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As more of my valued colleagues face the threat of redundancy, here’s a quick reminder that it takes years and years of public investment to train an academic. Cutting someone with this wealth of experience loose isn’t “saving” anything. It is a massive waste of our collective resources.

Israel has illegally intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters, abducting British citizens and seizing ships sailing under British flags. The government must condemn this attack on humanitarians, speak up for their safety and demand their immediate release.

“The former leader of Reform UK in Wales has pleaded guilty to bribery charges relating to making statements in favour of Russia while being an elected member of the European Parliament.” 1/

Your electricity bill is going up because data centers are raising demand, not because your utility started scaling out some renewables. Pass it on.

going to write a paragraph in my Two Gents review about how Lossi is unconventional casting for Crab because she's so elegant and has a mournful long greyhound face and generally seems like she might be the wisest character on stage

further disincentive for international students is of course *just* what the sector needs at the moment

Asking for a student: what is the figure on the right holding in the title-page woodcut to the Haec Vir pamphlet? my first thought was a badminton racket and shuttlecock, but a bit of cursory research into the history of badminton suggests this is unlikely! A handful of feathers and... a spoon?

Does anyone have institutional access to AM Digital's 'Eighteenth Century Drama' repository? I'm hoping to read Samson Penley's 1818 adaptation of 'The Jew of Malta'

Does anyone have institutional access to AM Digital's 'Eighteenth Century Drama' repository? I'm hoping to read Samson Penley's 1818 adaptation of 'The Jew of Malta'

Rediscovered an offcut from the ‘Royal Actor’ book about Coriolanus, the French Revolution and George IV misunderstanding satires about himself, and I’m tempted to polish it up as a short-ish article. I am technically meant to be doing several other things instead, though

the University of Warwick rebrand is deeply embarrassing, but the sad thing is I can also imagine our Head of School showing it off in a meeting as something that we should emulate

suddenly wondering if Sabrina Ghayour is making an Andrew Marvell reference

We're advertising two artist's residencies at Thin Ice Press: the York Centre for Print. Please share! www.thinicepress.org/research/pri...

Series of personal and professional knock-backs lately, gonna go walk the Salt path* *wales coast path, I’m not facing the M4 in this mood

Lovely Cymbeline at the Willow Globe this evening, worth the lengthy round trip to mid Wales

Seems important.

staging a show-and-tell about a fake genocide during a real genocide to the government that has done the most to seek justice for that real genocide is designed to break our brains. They know what they are doing. www.cnn.com/2025/05/21/w...

Very honoured and excited to learn that 'Shakespeare and the Royal Actor' is shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize for 2024!

Absolutely chuffed and very grateful that STRAIGHT ACTING has been shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize 2024 - it’s made my week! www.str.org.uk/grants-prize...

👑 A new book reveals how the royal family has historically benefitted from connecting itself to Shakespeare. 📕 By Dr @sally-barnden.bsky.social, Professor Gordon McMullan (@kingsenglish.bsky.social) Professor Kate Retford & Dr Kirsten Tambling. 🔗 Read more 👇 www.kcl.ac.uk/news/royal-f...

I was vaguely planning to jettison Volpone from my 3rd year module, but this year's cohort have written such excellent essays about it that I'm going to have to rethink. A victory for Ben!

A contributor has had to withdraw from something I'm editing, late in the day. I'm looking for a sprightly 10,000 book historical words on the broad theme of 'consumers/consumption' and the period 1450-1650 (not necessarily all of it).

Students: Leontes is an old man. Me: But we know he's in his early 30s at the beginning of the play ("unbreeched" 23 years ago) and therefore only in his late 40s at the end. Students: Like we said, old.

The Prime Minister imitating Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech is sickening. That speech fuelled decades of racism and division. Echoing it today is a disgrace. It adds to anti-migrant rhetoric that puts lives at risk. Shame on you, Keir Starmer.

My copies of “Shakespeare’s Afterlife in the Royal Collection” have reached sunny south Wales! 23 essays by 23 amazing scholars, plus colour pictures, for an unusually reasonable £30 global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Lovely final seminars with my Shakespeare second years on The Winter’s Tale. We talked in details about the pros and cons of different bears (CbJ’s startling projection, the Royal Ballet’s bear blanket, the RSC’s incredible puppet from 2009…)

automatic captions are hearing 'Leontes' as 'the aunties'

Postdoctoral vacancy at Swansea, working with Dr Laura Seymour on her AMEND project researching neurodivergence in early modern Europe www.swansea.ac.uk/jobs-at-swan...

Excited to share my new N&Q piece on a previously unidentified cue-script fragment of Mucedorus! Especially satisfying as it’s a play uniquely associated with regional and non-professional playing (and I’m writing a book about it): academic.oup.com/nq/advance-a...

Wow, @kimgilchrist.bsky.social! A ‘fragment of a longer cue-script produced for amateur performance’ of *Mucedorus*! Great stuff! academic.oup.com/nq/advance-a...

This collection is out today! Featuring 23 essays about weird and/or wonderful objects in (or formerly in!) the Royal Collection. Mine is on this bizarre Victorian photomontage

read, weep and - especially if you're a parent of students - protest voice.cymru/two-weeks-in...

Oh yes, Homer’s famous “Tes Thdpssssps.” 👍🏻

Panopto's automatic captions are v insistent that The White Devil is about 'the Duke of Bracknell'

Taylor and Francis ebooks treating page numbers as if they're some kind of state secret 😭

we are having several of these fights at the moment under the administrative euphemism “curriculum transformation” and it’s exhausting

just finished marking (again) and now battling an urge to reply to an email from my boss's boss with a stern explanation about sentence fragments

Finished marking 🥳 Had some stunning MA essays this term—I’m so glad I decided to teach ‘Hero and Leander’

the only way an AI personal tutor would be of any use is if the students themselves were all AI. which may, now that I think about it, be the endgame

So this is very exciting! We have 16 places on our AHRC-funded Print Matters Summer School. There is no course fee, and applicants get 4 nights B&B accommodation and a travel bursary of up to £100. The Summer School is open to all disciplines and career stages. www.thinicepress.org/events/print...

This collection is now available for pre-order at the relatively affordable price of £30! Featuring chapters by 22 brilliant scholars and curators (and one by me) global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Don’t laugh: teaching Henry IV plays, do you give a content note about the fat-shaming? Earnest question and I can imagine some may appreciate being forewarned about it (though I appreciate this makes me sound like a parody liberal English lecturer)

It's also destroying the creative industry, not because it will outdo creatives but because it will be used by aforementioned horrid people as leverage to undermine writers/artists at every level, and the more you use it the more leverage you're giving them!

Without downloading any new pics, what’s your energy going into 2025?

Time to get out the festive Thomas Middleton which is my favourite ever gift from a student

I don't see many long threads on here, but I'll try one - it's about Holbein's Ambassadors, his 1533 masterpiece in the National Gallery. It's often presented as a great mystery, but I think once we understand the circumstances in which it was made, its meaning becomes clearer. 1/

Another day, another dystopian punch in the face from the British government

I have been thinking about this a lot lately: that the “phasing out” of humanities scholarship as part of popular education is an effort to prevent people from being able to interpret their political reality.