Trawling through Rhodesian newspapers & television guides for examples of British-made programmes & films that slipped through the sanctions net. Will be a key theme in the final chapter I'm currently writing for my book on British policy towards cultural relations with Rhodesia during UDI

Reform will be a total failure at governance whether at local or national level. The problem is the cognitive dissonance of its supporters won’t impact their loyalty, the party’s failures will always be someone else’s fault, the woke, the blob, the globalists, the WEF etc

On a very early train to London to do (what I hope) is the final research trip for my next book on British cultural relations with Rhodesia. Using the time to write a review of a book on the Lancaster House talks, which saw the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe.

Pleased to see my review of the Contemporary British History special issue “Diplomatic Departures: Negotiating Britain’s International Outreach in the Contemporary World'' has been published by @h-diplo.bsky.social (Available at: networks.h-net.org/group/discus...)

Spending the afternoon going through the excellent abstracts we have received for this event in advance of a planning meeting later

Review now out on @hnetreviews.bsky.social www.h-net.org/reviews/show...

Whatever your views on Owen Jones, this is pretty disgraceful. I remember he went the Tory Party conference a couple of years ago, and while I think party grandees just ignored him and left to speak to teenage members, he was allowed to be there for the duration

I think Burnham would make a much better PM than Starmer, but the joke allegedly doing the rounds amongst some Labour MPs sums him up: A Blairite, Brownite, a Starmerite and a Corbynite walk into a pub, the barman says 'what do you want Andy'

Thrilled to see the first review of my book published in the American Historical Review academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...

Have a vague hope that the 'Mandelson Affair' might bring Starmer down. But the likelihood is he'll just be replaced by Wes Streeting. Theresa May replaced by BoJo vibes

Crisp early morning walk before the first big meeting of the new academic year

If Farage wins the next election, it will be down to one person. His name is Keir Starmer. This thread explains why. 1. Destroying faith in democracy. The UK decisively voted out the Tories, only for Starmer to give us a Continuity Tory government, shamefully beholden to economic power. 🧵

The UK is a country with a rapidly ageing population that needs vast numbers of jobs filling. For it to crash all migration downwards because the public are enraged about small boats is the definition of national madness. www.bearlypolitics.co.uk/p/nans-not-b...

Great talk by FCDO historian Richard Smith on Lord Carington’s time as Foreign Secretary at #BIHG25

Reading for the long train journey down to Norwich for the British International History Group conference at the University of East Anglia

The Labour government’s capitulation to the far right continues

UK-based researchers in the humanities and social sciences are invited to our informative ERC Synergy Grants 2025 webinar on 8 September. Draft B1 proposals may be submitted by 1 September at 12:00 for feedback during the session. Learn more: https://bit.ly/4lTTx6x

I knew this Labour government would be bad, but I didn’t think it would be this bad. Reform tribute act now seems to be the approach.

Took a brief interlude from annual leave to deliver an invited talk to lawyers and civil servants in the UK Cabinet Office's Union & Devolution Directorate as part of their 'Constitution School' series

‘… social historian David Kynaston, told The Observer he suspects “a serious scandal is unfolding” John Wyver, Ian Greaves, Erica Wagner and others on the growing battle to prevent damaging changes to the BBC’s priceless behind-the-scenes archives:

A new Research Network - Historians of Cultural Diplomacy - has emerged from the @britishacademy.bsky.social/ @leverhulme.ac.uk sponsored workshop I organised in February. Thanks to the brilliant work of @lgmar.bsky.social we now have our own website: sites.google.com/ucm.es/hcd

In the night we reached 300 signatures. A rapid rise but also a clear statement from the community that this is a retrograde decision causing widespread worry about the future of research - not just of the BBC, but almost anything within its century-plus global and cultural reach. Please join us.

Yeah, I always thought the "graduate regret" is a narrative pushed by certain people and newspaper columnists... it's a different question entirely whether we should charge students 10k per year... But at a fundamental level universities are almost always good for young people.

refugees are being housed in hotel rooms that do not meet their basic needs: families are being housed in rooms with no cooking facilities, nowhere for children to play, frequent reports of mould, damp, vermin. if an MP can’t explain that to constituents what are we doing here.

Starmer and Cooper will probably be right there with him in a few weeks the way this lot are going

I’m actually writing a chapter on the BBC in Rhodesia right now primarily using material from the BBC WAC. This decision has the potential to do major damage to future projects analysing British cultural diplomacy

Fascinating that some BBC listeners in UDI Rhodesia basically tuned in because they despised it. The 1960s equivariant of 'hate-following'

“Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1 percent and 7.5 percent respectively, according to a report… That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates”

You might have seen the film Ocean’s 11, but have you heard of the Sun City 8 who stole millions of Rand from a Casino in the South African Bantustan of Bophuthatswana? No? Well you can read all about it in my latest article published in @mbhjournal.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/tcbh...

In hastily written first drafts I used to always misspell apartheid by putting the I before the e. I have finally stopped doing this, but instead have started putting the i before the a in Britain

Only just found this relatively new article by Nick Cull and I'm absolutely buzzing that such an eminent scholar of cultural diplomacy has cited my work! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Brilliant few days at #BATW25 excellent papers and even better conversations. Not sure I’ll make it as a walking tour guide mind 😂😂

Early morning walk to blow off the cobwebs (*post conference meal wine hangover*) before the final day of #BATW25

So excited to incorporate AI into the classroom and liberate my students from boring tasks like reading and thinking

New article alert!! In this article, Franziska Rueedi examines the Hostel Peace Initiative in the greater Johannesburg areas during the final years of Apartheid and uses it to shed new light on the democratic transition in South Africa www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Very much looking forward to @ljmuhistory.bsky.social hosting the annual @batw.bsky.social conference next week. I'll be discussing my research into British policy towards the South African Bantustans which has so far led to one publication with another in press

Random archive discovery from KwaZulu research trip: Buthelezi presented prizes at the Daily Star Gold Awards in 1993

What is the point in Labour? They are becoming a Reform tribute act who view the working class as a bigoted caricature. Might be a better idea to chase some of the 11 million who voted for Labour back in 2017

Fixed term post in African History in my department covering a colleague's externally funded research leave www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNH697/l...

Back to work after a great research trip to SA. Now all I need to do is incorporate all this new research into a draft article that is already too big

Watching Trump & Ramaphosa talk, is basically like watching an intelligent adult try and deal with your thick racist grandad. If I was Ramaphosa I’d just walk out. I’m saying this as a white guy doing research in an SA town which is basically 99% black, where I have been made nothing but welcome

Having a productive week so far in Ulundi undertaking research for my project on UK relations with the KwaZulu Bantustan

So UK politics is now Reform and the two (current) largest parties as Reform tribute acts. Depressing that Farage has the single largest political influence of any politician for decades

I'm actually quite intrigued what sort of person is still backing the Tories? The racist reactionaries must have all gone to Reform, while the Cameron style 'moderates' are surely more at home with the Lib Dems than Badenoch's Farage tribute act

Harsh analysis, chasing the votes of people who despise you and will never vote for you, while developing policies that alienate those who just about tolerate, you makes perfect political sense

Problem is, as demonstrated by Trump’s triumph, to a significant number of voters, vibes are more important than facts

Writing something on UK policy towards Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Inkatha. Something obvious which I hadn't really thought about before is the tendency of FCO officials to make sweeping generations & comparisons of events in different African countries in a way they would never do about European ones

First year as a member of ALCS and I am not disappointed with my statement!