A modern classic, now scarce - Faith's The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship - is being reissued as an ebook by @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social (at a very reasonable price). www.bloomsbury.com/uk/english-p...

Imagine being so based even your AI girlfriend breaks up with you over it

Bet-you-didn't-know (I certainly didn't) #FunFact of the day. #OldNorse 1/2

Sky Sports has boiled its Ashes coverage down to its purest and greatest form: Mike Atherton and Nasser Hussain standing there talking about what’s gone wrong www.kingcricket.co.uk/sky-sports-h...

Booking for the first @royalhistsoc.org Lectures of 2026 is now available: bit.ly/48N0CCY > Charles West on 'Queens & the Making of Medieval Europe’ > Vinita Damodaran on 'Decolonising the Natural History Collections of Empire' > David Stack on 'Well-being: a Historian's Perspective' #Skystorians

WILMA!!!!

One for the early medieval/Merovingian nerds: Happy to receive a copy of Dáibhí's 2023 Jennifer O'Reilly Memorial Lecture, in which he argues that the name Rath Melsigi, the Irish monastery where Ecgberct (d. 719) settled after the plague of 664 according to Bede, derives from 'M[á]el-Sigi'... 1/3

For your collective delectation this holiday season: Quite possibly the silliest thing I've ever written (and definitely the most ridiculous graph I've ever made!) loreandordure.com/2025/12/16/j...

New post just out: "The Overshoot" Net migration is collapsing, and will fall further over the coming years. We could even have net emigration. What does that mean for the country and the political narrative as we head towards the next election? (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

#EpigraphyTuesday Inspired by the reopened National Museum of Libya in Tripoli, let's look at IRT 231, a Roman-era dedication to Liber Pater: irt2021.inslib.kcl.ac.uk/en/inscripti...

Though no longer a new development, worth noting it's pretty useless that ESPNcricinfo aren't providing live scoring for a women's ODI between two Full Member nations (for which live streaming is freely available). An empty scorecard simply stating/demanding 'Bet' says it all.

The ad for the second postdoctoral position on our @leverhulme.ac.uk Britain’s Early Medieval Letters project is now live. We’re looking for an Old English specialist (who also works with Latin). 32-month FT post. Deadline for apps is 16 Jan 🙂 jobs.kent.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

'This was even higher among the most disadvantaged students, with more than half (52 per cent) stating that this was their intention – meaning they are three times as likely to be based at home as their wealthy peers.' How/why Cold Spots really and increasingly matter to equality/inequality. 3/3

We could not be more thrilled at UCC @radhumslab.bsky.social that our brilliant colleague, Dr Eugene Costello, has been awarded a €2m European Research Council Consolidator Grant for his project, "DeepCattle." www.ucc.ie/en/news/2025...

Call for Papers! Our Spring Conference @snsbi.bsky.social will be held on 27-29 March 2026 in the historic Athenaeum in Bury St Edmunds. @namestudies.bsky.social, @englishplacenames.bsky.social, @logainm.bsky.social, @placenames.bsky.social, @placenamesni.bsky.social, @ainmean-aite.bsky.social

Who has made this 🤣

Enmeshed in marking, but just thought I'd point out that this article is now out, open access: Simon MacLean, arguing that the Astronomer's Life of Louis the Pious could be rather later than historians have assumed: might 'the Astronomer' be Jonas of Orleans? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Clare Downham @downham.bsky.social reviews 'Vikings in Early Medieval Ireland: Church-Raiding, Politics and Kingship', by Colmán Etchingham academic.oup.com/ehr/advance-... @boydellandbrewer.bsky.social

Looking forward to giving a paper next week in Rome with the archaeologists who excavated parts of the Schola Saxonum, just opposite the church built over Sancta Maria scola Anglorum, as Archbishop Sigeric called it. Lots of interesting 10th-cent evidence attesting to life in the English quarter

okay I can see this is coming from the replies so: to be clear I'm not saying Farage having been racist at school doesn't matter, what I'm saying is that I find it weird that the media is going soooo big on this when they'd mostly remained quiet on the many, many dogwhistles of current day Farage

Wonderful project from @jnockels.bsky.social on improving text recognition in historical Scottish newspapers, in collaboration with the National Library of Scotland. www.dhi.ac.uk/projects/rec... #ff2025

New issue of @parergon.bsky.social edited by @mattfirth.bsky.social, Dr Cassandra Schilling and me!

Does the concept of a 'shatter zone' help us understand 11th-c. Normandy? Looking forward to reading this by @ralphtorta.bsky.social direct.mit.edu/jinh/article...

Fuck Mitchell Starc and his stupid pink ball.

Really pleased to have my short article out with @epoch-history.bsky.social on the experience of disability during the Hundred Years' War! The rest of the issue is a fantastic read and it was lovely to work with the editors and @joshcoulthard.bsky.social. www.epoch-magazine.com/post/the-exp...

keep meaning to write about this but god if this isn't me - feel like people maybe assume that being bilingual means thinking in a mix of words but my god it's so much worse than that, I conjugate French verbs in English, I feminise/masculinise English nouns, it's a MESS up here

[cough] or French newspapers from today

I don’t get it, why does making art become unsatisfying when you remove the part where your brain works and is rewarded with a sense of accomplishment

The modal British voter thinks that pensioners are the group who gets the least good deal from the state! You can't have a serious conversation either about shrinking the state or expanding the tax base from that starting point!

Another year, another end-of-semester infographic presentation from my students. Here's a map showing Alcuin's letter network.

Handing back student work that’s been written by ChatGPT with a 0 followed by the comment “This essay will never stand in authentic wonder before the Beauty of God’s creation.”

and again - literally just the hobby horse of some random anonymous Twitter accounts, enraging how quickly they managed to turn their horrid posting into actual government policy and rhetoric

Let's be honest, Boaty McBoatface is the most impressive thing the UK has achieved over the last 9 years... everything else has been a bit crap

lmao France

This is Irish erasure.

only another 0.2-0.5 sleeps to go until the ashes

Out next Monday.

I sometimes feel like I am going mad. Owning a £1.5m home is not normal in London or the South East of England.

In case you'd like to try before you buy, the good folk @academic.oup.com have made Chapter 1 of my book free to view for a few weeks :) academic.oup.com/book/61370/c...

Palaeography 🧵! Or why it can take a historian a while to confirm what they already suspected must be the case and not really get any further than they were—but this time with confidence 😂 I'm working with documents that list the incomes of medieval French lordships, so a lot of it is about grain.

An anthropotoponym is a place-name derived from the name of a person, like Herston (from Hǫrðr) A zootoponym is a place-name derived from an animal, like Scarf Skerry (from scarf 'cormorant') I don't think we have a category for names like Dora's park, where Dora is a pony

"cantiori hic iacit venedotis cive fuit [c]onsobrino ma[g]li magistrati" ('Cantiori here lies, of Gwynedd a citizen he was, a cousin of Maglus the magistrate') Still fascinated by the 6th-cent. Cantiorix Inscription, from sub-Roman north Wales, bearing the first mention of the Kingdom of Gwynedd.

Today's name story is: Carpets of Wild Garlic, Creamhchoill and other aromatic place-names in Ireland, written by Conchubhar Ó Crualaoich & Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhghaill. Additional text referring to wild garlic beyond Ireland is written by Diana Whaley. www.snsbi.org.uk/exploring-na...

'Sheffield Hallam University has a stronger multiplier effect than many other UK universities (with every 1 job at the University supporting 2.54 jobs in the local economy). The loss of 1000 jobs over the past two years...will...have a detrimental effect on the city and region.' 3/3

"Given that the UK needs more graduates with languages qualifications, the task of universities is not to accelerate the decline of language learning but to find ways to bolster their student intakes."

More evidence for my theory that everywhere is becoming France, a country where the voters hate everyone

On advance access: "Economic Change, Silver, and the Plague of 664-687 in England" by @rorynaismith.bsky.social (University of Cambridge) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...

I thought I would mark the occasion by making an interactive dashboard of the London Lives Westminster Coroners Inquests. sharonhoward.github.io/mindseye_of/...