I wrote about the photographer Lettice Ramsey (1898-1985), who in 1933 asked her friend Ludwig Wittgenstein for advice on the décor of Ramsey & Muspratt's first Cambridge studio. ‘If it is good paint it white,’ he told her. ‘If it is bad paint it black.’

"Time, which was once squandered, must now be given over to the actual, the possible, and perhaps to that evanescent hope of a good outcome which never deserts one, and which should never be abandoned." Anita Brookner, Leaving Home, 2005 (the novel's last sentence) #SundaySentence 📖 #Flowers

Suffragette leader Christabel Pankhurst. c.1910, photo by Scottish photographer Christina Broom (1862-1939), UK's first female press photographer, who documented the women's suffrage movement.

It’s time to reveal the 2026 #WomensPrize for Non-Fiction longlist! A hopeful list, these are 16 books that reflect the belief that every woman’s voice has the power to elicit and inspire change: youtu.be/ScHiI1saMCY

I’ve got a brand new short story, a re-imagining of the Lot’s Wife narrative up on the EFACIS website as part of Kaleidoscope 3. It’s my favourite thing I’ve written in ages. Follow the link here if you fancy spending 15 minutes with the “Salty Wives” kaleidoscope3.efacis.eu/publications...

Lovely piece on hair gift-giving by @leannecalvert.bsky.social who has been digging around in the hairy archives at PRONI.

not a lot of people know that G4S stands for 'Grill For Sausages'. it originally started out as a street-food company, and the iconic dark-blue vans - though they have long since sealed up their hatches - still all have fitted fridges and gas bbqs in the back

It's International Day of Women and Girls in Science - this is very important and relevant in my day job. Not relevant to my day job, but tentatively related because... uh, women in the SWEET SCIENCE (🤷🏻‍♀️!?), here is a bit of research I did a while back 🥊🥊 grapplingwithhistory.com/2024/03/10/f...

"The South Vietnamese people, who are struggling for their independence and freedom, are friends with the American colored people being victim of barbarous racial discrimination at home. Your battlefield is right in the USA! Your enemy is the war lords in the White House and the Pentagon!"

"Since the usual channels for book discovery have been gutted by the uber-wealthy, which they have clearcut for their own personal profit...we authors are all now expected to engage in this starved and hysterical culture of the few."

This @historytoday.com article is FREE for 7 days to mark the 200th anniversary of London's first university #UCL200 @ioew.bsky.social @uclnews.bsky.social @ucl.ac.uk

TS Eliot on academia: “I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls . . . Oxford is very pretty, but I don’t like to be dead." Eliot to Conrad Aiken, 31/12/1914.

Arnold Mason earned his living mostly by painting portraits, much in the style of Augustus John, with whom he shared a studio. He was engaged to fellow Slade artist Winifred Knights and produced a number of portraits of her such as this one from around 1918.

Tomorrow night on @pbs.org ...

Cover reveal of my new book and a link to pre-order. You’re welcome 🤓https://www.lilliputpress.ie/products/a-hosting-interviews-with-irish-writers-1991-2025

I’m an Ambassador for this brilliant charity, Bookbanks, giving away books with food parcels at food banks. There are two part-time jobs going for Regional Leads in London and East Anglia. Link below. Please share far and wide :)

The existence of downhill skiing implies the existence of uphill skiing, which I would very much like to see.

800 words on newspaper economics in a era where no one will pulp a magazine

Like Alan Bennett's nephew has called over to cook him a dinner even though he has never cooked before. Jeans and slip-ons a tough look to pull off.

Shame on The Washington Post. Anyone would think the paper was owned by a… oh wait. Hopefully another paper will snap up brilliant Ukraine correspondent, Lizzie Johnson, immediately.

Also universities.

Parliament today

It is worth recalling that the position of U.K. Ambassador to the US was not vacant at the time the Prime Minister chose to appoint Peter Mandelson to the role. A highly competent and respected woman was replaced.

#OnThisDay in 1555, John Rogers became the first of many Protestants burned at the stake during the reign of Mary I. Born in 1500, Rogers was the editor of this English translation of the Bible published in 1537 under the pseudonym Thomas Matthew (BSS.201.B37.5).

Who needs BOOKS, anyway? 😬

I was granted a marvelous platform at The Washington Post for a couple of years, and I'm heartily sorry to see it systematically, malignantly destroyed.

My February newsletter, about love letters, books, and a less than romantic marriage proposal from a Cambridge don in 1924.

I was very happy to spot a copy of A Secret Sisterhood, my group biography about female literary friendship (cowritten with Emma Claire Sweeney), in @akennedysmith.bsky.social's shelfie accompanying her essay on love, literature & cultural highlights for February: tinyurl.com/4673erpz

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

Library Shelfie Day is always a great excuse to show off the variety of ages, colours, shapes and sizes on the shelves of our rare book collections! 📷 Syon Abbey Library, Chris Brooks Collection, Hypatia Collection and Dodderidge Parish Library #LibraryShelfieDay #ShelfieDay #RareBooks

We are delighted to announce The Poems of Sylvia Plath. The definitive edition of Plath’s poetry, drawing on decades of research and almost doubling the content of the previous edition of Plath’s Collected Poems. Out 7 May 2026. www.faber.co.uk/product/9780...

Faber is set to publish several new editions of Sylvia Plath works in 2026, including new editions of The Bell Jar and Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, a "landmark" volume of Plath’s poetry and a selection of her reflections on writing 👇 #BookSky

There's always a moment in late January when the volume, variety & intensity of birdsong seems to have chipped up, and this year it seems to be today. Wren, goldfinch, redwing, song thrush, robin, all the tits, blackcap, nuthatch & more (the heron was flying over, silently & the V-2 crater is full)

Revealed: newly discovered photographs of Baudelaire’s muse

An honour to be in the company of the likes of Fitzcarraldo, Faber and Canongate, and to be working alongside so many kindred spirits:

‘The “Rooksnest mantelpiece”’ E.M. Forster wrote after moving back to King’s College Cambridge in 1947, ‘has followed us to Tonbridge, to Tunbridge Wells, has been stored, followed us to Weybridge and West Hackhurst, and now stands, more effective than ever, in its last home.’

Bill is a collector whose truly astonishing collection of 18th century material is open to researchers by appointment (I have rarely been more nerdy about both the holdings of a collector AND their truly enviable shelving systems)

‘Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlan ferlie! Your impudence protects you sairly: I canna say but ye strunt rarely, Owre gawze and lace; Tho’ faith, I fear ye dine but sparely, On sic a place. Ye ugly, creepan, blastet wonner, Detested, shunn’d, by saunt an’ sinner’ ~ Robert Burns ~ To A Louse.

Wedding garland belonging to the daughter of Victor Hugo. She died, along with her unborn child, in a boating accident a few weeks later. Hugo kept the garland in a glass box on his writing desk for the rest of his life. I often think about this.

If anyone missed it, this TLS review from Friday is the kinda thing most writers would sell a kidney for. Alice Jolly is an unbelievable writer too so this is really quite something to read coming from a technician of that calibre. First ever review for my fiction, what a start.

Since March 2025 we have been celebrating the 80th anniversary of the first two women elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, Marjory Stephenson FRS and Kathleen Lonsdale FRS. Find out more about these trailblazing women here: #WomenInSTEM royalsociety.org/news-resourc...

A wonderful @royalsociety.org short film about the scientist Marjory Stephenson's time in the 'Old Labs' at Newnham College, Cambridge. Despite lack of institutional support, she became a pioneer of bacterial biochemistry and her work informs much of our current understanding of biotechnology.

Or consider being born to parents who can give you a role in the family firm? www.ft.com/content/c894...

three hares (holy trinity) germany, 16th century

Charlie Chaplin rose from the hard streets of working-class Edwardian London to global fame. Framed through this iconic success story, Jacqueline Riding paints a striking portrait of a vanished city. #HardStreets by @jacriding.bsky.social is out 5th February. profilebooks.com/work/hard-st...

Great story. (Myself, I've never yet climbed over a table to escape an aggrieved author's relatives.)

New old Powell. Via the good burghers of Swansea.

'The Gramophone.' (1923) In the 1920s Henry Lamb echoed Walter Sickert: pared-down interiors, blunt forms, and a restricted palette of greys, ochres, and greens. Mood over polish, paint as atmosphere, not so much as display.

@akennedysmith.bsky.social is so good at shedding light on often overlooked episodes in the history of female scholars at Cambridge, and placing them within their social & cultural context. This essay from her Substack 'Locked out of the Library' is no exception.