Tomorrow! Join me at our Ambleside campus for this Saturday's Open Day to find out more about our unique MA in Literature, Romanticism and the Lake District 📚🍃

The next free event in our Cultural Landscapes series will be a talk on Tuesday 2nd December (6.30pm start) by @dalegothic96.bsky.social on 'Gothic Architecture and Gothic Fiction in the Long Eighteenth Century'. See here for further details & to book a place: www.ticketsource.co.uk/cultural-lan...

Anyone around Ambleside in early December? @drpennybradshaw.bsky.social www.ticketsource.co.uk/cultural-lan...

A joyous and very special Cultural Landscapes event this evening with the brilliant Dr Sue Allan discussing song, music and dance in the Lake Counties. The talk included archive recordings as well as wonderful performances from Sue herself 🎶🍃📚

Maps have always both granted power and threatened it, depending on who controls the data, the scale and the narrative.

Join me in Ambleside one week today to find out more about our unique MA in Literature, Romanticism and the Lake District. Visit the link below for further details and to book a place 📚🍃

A Cumbrian poem for Hallowe'en: 'The Vampyre' (1810) by John Stagg, who was born near Carlisle. The poem appeared in his collection 'The Minstrel of the North; or, Cumbrian Legends' 🦇🧛‍♂️🎃🕯️📚 rictornorton.co.uk/gothic/stagg...

Join us in Ambleside one week today for this free talk on ‘Folk song, music and dance in the Lake Counties’. See link below for further details and to book a place 📚🍃🎶

Love this idea @nytimes.com "How many of you practice seasonally driven reading? I doubt any library patron on earth remains unfamiliar with the term “beach read,” but what should we crack open once we see delicata squash & heirloom pears stacked up at the market?" www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/b...

Glorious autumnal day for a sunny morning leg stretch along the banks of the River Ribble and a visit to the old Roman town of Ribchester 🏛️🍁🍂

Within the damp and clinging earth, Where darkness spans a world unseen, An acorn dreamed; and, dreaming, saw blue skies and forests green Ella Maxwell Haddox

Interested in PG study in the fields of literary, cultural, heritage & environmental studies? Why not come along to our Open Day on Sat 8 Nov to find out more about our MA Literature, Romanticism & the English Lake District, based at our Ambleside campus: www.cumbria.ac.uk/events/open-...

A superb article which showcases the brilliant archival research undertaken by our MA graduate @suewilkinson.bsky.social on the Grasmere Dialect Plays 📚🍃

Vibrant yellow October leaf art 🍁

Dramatic skies over the lake here in Ambleside this morning for the first of our MA seminars on Arthur Ransome’s influential ‘Swallows and Amazons’ series ⛵️📚🍃 #LiteraryLandscapes

Enjoyed filming this video on Recovery of Literary Manuscripts and our multispectral work on Tennyson and the Shelley Circle. Many thanks to the video team at the University of Oxford! www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvIq... @ox.ac.uk @engfac.bsky.social @oxhumanities.bsky.social @bars.bsky.social

A misty, moody and beautiful day in Ambleside for our discussion of ‘Romantic Ecology’ and the way in which Wordsworth’s work has contributed to our thinking about the relationship between humans and the natural environment 📚🍂

‘Austen’s mapped worlds remind us that geography is never neutral. It shapes choices, relationships and power’. Her novels ask a question still urgent today: ‘where, and how freely, can women move?’ Another superb piece in @uk.theconversation.com by my doctoral student @nadasaadaoui.bsky.social 📚🍃

events.bl.uk/events/the-w... Very much looking forward to this talk by Jonathan Bate next Monday plus the performance by Emily Woof, daughter of Robert and Pamela.

October ditch: leaf art 🍂

Absolutely brilliant talk by my doctoral student @whitbyabi.bsky.social on Anne Lister and Dorothy Wordsworth at the Anne Lister Research Summit. So good to see the way in which material from the Armitt Library archive and the newly published Rydal Journals are informing new research 📚🍃

Interesting Guardian article by Sarah Hall for MA students past and present Blue sky thinking: why we need positive climate novels www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

‘The more local you are, the more global you are’: the ever-brilliant Sarah Hall on her new novel, ‘Helm’, place-writing, and the importance of positivity in environmental fictional writing at @litfest.bsky.social 📚🍃

Day of leave to take in a matinee show in Blackpool and so (as I have been missing the coast of late) I spent a lovely morning walking along the deserted beach and taking in its vast vistas and faded late Victorian grandeur.

Our next online launch event is on Tuesday 21 October at 7pm. Menna Elfyn and Kit Wright will read live and discuss their new collections with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley, with audio recordings of Selima Hill reading. Watch live/later via YouTube. www.bloodaxebooks.com/events?artic...

I will cut adrift—I will sit on pavements and drink coffee—I will dream; I will take my mind out of its iron cage and let it swim—this fine October. - Virginia Woolf #Womensart

"But worthier still of note Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; Huge trunks!—and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved" [Wordsworth on the Borrowdale Yews] Only 3 now - & they're sororal!

The 14th century tower of St Oswald’s Church in Grasmere, Cumbria today. Up until the 1890s the church was rendered in lime. This was removed and replaced with a cementitious pointing. In December 2017 a project was completed to restore the tower’s lime render.

British Association of Romantic Studies digital event: 'Volcanic Romanticism', 30 October, 7pm UK time. I'm chairing, but please don't let that put you off. The speakers will be great! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bars-digit...

Low clouds and autumn colours made this a perfect day for discussing Coleridge’s poetic engagement with Lake District landscapes, including his evocatively Gothic opening of Book 2 of ‘Christabel’ 📚🍂

Had a very lovely surprise at the end of my MA seminar today when a colleague arrived to present me with a beautiful bouquet to mark 25 years of very happy service at our University 💐📚🎓

Also this week - Jean Sprackland is celebrating the forthcoming release of her latest non-fiction book Night Vision: In Search of the True Dark with 3 events at Manchester Poetry Library - starting THIS WEEK with Andrew Hurley & Jacob Polley - WEDNESDAY 15th October: www.mmu.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Interested in PG study in the fields of literary, cultural, heritage & environmental studies? Why not come along to our Open Day on Sat 8 Nov to find out more about our MA Literature, Romanticism & the English Lake District, based at our Ambleside campus: www.cumbria.ac.uk/events/open-...

Inspired as I always am at this time of year by our MA work on Beatrix Potter’s mycological studies, I have ‘gathered’ a little collection of fungi from recent walks 🍄🍄‍🟫

One of the highlights of the year: our MA student visit to The Armitt Museum and Library, to study the extraordinary mycological watercolours produced by Beatrix Potter in the 1890s as part of our engagement with the development of children’s literature in the Lake District 🍃📚🍄🍄‍🟫

Lovely walking post from one of our current MA students 📚🍃

Professor Angela Wright is editing Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho for The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ann Radcliffe. Discover how this groundbreaking Gothic novel shaped Radcliffe’s legacy and why it remains essential reading: player.sheffield.ac.uk/events/editi... #GothicFiction

It's taken over 24 hours to get this uploaded with passable captions, but here's my talk from last night @cumbriauni.bsky.social with @drpennybradshaw.bsky.social on #TheCompanyOfOwls and #DorothyWordsworth. Including some terrible slights on robins, and blackbird impressions. youtu.be/goiC3hhlsx4

The last of the day’s light 🍂

The next event in our free monthly Cultural Landscapes series will be a talk by Cultural Historian, Dr Sue Allan, on 'Folk song, music & dance in the Lake Counties', taking place at our Ambleside campus on Tue 4 Nov. See here for details and to book a place: www.ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/per...

A wonderful start to our 25-26 Cultural Landscapes event series with a superb talk by @pollyrowena.bsky.social which drew together material from her books ‘Recovering Dorothy’ & ‘The Company of Owls’ to explore modes of companionship with our fellow creatures & the wider natural environment 📚🍃🦉

Great start to the 7th series of 'Cultural Landscapes' talks tonight: @pollyrowena.bsky.social on 'Companions of Nature' - launching the paperback edition of her book, 'The Company of Owls' @drpennybradshaw.bsky.social @samreadbookseller.bsky.social

Join us tomorrow evening at our Ambleside campus for this free talk by the brilliant @pollyrowena.bsky.social. Details and booking link can be found below 🍃📚

Autumnal nature art 🍂🍄

Join us on our Ambleside campus next Tuesday evening for this free talk with the brilliant @pollyrowena.bsky.social. All welcome - details and booking link can be found below 🍃📚🦉

As the garden has taken a bit of a battering over the last few hours, this seemed a good moment to make a last gathering of summer’s gifts for a little autumn display 🍂💐

Before the storm: beautiful autumn colours in Ambleside 🍂

Daphne NU Maurier www.samreadbooks.co.uk/product/daph...

On October 16th the paperback of #TheCompanyOfOwls is out - approx 30% more pocketable and more affordable than the beautiful hardback - but just as iconic thanks to Matt Underwood's #TawnyOwl print. Get an early copy at my (free!) talk in Ambleside, Oct 7th. #BookSky #NatureWriting #BookTalk

Day of leave to take my wonderful father for lunch and to the theatre - the latter was to see a superb and highly recommended production of ‘Death on the Nile’ at The Lowry 🎭