WHO’S THE BEST HENRY VIII? V funchat with @sixteenthcgirl.bsky.social @alexvont.bsky.social & @drjoannepaul.bsky.social Watch on History Hit TV or listen here👇 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/n...

Also @jessiechilds.bsky.social says so

It’s publication day for Thomas More: A Life and Death in Tudor England with Michael Joseph @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social! Pop by your local bookshop or order now - uk.bookshop.org/a/12264/9781...

VE Day from Hammersmith! Celebrating peace, freedom and civilisation. Stay frosty ✌️ #VEDAY80

Iain Pears’s latest book is non-fiction and I loved it. My review is in today’s Sunday Times @thetimes.com www.thetimes.com/article/00d6...

‘Auschwitz did not fall from the sky. It comes step by step. Evil comes step by step.’ Auschwitz Survivor Marian Turski who died 3 months after being interviewed by Simon Schama for this chilling, deeply affecting, utterly essential film. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Meta needs to PAY authors for what it has already STOLEN

This happened yesterday - the launch of #StoryofaMurder with some of my favourite authors and historians (and the group hug after the photo). #SuzannahLipscomb #sarahchurchwell #davidolusoga #bettanyhughes #jessiechilds #alexvontunzelmann #matthewparker #LindseyFitzharris

Loving the spring blossom, but looking forward to The Blood in Winter! Congrats @jonathanhealey.bsky.social - looks like another corker

📅 #OnThisDay (March 24, 1603): Elizabeth I's illustrious reign concludes with her passing. 🌟 @jessiechilds.bsky.social challenges the notion of Elizabeth's tolerance in our Series 7 episode. Listen now at: pod.fo/e/18aeb8 #Elizab#OnThisDay#ElizabethI #Tudor #otd #onthisdate #history #podcast

Dynamite review of #StoryofaMurder in today’s Sunday Times!

So well deserved! I’ve just heard the first two eps and they are BRILLIANT!! Bravo @sarahchurchwell.bsky.social and @davidolusoga.bsky.social I can’t wait to hear more 🥳

Looking for a new history podcast? Look no further! @davidolusoga.bsky.social and @sarahchurchwell.bsky.social join forces to shine light on obscure stories from the past in JOURNEY THROUGH TIME. First up is an explosive tale about a terror attack that damaged the Statue of Liberty in 1916 👇

New on the writer’s bookshelf: eight questions about writers, books, and reading with the brilliant @jessiechilds.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/mathewly...

I love this - a detail from Alison Watt's extraordinary triptych of paintings based on Oliver Cromwell's death mask. Oil on canvas. Incredibly lifelike, even in death. It's part of Watt's wonderful new exhibition, From Light, which opens at Pitzhanger Manor today.

‘If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.’

No lovelier place of a winter’s evening than John Sandoe Books 🧡 Pic taken last night at the launch of Edward Wilson-Lee’s wonderful new book, The Grammar of Angels.

‘Two in five people succumbed in the first winter and the streets were littered with corpses. Most citizens trudged past them without a backwards glance. All that mattered was the next meal.’ @jessiechilds.bsky.social on the siege of Leningrad: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘State broadcasts told of “hardship” and “shortage” – not “starvation” and never “famine”, a word that had been criminalised a decade earlier when the government’s collectivisation policy killed millions.’ @jessiechilds.bsky.social on the siege of Leningrad: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

There are now more than fifty LRB writers on Bluesky - including @torilmoi.bsky.social, @jessiechilds.bsky.social, @sophiagoodfriend.bsky.social and @bekadiski.bsky.social with writing in our new issue and on the blog this week. Read and follow them here: go.bsky.app/5CZWQgk

‘The man in charge of the city enjoyed butter on his bread and lashings of caviar while those in his care ate their pets, sometimes their neighbours, and fashioned tagliatelle out of slow-boiled strips of leather.’ @jessiechilds.bsky.social on the siege of Leningrad: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

BDSM, angels, the inquisition, the Chaldean tongue, Savonarola – my review of Edward Wilson-Lee's fizzing book about Pico della Mirandola's thought, for The Sunday Times. www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

An incredibly powerful archive with warnings for today. www.whlcollections.org/testifying/

This is an extraordinary and original book by a brilliant writer and thinker - the perfect tonic to an AI world! Out next week

Once more with feeling and a dollop of frustration … Taking our work without permission or payment is theft. thttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/14/british-novelists-criticise-government-over-ai-theft#img-1

A little teaser about my next book at the end too! Good fun - thanks for having me, Carol Ann!

Here’s a book to look out for in the new year: Helen Rappaport’s biography of Queen Victoria’s aunt Julie - the teenage bride who stunned Europe by bolting from the Romanov court. It’s beautifully written, incredibly moving & illuminates the entire age. Have fun tonight, however you ring it in!

Great fun, as always, to join Saul David, Roger Moorhouse and Richard Foreman on the Goalhanger Battleground Christmas Special. My military history (interpreted broadly!) #booksoftheyear include Helen Castor, @simonparkin.bsky.social & @jamescrossland.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/b...

Now out in paperback in case anyone’s looking for a last-minute Christmas pressie 😉 And thank you, James, you wise and kind historian!

And I forgot the 1954 coup. So 1949 (3x), 1954, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1970, plus failed attempts in 1956, 1957, 1963 and 1966.

A Russian bearer bond of the South-Eastern Railway Company (1914). Rather beautiful and I love the way it was sent to me. Amazed these stamps are still legal tender!

Striking Ministry of Information pamphlet.

NEW! Looking to try something a bit different in the new year? Why not sign up to our fascinating new online course? THE TITANIC: A HISTORY Setting the Titanic within its global & historical context, you’ll explore its multifaceted history & legend. Book now! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-titani...

Early sketches of bugs by Robert Hooke, including (right) 'a kind of teek found creeping upon paper..April 11 1661’. (British Library Add MS 47495)

Folks, I am stepping in for the fabulous @gregjenner.bsky.social and interviewing the equally fabulous @peterfrankopan.bsky.social at The British Museum on Friday night, in light of their stellar Silk Roads exhibition. Do join us from 6pm. www.britishmuseum.org/events/new-s...

I took part in Radio 4’s The Conflict programme, talking to Jane Corbin and Jonny Dymond about the events leading up to the creation of the state of Israel. Listen via the link, or on Radio 4 later this evening.

When we say we like to get our hands dirty in the archives, we really do mean it!

New from @EmpirePodUK To coincide with the acclaimed Mughal Exhibition: Art, Architecture and Opulence @V_and_A we are today embarking on a major new series on The Great Mughals, telling the story of the lives, courts, writings, battles, art and architecture of the first six Mughal Emperors

Cannabis in 17th-century England grew freely in cornfields & roadsides. Good for earache, jaundice & ‘causeth hens to lay eggs more plentifully.’

yay, Frank's here!

Oh I do like it here!

I’ve finally made it here. What have I missed?

Fantastic BBC radio programme about the intersection between history and food, featuring the magnificently knowledgeable Prof @peterfrankopan.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Friends of Bath! or indeed further afield, this will be wonderful: Miranda Raison to join Ralph Fiennes in new David Hare play Grace Pervades at Theatre Royal Bath | West End Theatre www.westendtheatre.com/262787/news/...

Me, leading people from the other place to #Bluesky! Welcome, newbies! I'm a medical historian who likes to remind people the past was pretty awful. If you ever wondered what would happen if you needed a leg amputated in 1832, or if you had a toothache in 1765 - look no further.

Morning! Here’s an ostrich drawn by 17th-century polymath Sir Thomas Browne - sent to his son in a letter in 1682. Now in the @britishlibrary.bsky.social (BL Sloane MS 1847, f. 146г)

Hello! New here. This is me - 16th & 17th century history books - though the next one will be completely different… Lovely to see old friends & new 👋🏼