That’s it, folks—see you in 2026! Look after yourselves, and after one another!

This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway, oh no, this is the road to hell. (Drive safely, Chris!) #rip 😢 www.theguardian.com/music/2025/d...

Aaaaaaand breathe…. 😌 Anyone who dares to email me before the New Year shall be cursed—anathema maranatha!

"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more." This piece on AI by Cory Doctorow is spectactular. pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...

Driving where the streets have no names… guess he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for!

This is an outrage. Stop wasting precious natural resources on something that nobody—I repeat, nobody—needs in their lives! www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Another lovely and carefully nuanced write-up of my latest research. Many thanks indeed to @medievalists.bsky.social!

When you write the perfectly evidenced paragraph and put a footnote at the end to your nemesis‘s article with the gloss ‘pace’, that's a spite-ation.

About time, too! That Turing scheme was an unmitigated shambles!

I do love the cartoon, though!

Can’t say that making it into the printed edition of the Daily Mail was top of my list of academic career goals, but hey-ho..!

Very nice and nuanced write-up of my latest research by @historyextra.bsky.social! Many thanks to @djmusgrove.bsky.social & Co.! 😊 www.historyextra.com/period/norma...

An interim version of the Explore Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue is now available through the BL website: searcharchives.bl.uk It contains all the catalogue data from the eve of the 2023 cyberattack, and features embedded links to all currently available digitised content within the records.

My tasty take (pun intended) on the Bayeux Tapestry—a subject on which I had vowed never to publish. Available Open Access with @ihr.bsky.social. See what you make of it, and bon appetit! academic.oup.com/histres/adva...

A press release from the University of Bristol about an exciting new article by @benpohl.bsky.social and published by Historical Research: www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2025/de...

My tasty take (pun intended) on the Bayeux Tapestry—a subject on which I had vowed never to publish. Available Open Access with @ihr.bsky.social. See what you make of it, and bon appetit! academic.oup.com/histres/adva...

Very happy to have signed the contract for my next book with @reaktionbooks.bsky.social! ✍️

An academic disliked an Oxford Very Short Introduction (145 pages) in his field so much that he wrote a 200 page book review attacking it. www.pierre-legrand.com/ewExternalFi...

Can you help @nationaltrust.org.uk buy- and care for - the land surrounding the Cerne Giant to help protect this numinous landscape? www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/cerne-abba...

Very happy to have signed the contract for my next book with @reaktionbooks.bsky.social! ✍️

What a bloody great thing AI is, huh? Truly marvellous! Better make sure to shoehorn it into every aspect of Higher Education!

Nice work by my @uobrishistory.bsky.social / @bristolcms.bsky.social colleague and fellow Bristol Record Society councillor, Evan Jones! bristolrecordsociety.org/stories-from...

Universities: investing millions so students ”develop literacy in the language of AI” Also universities: defunding the humanities so students are illiterate in ordinary languages

🤘🍺😈

ALT-Text: Schauerliche Hände von Untoten krallen nach einer halbzerfetzten Erdkugel; Würmer fressen Handstumpen; überall sind Finger, einfach sehr viele gierige Finger, die grabbelig aalig nach einem dreckigen Klumpen schnappen. (Unter allen hässlichen Preisen ist das wohl der hässlichste)

Sometimes it’s the little things that really brighten your day, like this lovely thank-you note from @magdalenoxford.bsky.social which I received yesterday. They didn’t need to do this, which makes it all the more special.

No integrity. None.

Sunset at Fécamp

The search for the best advent calendar ever is officially over! 😍

We are VERY excited to announce the call for papers for our 2026 conference! 🎉🎉🎉 This year, we invite paper and poster proposals on the themes of power and/or performance! All proposals to be sent to [email protected] by 17:00 on Friday 9th January. #medievalsky #skystorians

Only a genuine idiot or a nasty piece of work could think that making one’s country less welcoming and hospitable so fewer people want to come and live there constitutes an achievement worth bragging about.

Last week, we were privileged to host Professor Sarah Hamilton (Exeter) for a CMS seminar on ‘The Liturgy of the Road: Masses for Travellers at St Gall, 900-1100’. We certainly learned a lot! Thank you so much Sarah — we hope that you’ll come back and visit us soon! ☺️ #medievalsky #skystorians

Curious about what a Bristol Medieval Studies Summer School might look like? Check out this wonderful video made by one of this year's summer school students! #medievalsky #skystorians

Roll up! Roll up! Medieval Studies Summer School applications are open for 2026

@uobartsmatter.bsky.social, @uobrishistory.bsky.social, @bristolcms.bsky.social, @bristolunienglish.bsky.social, @bristoluni.bsky.social

🚨 Hwæt, medievalists: following its successful inauguration last year, the Bristol Medieval Studies Summer School will be running again in 2026! 🚨 Please share the good news or—even better—sign up yourself: www.bristol.ac.uk/centre-for-s... We're so proud of this course, and we'd love to see you! 🚨

Love medieval manuscripts? Love public libraries? Love Bristol? Don’t miss this FREE exhibition: bristol.events.mylibrary.digital/event?id=250...

More concrete proof—if any were needed—that mindlessly shoehorning AI into everything, including Higher Education, causes not progress but decay.

The phrase "it could be argued that..." needs to be removed from the academic lexicon as a matter of urgency. Either go ahead and argue it or don't! UGH!

“We’re scapegoating asylum seekers for the failures & political divisions caused by successive governments in the last 15 years—the failures of successive governments to address wealth inequality, funding for education, the cost of living & primary healthcare and infrastructure.” Well said, bishop!

The UK does not have an asylum problem. What it does have is a far-right problem. The govt is inventing the former to appease and deflect from the latter.

Forscher irrten jahrelang: "Himmelsscheibe" von Nebra ist offenbar ein Pizza-Rezept www.der-postillon.com/2019/11/pizz...

For this week's CMS seminar, we are lucky enough to be joined by Bristol's own Dr Kathleen Thompson for a paper on 'Leperhouses and Lordship: Some Ideas from Medieval Bristol'. We can't wait to find out more! #medievalsky #skystorians

Very proud of my former PhD student, Dan Booker, whose important study on women and the law of the exchequer has just been published by @ihrlibrary.bsky.social: academic.oup.com/histres/adva...

“Reeves said she would not duck the difficult choices ahead, even if they broke her pledge not to put up income tax, VAT or national insurance”—or you could just, I don’t know, oh yeah: 👏 tax 👏 the 👏 bloody 👏 rich! www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

It frustrates me that fields such as history are increasingly becoming something of a free-for-all. Imagine the reverse, in which a bona fide history professor publishes a polemic book claiming to ‘lift the veil on secrets’ of, say, structural engineering. It’d be considered absurd, and rightly so.

A long but very worthwhile read

No neede for expensyve consultinge firmes. Heere ys a planne for excellent higher education: 1) Hire manye facultye 2) Small class syzes 3) Emphasyze engagemente & delighte 4) Sustayne & cultivate a varietye of fieldes and disciplines, even currentlye unfashionable ones -- thys ys ed, not retail