Couldn't make out the title of the book the guy in front of me on the train was reading. One day, when I'm old enough not to care what prople think, I will just march up the carriage and demand to know what everyone who is reading is reading. Then we will have an impromptu book club (with snacks).

I've never heard as much cheering at a book event as I did tonight @portybooks.bsky.social event at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh for Douglas Stuart bring chaired by Nicola Sturgeon for the UK launch of John of John. So much love and pride for this amazing writer. Also, Nicola's shoes.

31 years ago I was sent on a computer programming course in Norway. The SSNE database went live online & open access 30 years ago this month. It records over 8000 British migrants (mostly #Scots) in northern Europe. Enjoy www.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/ssne... #EarlyModern #WhatsHistory #History

I have just written the words, "a short excursion into Scottish medieval history cannot be avoided," which I do feel would be good as a general principle.

Hive mind help please! Does anyone have a copy of "Who Built Scotland: A History of the Nation in Twenty-Five Buildings" and could check a detail of a quote for me?

Vigorously shampooing the dog in the back garden after he rolled in *something* vile on the afternoon walk. The expressions "hideous reptile " and "AntiChr*st" have been employed, on both sides. Will be June before we're speaking again.

Just got the bus into town @13 miles. The sheer thrill of the £2 ticket. Bus drivers see some terrible driving by motorists on the dual carriageway, I'll tell you. And then, passing the BMW garage as we reach town, and there's a used car in there for £73 000, and the madness of it all is too much.

🧵On the site of an earlier church, the current Minster Church of St Gregory, Kirkdale is a late Anglo Saxon parish church from around 1060. Saxon stone crosses are built into the remaining original walls. Major modifications were completed in the 15th 19th and early 20th centuries. The

Aapproaching the end of a huge project I have realised that, should anything happen to me, neither the people who commissioned me nor my family trying to negotiate my study, would have a clue where to find anything. Hence the 'should I be abducted by aliens' note now taped to the lid of my laptop.

I don't really watch nature films or particularly read books on nature, wildlife etc, but every time he pops up somewhere these days, I think, 'Thank God for David Attenborough '. A good human.

Reading an old Literary Review, and the List of Contributors is a blissful thing: A is a senior specialist in rare books at Peter Harrington B a visiting fellow at All Souls, Oxford C a writer, film critic &photographer living in Belgium D writes plays for R4 ... E is a journalist living in Paris

You can find DON'T EVEN HAVE TO SAY HIS NAME on streaming services too waterboys.lnk.to/DEHTSHN #TheWaterboys #ProtestSong

It is quite distressing, as a British person to wake up and think, 'Oh thank goodness, there's something that isn't US politics trending' and then you discover 'Spurs' isn't even the proper Spurs. I'm not even a Spurs fan - it was just nice, for a minute.

Actor George Clooney in 2005 📷Antonin Kratochvil #BicycleBirthday May 6, 1961

Some campus novel or dark academia recommendations, please, especially that might work as audiobooks. Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter!!

I knew by p3 that this book was a keeper. The 1st woman we meet is cooking. Something is burning. She has frequently informed everyone that she is "not a *#@*%@! cook". She's "growling at the bread,which she shovels out of the oven". Am going to have a t-shirt emblazoned with "I am Jennot".

Tiny wee baby snail on the bin lid this morning. Have a nice day, little snail. Please do not eat my flowers, should I ever make it to the the garden centre and then actually get them planted.

In the white heat of a fast-approaching deadline, I have assured my husband (who just came in to check that I was okay), that I have a system, and I know where everything is. I did not tell him that should my index card box be in some way lost or destroyed, life as we know it is over.

Anne Boylen giving 100 % Christina Koch energy: Scientists believe they have found previously unknown sketch of Anne Boleyn share.google/fGjZmjoVpzzz...

Actual dream summer holiday.

'No mow May' is upon us, and my husband's joy when he realised it was something to behold. Grass-cutting is his job, and for this one month alone he is an environmentalist to his very core.

Want to attend @bloodyscotland.bsky.social this year but face financial difficulties? If you’re a member of The CWA? Then consider applying, in confidence, for this new bursary 👀

Am reading a history book in which the author keeps referring to a 5 year period as a 'quinquennium', and while I realise this is technically correct, I am also aware that this is the kind of thing that puts people off reading scholarly texts.

This book is very close to my heart - I happened to have it at home, on loan from @thelondonlibrary.bsky.social, when the pandemic started, and I went on to launch Manderley Press with a brand new edition in 2021. Since then ‘Edinburgh’ by RL Stevenson has become our bestseller by a country mile!

I think there are few things as grounding as language. I saw a neighbour this morning, a village 'lifer', and out it came from my subconscious before I knew it: "morneen". I was away 26 years before we moved back here, but even if it had been a hundred, that "morneen" would still have been there.

Thank you! btw, #SiobhanRedmond (!) reads... libro.fm/audiobooks/9...

Just seen 'Glenrothan'. V. enjoyable, & 'the Scottish Tourist Board really got their pound of flesh,' (OH). Surprised Alan Cumming didn't turn into a pile of dust when Shirley Henderson lost the plot with him mind. Also no-one will ever wear a Barbour International as well as she does in that film.

Repeat after me. Scotland is a net exporter of power. Scotland doesn't need nuclear. Scotland needs storage capacity.

I've just discovered that there is a website 'Historic Coventry'* that instantly dates old Valentines postcards when you type in the serial number. Just used a magnifying glass to read the number on a really bad photocopy, typed it in and it told me immediately. I am beside myself with happiness.

The new wheeze of the lit-phishers seems to be to masquerade as legitimate book festivals, offering authors the opportunity to have their book (title not specified) 'promoted' at a festival which is just weeks or a couple of months away. Real book festivals plan the best part of a year ahead and

Would immediately buy the mid-century novel that began with this sentence.

Home to my dog after 2 day tour of family members & their dogs. On stage now. 1. Ecstatic: You're home! I thought you were dead! 2. Curious: Allow me to sniff your boots and jeans. 3. Incredulous: WHERE have you been & WHO have you been with?! 12 hrs later, still on cold shoulder & indignant glare.

Having my breakfast in the private lounge of a tiny C18th inn in which Bram Stoker once stayed, on the edge of the Moray Firth. Just peak everything.

Cannot believe I've won the entire Wolfson History Prize shortlist in their competition here on Bluesky. Thank you soooo much! [email protected] (The only one I already had was the brilliant Embers of theHands by Eleanor Barraclough).

But, you know, let’s campaign about allowing oil and gas drilling licences in the North Sea. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Started reading again a book this morning that I'd last been reading a few weeks ago and had to set aside for other things. I'd been on p28 and debated with myself about carrying on from there, but decided to go back to the beginning incase I'd forgotten anything. I'd forgotten every single thing.

What a glorious, generous, brilliant book from @damianbarr.bsky.social I've been intrigued by the story of Robert McBryde and Robert Colquhoun ever since I saw the The Two Roberts exhibition years ago in the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. I wish I could go back in time and see it again now.

Bought today at the library book sale. I listened to an audio version of this while I was working on my last book, trying to get into the mind of an educated young Scotsman of the 1830s. 'Mad as a bag of spanners' is the phrase that stuck in my mind. I'm curious how it will seem actually reading it.

It may just be me, but I am seeing a cross between the Pictish Beast and a gormless Labrador (2/3 down and just over 1/2 way across) in this 1836 map of the Cromarty Firth and Nigg bay. Once you see it, you will not unsee it.

Finally, someone talking sense.

⚔️ 9th-century sword hilts ⚔️ Left: Eigg, Inner Hebrides, Sco. (copper-alloy, silver, gilt) Right: Søndersø, Jutland, Den. The immense expense of, and status associated with, the swords owned by Scandinavian elites across the Viking world is self evident here. My 📷 NMS | NMD

I have just now learned that Balamory is back, and that Miss Hoolie is still in charge of the nursery. The empire of evil, retreat.

Snow on the mountains of the mainland leave Hamish unmoved.

If Kamala had said it, they'd have carted her off somewhere by now.

A bit of an old wall that gives me joy every year.

The Diggers, religious and political dissidents led by Wigan-born Gerrard Winstanley, on this day 1649 took over common land at St George’s Hill in Surrey to grow and distribute food, but landowners sent armed men to attack them. Eventually the colony was abandoned.

Things only got worse when I got to the archives. Some interloper had taken my preferred locker. The wotld is going to wrack and ruin.

It is quite scary when you are in the reference room of the library and the microfilm reader is so old and noisy, you gradually become aware that the one other person in there wants to kill you.

I have been an adult for quite a long time and yet ... out walking the dog (black lab) in the woods this morning, I met a neighbour walking hers (white golden). I felt sorry for her with how dirty her dog was. Home and towel-drying mine was like the fight scene in the pig yard in Peaky Blinders.

One of my books. All royalties go towards helping women and girls in Afghanistan