Part of the problem is the way We have treated scientific discovery as if it is made by brilliant men. All science is built on the science that came before. It is collaborative in multiple ways. All attempts to credit a single scientist with THE crucial discovery are flawed.

'Knowing was probably written by a male cleric, but ostensibly addresses a female readership. It emphasises the role of women as caregivers and midwives, but also as readers and mediators of the written word' James Freeman @theulspeccoll.bsky.social specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk?p=30906

In the lead up to the #WolfsonHistoryPrize winner announcement next month, we are shining a light on each of the shortlisted books. This week, Sara Lodge's (@victoriandetective.bsky.social) 'The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective' takes the spotlight @yalebooks.bsky.social.

My first lot of marking has arrived but so has the cover of the book!

@akennedysmith.bsky.social's essay on DNA pioneer Dr Rosalind Franklin reminds us of the continued importance of giving women's historic scientific discoveries their due.

Putting my hat in the ring for the BBC Director General job. Key pledges: 1. No more barefoot contempo waft on Strictly 2. A weekly new music show that has no threat of Jools playing boogie boogie piano 3. Open University programmes and arty French films to be shown during the night.

Looking forward to the BBC making a podcast about the cancellation of Tim Davie

The overlooked female poets of World War One www.channel4.com/news/the-ove...

As Francis Crick put it, ‘I’m afraid we always used to adopt – let’s say, a patronizing attitude towards her.’ I wrote about DNA pioneer Dr Rosalind Franklin, and how she was deliberately excluded from her male colleagues' conversations.

ICYMI: BookTrust has launched its Christmas appeal, aiming to deliver 18,000 book parcels to disadvantaged children and those in care across England, Wales and Northern Ireland 👇 #BookSky

Pre-orders for the new Archipelago are now available. Not sure of the general contents yet, but I have a little essay on Heaney and Jutland, ‘Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard’. www.clutagpress.com/product/arch...

This is from the final chapter of the biography of Franklin written by her younger sister, Jenifer Glynn. The picture Watson painted of her was a cruel lie - but lots of the corrective counter-stories, although important, can also obscure the real person.

"excluded from the world of informal exchanges" got me. That's the bit we still do really really badly. African scientists unable to get visas to attend conferences, mothers struggling with childcare, class exclusion. If we turn it into a "theft" narrative it's easy to say "oh well I don't do that".

This is most revealing part of @matthewcobb.bsky.social's piece on Rosalind Franklin: "Franklin did not succeed, partly because she was working on her own without a peer with whom to swap ideas. She was also excluded from the world of informal exchanges in which Watson and Crick were immersed."

I love these photos of my nan, my granddad and my uncle dancing in my grandparents' living room in Nottingham in 1972. I am massively intrigued to know what the song was.

(New). On E.M. Forster's 1909 story 'The Machine Stops', eerily prescient about our online world. 'The Machine develops - but not on our lines. The Machine Proceeds - but not to our goal.' www.juliangirdham.com/blog/em-fors...

I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek of this book! A marvellous new biography of The Notorious LMB.

'being dismissive of Oxbridge dons' oh no, did they also use the wrong fork?

It’s possible our species wasn’t really intended to make it much past 45 or so. I’m trying to be grateful for every day I have made it past that. Instead of viewing my issues (cancer, autoimmune, menopause, root canal etc) as catastrophes, they are proof I yet remain. I am not a catastrophe. I live.

I wrote about Mary Alice Willcox's education at Newnham College, Cambridge before she helped to establish the first zoology department at Wellesley College, Massachusetts.

It’s 6 November, and you know what that means, don’t you? YES, THAT’S RIGHT. It’s the 156th anniversary of the death of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s pet wombat

Thrilled to see Helen Garner’s diaries win 2025 Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction. So well deserved. And what a result for creative nonfic... My interview with Garner from last year: www.ft.com/content/2f37...

Helen Garner has won The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction with How to End a Story: Collected Diaries (W&N) – the first diary to win the prize 👇 #BookSky

The natural history of the book. Scarlet pimpernel in a copy of William Salmon’s ‘Botanologia: the English herbal’ (London, 1710) (along with several other pressed botanical specimens). CCA.46.31 @theUL.bsky.social

An exhibition in Vienna confirms the newly established reputation of Michaelina Wautier as a great baroque artist and one of the most significant female painters in the history of art

This week I'm tackling why creative women need to be allowed to fail. Women composers have been judged as women first and artists second for too long. It hampers creativity, and does nobody any credit to make gender such an important part of listening. leahbroad.substack.com/p/why-creati...

edith making full use of the armchair, which she has positioned within reach of her rather precarious bookshelf. top-notch sitting here

Find yourself something that makes you as happy as Edward Barlow's 'dolphin' was to 'swim in the sea'. #skystorians #earlymodern (National Maritime Museum, Journal of Edward Barlow, JOD/4/197-210, 213-294)

‘I returned to this long strand/ the hammered shod of a bay/ and found only the secular/ powers of the Atlantic thundering’ (from ‘North’ by Seamus Heaney) akennedysmith.substack.com/p/the-coming...

[elbows way through slew of Halloween posts] It’s eerie, it’s a bit revolting, it’s rammed with history – my ‘Bodysnatching & Anatomy in London’ study day is now booking, at Highgate Lit & Sci, Sat 22 November: hlsi.org.uk/courses/day-...

This is wonderful. Brilliant guests and discussion. Have always thought the novel is so much about medium/s: narrators as mediums, the voicing and summoning of others, including the dead. A perfect Halloween listen

Blackwell’s have been kind enough to host a book launch at 5.30pm on Thursday 5 March for Late Heaney. I’ll be having a conversation with my friend Fiona Stafford and tickets are below, with an option to include the book. I’d be glad to see you. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/nicholas-a...

A Thomas Hardy poem for Halloween

It's Halloween-een so let me tell you a real life ghost story from my research. It concerns this guy, William Windover, successful merchant from Salisbury in England, and owner of one of the most impressive desk tidies in all of art history.

Increasingly convinced that we are living through the decline of mass literacy and cringe as it is, we all need to get into publicly celebrating reading books as much as possible.

"No, no. We have never been readers in our family. It don't pay. Stuff. Idleness. Folly. No, no!" #APSTogether #BleakHouse #APublicSpace

Do you know a Year 12 student from a Black African, Caribbean or mixed race background who is thinking about applying to Cambridge? Target Oxbridge is a free mentoring programme that has helped over 500 students to secure Oxbridge offers. Apply at targetoxbridge.app.candidx.io/roles before 23 Nov.

This is an incredible move by some visionary funders to support the literary arts in the US.

I was lucky enough to see THE LIBRARIANS as part of the Global Cultures at Jesus College Cambridge recently, and it's a really important film. Well worth voting for. @jesuscollegecam.bsky.social www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/research/glo...

"...back then Halloween would have been more about getting revenge on people, that sort of thing..." says my mother, wistfully

Listen to two new choral works from the Timeline Choir inspired by our #CuriousCures exhibition! 🐀 ‘A Charm Against Rats’ by composer Charlotte Baskerville is inspired by a 15th-century manuscript (@caiuscollege.bsky.social, MS 457/395, f. 1v). Hear the full version: https://loom.ly/2fJO_xs

We're sad to hear of the death of David Bellos, a wonderfully witty writer, professor, translator and judge of the 2016 International Booker Prize.

This is the most fun thing you can read today: @jayrayner1.bsky.social on the memoirs of three very different restaurateurs. Gift link free for 300 clicks on.ft.com/4qx0yhn

Highly recommended!

Had a wonderful time talking about Gwen John earlier this summer for BBC Cymru Wales doc. Screening early next year. Arts docs such an endangered species these days, so doubly glad Gwen J is getting this tribute for her 150th anniversary #artistssiblingsvisionaries @picadorbooks.bsky.social

Having now completed The Diplomat Season 3, allow me to assure you that, after a brief blip, it course corrects beautifully. But I do hope Aidan Turner gets the sack before Season 4.

Short essay by David Todd about the emergence of scientific racism in 18th & 19th century France — taken from a June edition of @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

There's just a day to go until @manchesterup.bsky.social publish my latest book Songs of Seven Dials: An intimate history of 1920s and 1930s London. I thought I should explain a bit about where the book came from. 1/15

‘We went to see the red picture & I thought it quite horrid, so fierce and so dirty’, Emma Darwin wrote about Richmond's portrait of her husband Charles Darwin. ‘However it is under a glass & v. high up so no one can see it’. open.substack.com/pub/akennedy...