Solstice sunrise

Clay letters from ancient Mesopotamia are alive with idiom, sayings, and everyday language that I love. Here are just a few random ones so you can enjoy them too.

When I was in Camden Town yesterday getting my eyes tested, I saw that the historic ladies loo on Parkway now had a plaque (local Camden scheme, not blue, yet): www.blueplaques.net/show_images....

Linguists start compiling first ever complete dictionary of ancient Celtic www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

“we estimate employment-weighted share of Americans using AI at work has fallen by a percentage point & now sits at 11%. Adoption has fallen sharply at the largest businesses, those employing +250 people. 3 yrs into the genAI wave, demand looks surprisingly flimsy” www.economist.com/finance-and-...

H is for Hawk. Encountered this falconer and his Harris Hawk out hunting in the woods while we were on our morning run!

Yesterday at West Horsley Place aka Button House from BBC’s Ghosts. Seriously haunting! I was in conversation with local historian June Davey about its putative links to Juliana Berners and The Book of St Albans. Amazing event, fabulous audience.

Did medieval nuns care for their appearance? Rings, brooches, combs, manicure sets all found on the site of Barking Abbey.

A 4000 year old carved figure found buried in Dagenham marshes alongside the skeleton of a deer 🦌

This came out earlier this week! Thank you so much to Yale University Press for all their efforts getting it to publication.

Surrey in Autumn 🍂

The problem of course is that women will vote for misogynists, but men won’t vote for women.

🚨 THIS WEEK ON PATREON & APPLE 🚨 Not all of the five came from the stereotypes we’ve been fed. 🏰 Annie Chapman’s early life near Windsor and the royal world is a story few expect. Discover it with @hallierubenhold.bsky.social 🎧 www.patreon.com/post... #History #TrueCrime #Victorian

@bristolcms.bsky.social here you go: on a trip to the Ridgeway with John Burrow and Basil Cottle!

Vile stuff. At my own university all new staff are employed via a subsidiary company to avoid the TPS pension (remember: pensions are pay) and we all fear the costing staff will be next. Management think staff are so desperate that they’ll accept anything. Remember: university managements are so…

Pleased to see such a great selection of books shortlisted!

New analysis shows over 15,000 university job cuts and c. 4,000 courses "shuttered" www.ucu.org.uk/article/1422... #Highered #Edchat #students #research

Today is the feast of Leoba, d. 782, learned kinswoman of Boniface who began her life in religion at Wimborne Abbey and accompanied B. to Germany. BSB Clm 8112, a copy of the Bonifatian correspondence, includes Leoba's letter from Wimborne ca. 732 introducing herself to Boniface. 🕯️#nuntastic

Here's another copy of the same letter from Leoba to Boniface in Vienna, ONB 751: viewer.onb.ac.at/10B7BF3F Thanks to Diane Watt for this blog post, which signals the folio nos. for the Leoba letters and includes details of MSS of Leoba's Vita: blogs.surrey.ac.uk/early-mediev...

Thanks to Jo for an important essay giving a first hand insight into the impact of a sector in crisis on academics and students 👇

I wrote something on my time on returning to Goldsmiths as an associate lecturer, 17 years after graduating with my first degree. It’s a plea to Frances Corner’s successor to learn from mistakes made over the last 6 years and change course. #UCU #UKHE ucucommons.org/2025/10/06/c...

Pleased to announce @univeng.bsky.social small funding scheme now open to members. UE will fund up to 20 projects up to £250 each to support research/pedagogy/continuing professional development activities in Lit, Lang, Creative Writing. See details here: universityenglish.ac.uk/englishcreat...

The British Academy and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation are inviting applications from early-career researchers in the humanities and social sciences to attend a research collaboration symposium on the broad theme of Truth, Justice and Peace in Germany. https://bit.ly/4nyWsmv

Love it when a reviewer gets my book ❤️

T o celebrate the forthcoming print publication of our Encyclopaedia and Palgrave’s 25th anniversary this year, four chapters are free-to-view throughout October. blogs.surrey.ac.uk/medievalwome...

#histnursing - don’t we know it - invisible nurses wherever you look in the history of health care and culture

22 Sept 1693: d. Sr Mary Cary #Benedictine daughter of Falkland Lord Deputy of #Ireland & Elizabeth Tanfield Cary #writer at Our Lady of Consolation Cambrai #otd She was also a biographer of her mother.

Really enjoyed giving my talk at the #gloshistfest and @historyrage.bsky.social gave me this great mug! Love it 🥰

The talk by @dianewatt.bsky.social at the history symposium this morning was wonderful! I highly recommend her book about Margaret Paston!

The Little Book of Dragons is published today (though you wouldn't know it from the British Library shop website). But all good retailers should be able to supply, unless you're in N. America where you have to wait a whole month for lovely dragon pix ..

What a lovely location for the launch of my paperback yesterday—The Holloway in Norwich. Support your local independent bookshop.

The Matlaske reliquary pendant. This is the sort of ‘device’ Margaret Paston may have worn and it was found around 3km from her first marital home in Gresham. Now on display in the Gallery of Medieval Life in the Norwich Cathedral Museum. I saw it properly for the first time yesterday.

My paperback is being launched tomorrow at the Holloway bookshop in Norwich. Do come along!

My paperback is being launched tomorrow at the Holloway bookshop in Norwich. Do come along!

Job offer for medievalists at the University of Warsaw: historia.uw.edu.pl/en/job-offer.... My dear friend & colleague Grzegorz Pac is looking for a postdoc to join his project Recognising Saints in the High Middle Ages.

"Proofed," the Boydell & Brewer Blog's Series Focus: Gender in the Middle Ages: guest post written by Diane Watt and Jacqueline Murray, editors of the Gender in the Middle Ages series. boydellandbrewer.com/blog/medieva...

Bank holiday weekend

Well... This has made my month! Thanks Manchester, what an honour.

I will be speaking at this free event in Barking and Dagenham! Sign up here valencehousecollections.co.uk/events/barki...

It’s touching and wonderful the amount of people saying reading Pratchett has made them a better person, myself included. Was it @adamchapman.bsky.social I remembering saying that his downstream positive effect on UK society is something we should increasingly be considering as his readers age?

Is it OK to post jobs here? Hoping so, as we're recruting 7 3-year Research Fellowships as part of a new Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Slavery in War. (More details below). Please share widely, and apply! jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

Deadline for this early modern PDRA role coming up at the end of the month. 12 month contract working on our ‘Inclusive Histories’ project. Happy to have an informal chat with those interested in the post.

Came across this interesting post about using medieval women’s own accounts as sources for role playing games refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2025/04/02/t...

Head in the clouds

I can't wait to speak at this year's Gloucester History Festival on Monday 15 September at 12pm. Find out more and book your tickets: www.gloucesterhistoryfestival.co.uk/events/marga... #GlosHistFest25 Instagram: @gloshistfest Facebook: /gloucesterhistoryfestival X: @gloshistfest

Really exciting new archaeology report showing that two people who died in 7th century Kent had West African grandfathers. It’s suggested they’d travelled here as traders and settled thanks to the Byzantine Empire’s trade network that linked North Africa to Britain

Dan Snow being given more time in Radio 4 right now to talk about the early medieval burials with West African ancestry & global trade routes rather than the actual archaeological expert involved in the project. Steam is leaving both of my ears

I can't wait to speak at this year's Gloucester History Festival on Monday 15 September at 12pm. Find out more and book your tickets: www.gloucesterhistoryfestival.co.uk/events/marga... #GlosHistFest25 Instagram: @gloshistfest Facebook: /gloucesterhistoryfestival X: @gloshistfest

This is a fantastic post about a fantastic research project by @thorntonsbooks.bsky.social — it could be an episode in AS Byatt’s Possession! It also highlights the importance of serendipity in research and also how online research will only get us so far. thornton.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/posts/blog/2...