Just mixed a Speyside Blossom (apple, basil, lime-juice, and gin), except that when I was supposed to add soda water I picked up the wrong bottle & poured in a bit more gin instead. It is delicious.

Interesting assertion today from Goodwin that he saw so-called family voting "with his own eyes". As someone without a vote in the byelection, how and why was he within sight of one or more polling booths within a polling station, the only place in which 'family voting' can conceivably take place?

Under Zohran Mamdani, gas prices have spiked, the stock market has cratered, and the US is locked in a nonsensical war with Iran. Is this really what New Yorkers signed up for?

It is connections, not civilisations, that drive historical change. Historian @josephinequinn.bsky.social in How the world made the West

I endorse this post. He‘s very nice.

Every so often you run into one of those policies that makes you speculate about the sequence of events that led someone to decide that the policy was necessary.

In Episode 1, @anitaanand.bsky.social and I are joined by Josephine Quinn, author of How The World Made The West, and Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge University, to discuss the ancient Mediterranean city states on the brink of the Bronze Age Collapse of 1147 BCE. linktr.ee/empirepoduk

Great podcast from @willdalrymple.bsky.social @anitaanand.bsky.social in conversation w/ @josephinequinn.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oeJ... Some states/civilizations had own writing systems, this from @viewsproject.bsky.social www.youtube.com/@views_project, so how did trade happen ?

I don't know what to write about this devastating news, other than that I too will miss Debbie Cameron so very much.

This is where I once again feel sad for having lost Old Twitter and all my South Asian friends on there. I was sure there was a project mapping all the medieval and Mughal sarais (caravanserais) across India — anyone know what I'm talking about?

Humans have been managing ecosystems for a very long while. "People living in Sulawesi perhaps as early as 50,000 years ago ... transported warty pig species as far away as Timor." A crucial blow to the stadial theory of history: #Unlearn phys.org/news/2025-12...

This delicious glass of New Year champagne only exists because my beloved @chrisbrooke.bsky.social has made mixology his New Year resolution and we have to finish up the remains of the AMAZING French 75s he just concocted. (No photos of those because we were busy.)

This was a lovely way to see Christmas in. But OLEM was so packed that we were standing sideways in a kind of ecclesiastical cage for a couple of hours, so I’m going to watch it on iPlayer later on to see what it actually looked like!

Catching up before Christmas, and can highly recommend this festive read on Trojan stories (Hector! Achilles!) captured in mosaic in the late antique East Midlands. They had moved a long way on from Homer's version: our ancient canon is modern. A tour de force from Jane Masséglia and colleagues.

New Odyssey: wine-dark sea; wine-dark sky; wine-dark land; generally gloomy clothing.

If it was four MPs and six factions I’d be impressed. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Apparently the number of houses a person can have before admitting that they're not actually hard-done by is n+1: buried near the end of this piece, we discover our fearful 1930s house-owner owns *another* house as well from which they receive a rental income.

🏺🧪

Another example of what we call "hunter- gatherers" being much more: rather landscape and #biodiversity managers phys.org/news/2025-11...

Doggos, delineated

This is great fun. (Nigel Biggar does not come out of it especially well.)

Listening to @andreloez.bsky.social @josephinequinn.bsky.social [Paroles d'histoire] 408. L'Antiquité au pluriel, avec Josephine Quinn (en anglais) #parolesDhistoire podcastaddict.com/paroles-d-hi... #history

On the train south, looking forward to talking about the World and the West at Southampton and catching up with @cazemiera.bsky.social

If we're to have forest towns between Oxford & Cambridge we should also have tapir, who are forest animals. Official advice on keeping tapir in N. Ireland is here--I don't think there is yet a similar leaflet for England, let alone the Oxford-Cambridge corridor: www.daera-ni.gov.uk/sites/defaul...

People who aren’t writers think writer’s block is at least as big and real a problem as I thought quicksand would be, as a child.

Now available in the US for all your weekend paperback needs... www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/736806...

I am excited about this

The amazing Paul Kosmin will deliver the Corbett Lecture at the Cambridge Classics Faculty on November 13 at 5pm on "The Rain of Kings". Reception to follow: all very welcome! www.classics.cam.ac.uk/seminars/spe...

Thanks @josephinequinn.bsky.social for the brilliant book that helped inform this: How the World Made the West. If you haven't read it, now's a great time to prepare your arguments against #CivilisationalThinking Full speech here: hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2025-1...

‘Alongside 44 historical buildings and seven archaeological sites, all three depositories of historical and archaeological material in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed.’ @josephinequinn.bsky.social on an exhibition of Gazan antiquities: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Our 11/6 issue is now online, with Ben Lerner on the heart, Mark Lilla on MAGA nation, Cora Currier on the “war on terror,” @josephinequinn.bsky.social on St. Augustine, Nitin Ahuja on the science of death, Darryl Pinckney on James Baldwin’s loves, and much more.

‘The message is clear: 20th-century colonialism created the conditions for a 21st-century tragedy.’ @josephinequinn.bsky.social on an exhibition of Gazan antiquities: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

How the World Made the West: A 4000-year History is a Kindle Daily Deal today - only! - for £2.99. Mixed feelings obvs, but that's less than 10p a century... www.amazon.co.uk/How-World-Ma...

The administration is aware of black bloc tactics, was vaguely aware of clown bloc tactics, but was completely unprepared for the advent of Animal Crossing bloc tactics.

At the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies we are offering 10 fellowships for scholars at any stage in their careers to stay with us for up to 6 months (PhD candidates and senior academics) or 12 months (postdocs) to complete a research project: www.dependency.uni-bonn.de/images/pdf-f...

Habsburgs in space!

‘The message is clear: 20th-century colonialism created the conditions for a 21st-century tragedy.’ @josephinequinn.bsky.social on an exhibition of Gazan antiquities: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Thanks to @empirepoduk.bsky.social for introducing me to How the World Made the West (2024) by @josephinequinn.bsky.social. It’s the perfect book for this moment.

‘The message is clear: 20th-century colonialism created the conditions for a 21st-century tragedy.’ @josephinequinn.bsky.social on an exhibition of Gazan antiquities: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘This show has excited controversy: should we even be talking about damage to antiquities in the context of so much killing?’ @josephinequinn.bsky.social on an exhibition of Gazan antiquities: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Thanks to @jpnudell.bsky.social for this thoughtful and perceptive review @frontiere-s.bsky.social. Just one tiny amendment: I am an Irish historian...

Also in this issue: @jamesmeek.bsky.social on what AI wants Neal Ascherson on Asa Briggs @keeanga.bsky.social on Audre Lorde David Todd on Jean-Luc Mélenchon @josephinequinn.bsky.social on Gazan antiquities Stephen Mulhall on Charles Taylor Yun Sheng on Chinese youth culture...

📖 Et le monde créa l’Occident. Une nouvelle histoire des mondes anciens, de Josephine Quinn @editionsduseuil.bsky.social 📌 Retrouvez @josephinequinn.bsky.social à Blois à l’occasion des 28e Rendez-vous de l’histoire, le 11 octobre à 18h #rvh #rvh2025 #lecture #festivals #blois #salondulivre

I've been podcasting again! This time I spoke about how 'Plato: a civic life' provides the historical background to Plato's thought and helps to explain how his ideas developed - with Morteza Hajizadeh from New Books Network: newbooksnetwork.com/plato

Since they are suddenly back in the spotlight, here's a link to an old essay that Josephine & I wrote for the New Left Project (back when that was a thing) that touches on the unlikely combo of the 1880s Fabians and gay sex.

New from @EmpirePodUK The History of Gaza Episode Three Byzantine Gaza: The Rise of Christianity @anitaanand.bsky.social &I are joined by the great Professor Peter Sarris to discuss Byzantine Gaza podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/2...

Hello! 👋🌍 You can now listen worldwide to our very funny episode of BBC YOU’RE DEAD TO ME about Hannibal of Carthage My guests are the fantastic comedian Darren Harriott and the brilliant ancient historian Professor @josephinequinn.bsky.social — listen wherever you get your podcasts!

Delighted to find myself in the superb Pasts Imperfect newsletter, along with @willdalrymple.bsky.social and monstrous births. Thanks @sarahebond.bsky.social!

Our Gaza series continues... ANCIENT GAZA: FROM THE ASSYRIANS TO THE ROMANS @willdalrymple.bsky.social and @anitaanand.bsky.social are joined by @josephinequinn.bsky.social to discuss the 5 ancient empires that conquered Gaza...