On February 19 I'll be speaking alongside the excellent @heggledepeg.bsky.social at @keelrowbooks.bsky.social about aspects of early modern book history. I'm truly hoping to supply quality slop for the hogs. If you're in the area, you can sign-up here: www.tixtree.com/e/seminar-in...

Meanwhile, over on the Instagrams... I've started making videos (yikes). Come and wander West Cork with me as we hunt down some delicious early modern ruins to explore. Find me here: www.instagram.com/matt_tells_s... Thanks! X

📸 What photo, that you have taken, is your favourite? 📸 This portrait was chosen by Victorian photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, as her favourite. Having taken up photography at the age of forty-eight, Cameron became a pioneer of photography. My Favourite Picture, 1867. WA.OA.1352

❤️

@serenadyer.bsky.social & I are thrilled to announce that our edited book is out now! It focuses on how processes of making, experimenting, experiencing, & reconstructing illuminate understandings around manual labour & material life. Overview 🧵 on 📕 chapters & our contributors! 👇

apparently my book comes out in September, wow, preorder it for all your library and intellectual history needs, stay for the section on Paradise Lost and John Ray's herbals, or the story of George Psalmanazar, my favourite early modern scammer www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

Delighted that my article on the exploits of the Martin Marprelate gang is featured in this month's edition of @historytoday.com. Online here: www.historytoday.com/archive/feat... and in the flesh below!

The September issue of History Today is on sale from today! Featuring: the #PeloponnesianWar, Birmingham’s influence on Muslim #India, the US occupation of Japan, #Elizabethan sedition, and more. Find out what else is inside and where to get it at www.historytoday.com/magazine

A Bristolian graffito. #RenSoc25

Likewise: follow Beth!

Had a fab time talking about Nashe, Chettle, and their printerly pals at the @srsrensoc.bsky.social conference. Thanks everyone for a gorgeous few days.

Always a joy to write about cheeky John Harington. Do have a read about his double dealing across the Irish Sea in my piece for @rtebrainstorm.bsky.social.

RECCE: Cork Prison’s Education Unit Now open until September on Spike Island, this exhibition features work created as part of our Beyond the Frame programme, an ongoing collaboration between Crawford Art Gallery and Cork Prison, curated by Matt Ryan and Daniel Sexton.

Why are they reporting it like it's a paramilitary coup?

'with // out' is now open at Spike Island as part of RECCE. Iam grateful for the contributions of @heggledepeg.bsky.social @crawfordartgallery.bsky.social, and Spike Island's curator, Dorota Gubbins. It will be on display until the end of August.

Today our show 'with//out' opened as part of RECCE at Spike Island museum. Huge thanks to @dsextonartist.bsky.social, @crawfordartgallery.bsky.social and the curator on the island, Dorota Gubbins. It's up til the end of August - come and see!

The comma shall be Oxford and the citations shall be Chicago and the 18th century is the longest. #historiantruths

Lynda Sayce plays a piece of lute music that was recently discovered in an archival document at the Museum Plantin-Moretus. Since the handwritten lute tablature was folded and reused as scrap paper, it's problaby the first time in 400 years that this music is heard.

Had a great time yesterday with @dsextonartist.bsky.social and Eimear Marley at the @irishmuseums.bsky.social conference in Dublin talking about our project with @crawfordartgallery.bsky.social. Thanks for having us!

For a little while now, I've been working with @crawfordartgallery.bsky.social, @dsextonartist.bsky.social, and a group of men who live in Cork Prison. We've been talking about art, exhibitions, and how our stories connect with the work in the gallery's collection. [1/2]

It’s not often that new biographical details for Shakespeare are discovered. The fragmentary remains of a letter puts him living with Anne Hathaway at a previously unknown address in London. www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Those poor medieval selkies

My fave history book of 2025 (so far) is @moudhy.bsky.social’s Between Two Rivers. It’s so beautifully written, so compassionate, so enthralling — it’s a joyous ode to studying ancient Mesopotamia, written by a wonderful scholar. And her audiobook is great too 👍 www.audible.co.uk/pd/B0D1GRSJ8...

Born (possibly) on this day in 1483, and died (alas!) on this day in 1520, Raphael. True genius of the renaissance. Here by himself, with a friend, in one of the great renaissance friendship portraits.

HEY! This episode just dropped on all your favourite podcasting services. You don't have to listen, just download it to make me look popular ;) 🗃️

Happy #WorldTheatreDay! 🎭 For the day that’s in it, we’re highlighting works in our Collection which feature a variety of figures in theatre, from playwrights, stage actors, and theatre designers. Here’s to their incredible talent and long lasting impact, both on stage and off!

Let's enjoy a look into book shops of the past. This is a 🧵 especially for #skystorians of #earlymodern Europe, and for #bookhistory, #booksky and #paperhistory nerds 🗃️ Expect, among other bookish stuff, lots of #backwardsbooks, and boxes with paper sheets, and a few sleeping dogs. 1/

How timely is this.

Natasha's article is a wonder. Really brilliant scholarship. Do have a read! **Also, while you're browsing through the latest edition of 'English', you might also spy my article on the bonkers world of the 16thc print trade ('Thinking Through Community'). Give it a go!**

1/4 I’m delighted to announce the publication of the latest issue of @englishjournaloup.bsky.social, expertly edited by Archie Cornish, Cathy Shrank & Kate De Rycker. It’s of urgent importance: a transhistorical study of Precarity, both academic & beyond. There are profoundly powerful contributions…

I'm out here reinventing the Renaissance model of the peripatetic scholar for the modern day (the café I was working in closed early so I've brought my laptop for a non-alcoholic lager while I wait to pick up the kids).

Watched "Adolescence"? Become terrified? Want a book that opens with angry boys saying "Feminism has gone too far," then covers porn, Andrew Tate, how to talk to your son about toxic heroes, and how to find better role-models? Then you want "What About Men?" www.penguin.co.uk/authors/1837...

look at this absolute unit

Evie Hone died #onthisday in 1955. To mark her 70th anniversary, we're sharing a small stained-glass work by the Irish artist depicting St Hubert of Liège in an encounter with a stag, which led to his pursuit of a holy life. It was bequeathed to us in 1958 by Hone's sister, Nancy Connell.

Thanks for all the lovely feedback on the publication of our #CorkLetterBook! So many thanks to my fellow editors Dave Edwards & the late Aidan Clarke and to David Heffernan for his invaluable help.

#Renaissance #skystorians putting together a proposal for a roundtable on methodologies and approaches to women and diplomacy in #earlymodern for SCS #16th Century in Portland 2025. Foci include royal women, diplomats, unofficial agents, brokers, health, etc. Leave a comment if interested - cfp tba

Could a page in the archives be more tantalising…? What a perfect example during a fantastic class visit to Southampton City Archives to think through archival absence and elision… “Whereas there hath beenn muche abuse off …” *blank* [Southampton City Archives SC2/1/6, 1620]

May the Great A'Tuin always carry you on your travels through the cosmos. Remembering the fabulous Terry Pratchett, ten years on since he sublimed to a higher level of conciousness. #TerryPratchett #books #livres #fantasy

Working in 1920s Berlin, Lotte Laserstein stakes a claim for a position in the art-historical canon with her 'Self-portrait with a Cat,' (1928) which shows her at her easel, hair cropped, androgynous-looking and holding a very patient feline.

Fantastic new article and open access! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

After tonight’s launch where I’d lovely conversations and lovely cake (decorated in the book cover! 🤩) I’m looking forward to reading @catherinekirwanbks.bsky.social new police procedural set in Cork city! #Booksky 📚

Chuffed that my (first!) article is now out in @englishjournaloup.bsky.social. So, if you want to know what connects rivalrous printers, Thomas Nashe, and talking cats, then do have a read! 1/2 academic.oup.com/english/arti...

🚨NEW EPISODE!! If you subscribe to You’re Dead To Me on BBC SOUNDS, you can now hear our new episode about the history of coffee, with comedian Sophie Duker and expert historian Professor Jonathan Morris ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ A great episode, this one, all about how our fave drink conquered the world!

William Blake, Laocoön, engraving and etching, 1826-27

In 1626, a Cambridge fishwife sliced open a cod, only to find a gelatinous, half-dissolved manuscript inside. It was published the next year under the name "Vox Piscis or, the Bookfish." At this point, why not get your news from inside a dead fish? #earlymodern #bookfish archive.org/details/bim_...

Climb on the top of this scummy water tower Screamin 'I can't hardly wait'

Her primary school has informed me that my daughter has moved on to 'chapter books', but disappointingly this does not mean the MS capitular records of cathedral and collegiate churches

I loved writing this episode of YDTM with the wonderful Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Greg and Emma Nagouse. It was such a pleasure. So, if you're into the Arctic, exploration, and lots of lads getting lost, then look no further!

Quick shoutout to not just the amazing YDTM production team, but, also, we can only make this show thanks to incredibly talented PhD students. Since series 1, they have provided fantastically detailed research notes for every episode, and have contributed to scripts too. On this ep, it was Matt Ryan