are delighted to be here at the annual Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland conference. Looking forward to two days of sharing research with colleagues from across the country

It’s striking that none of these guys ever say the need to urgently rearm means we need to, say, sharply jack up taxes on the top 50% of earners. A thing that would surely work, and quite easily too. If it’s that important, then it’s surely a must.

A full recording of Saturday's Symposium on 'Peasant Movements and Land Agitation in Ireland' is now available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJaf... @marcmulholland.bsky.social @peelersandsheep.bsky.social @petergray47.bsky.social @sophcocooper.bsky.social

I've reviewed Edward Burke's latest - a fine book - for American Historical Review:

This was very stimulating, as they say. I was in there (on the far-left, in the spex) trying to do my bit in saving the peasantry from being condescended to as gullible "lugs, thugs and mugs" (as I put in in my book).

The Rosary (c.1912) by Irish artist Grace Henry #womensart

Ukraine and Russia will cease fire for the Orthodox Easter holidays, the warring countries' leaders said, announcing a rare 32-hour halt in fighting

Very pleased to have been awarded the Society for the Study of Nineteenth Century Ireland Essay Prize for my 2024 Irish Historical Studies article 'The Irish-American press, the Franco-Prussian War and Irish-American identity in the postbellum United States, 1870–71’ doi.org/10.1017/ihs....

Abbeyleix, Co. Laois. I haven’t seen this yellow plastic covering on shop windows since the 1970s, this is a real survivor.

Why does my weak and pathetic cat refuse to bark and wag its tail

New 1926 General Strike map online! Using early 20th century Ordnance Survey maps, the online resource shows strike events (through archive sources) in their contemporary landscape. Explore the map, digitised sources and more at warwick.ac.uk/services/lib...

This is a free event in-person and online. Registration required.

Come on, now. It’s the same shit as ever, it’s just these guys are just too stupid to realise it would help to pretend that it isn’t.

Fintan O’Toole and Sam McBride win Christopher Ewart-Biggs Literary Prize. Books newsletter: a wrap of the latest news and preview of today’s pages www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

James Joyce: A Political Life by Frank Callanan is a major new #biography that reveals how politics profoundly shaped Joyce’s life, thought & writings. Out now in the UK/Europe, & available in North America on April 14. Learn more: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... #JamesJoyce #Literature

This article is a pretty good sample of just how far constructionism has gone and how we have come to deny fundamentally trans-historical human nature.

I've been using AI to visualise a *lot* of data-points onto a pretty detailed map of Ireland (130 polygons) and I gotta say, it's been invaluable. It would have been impractical (for me) before now.

So, historian here looking for more freelance work over the next few months. I’m a very experienced RA and have done lots of things, including numerous oral history interviews, editing, co-authoring a book, public history journalism, archive work…

📜Chartists, Rebels & Radicals🔥 Dr Neil Pye @livunipol.bsky.social and Constantin Torve @quceh.bsky.social will explore the lasting impact of 19th century popular protest. 🗓️6pm, 29 April 🧭CTL, @liverpooluni.bsky.social FREE registration: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1985517033... #AcademicSky #HistSky

ICHS 2026 Symposium: Peasant Movements and Land Agitation in Modern Ireland,  Institute of Irish Studies, QUB, Saturday 11 April 2026, 9.30-4.00pm. All welcome (in-person and online). Further details and registration👇

The Iranian government are a bad bunch but if they don’t do this, they all get killed, their military gets destroyed to the foundations and their country gets broken up into an ungovernable mess. And it’s not like neither Reed nor Phillips understand that this is so. They get it just fine.

It's blindingly obvious that a return to sit-down exams is the only response to AI. I don't understand why the switch hasn't been immediate and universal.

John Pentland Mahaffy tries to persaude the young Shane Leslie NOT to go to Oxford and go to Trinity Dublin instead (he went up to Cambridge).

It’s been out a while now, but Rosemary Sweet and I have written a book about #18thcentury British travel to Spain and Portugal that is free to download here! uclpress.co.uk/book/no-coun...

I finished prepping my Famine paper today. It felt *furious* as I was writing it, but ironic and detached when I read it out loud to myself. I guess I'll find out how it carries tomorrow! ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...