I came home to the UK in 1972 after 3 years in high school in LA, to study Philosophy at York University. I was overjoyed to have a room in the new college of Wentworth, and loved everything about my new home. This film brings it all back!

Have the constant and avoidable losses of environmental habitats got you down? You're not alone. A new publication by Pablo Fernandez Velasco and Louise Richardson argues that this feeling is *essentially* a shared emotion, because of the shared places that make up our identities.

Joe Lee-Doktor spoke at the recent anti-racism protest in York's city centre, making it clear that our department is against the recent racist attacks that have taken place across York, including on campus. Aerial shot courtesy of Jacob O’Sullivan.

Only Sally Wainwright could create a series that's even better than the outstanding Last Tango in Halifax, and even the legendary Happy Valley. Shakespeare's Sister lives!

So thrilled to attend today's service of thanksgiving for #JaneAusten at Winchester Cathedral and see the new statue unveiled. Plus there were a few faces from the 1995 P&P who read excerpts from the novel during the service so wonderfully.

Here is a useful report on the many different kinds of inequality and poor outcomes experienced by the approx 500,000 Irish Traveler, Roma and Gypsy people in the UK publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/...

In 1880, Mortimer Menpes befriended James McNeill Whistler, under his influence he began incorporating motifs and techniques of Japanese art into his work. In 1887, he travelled to Japan to witness its culture first-hand and produced many paintings including 'Flower of the Tea.'

In Herbert Badham's 'The Night Bus,' (1943) the interior lights highlight the different figures and their gestures, all still, fixed in the moment. A woman reads a magazine, a man smokes, the conductor chats to a passenger.

My piece in @thespectator1828.bsky.social this week looks back at a lecture I attended this summer where a Cambridge art historian insisted paintings by Stanley Spencer were painted by David Jones. It revealed a weakness that stretches beyond one lecture; how we teach art history is woeful.

Only Sally Wainwright could create a series that's even better than the outstanding Last Tango in Halifax, and even the legendary Happy Valley. Shakespeare's Sister lives!

Did you see Riot women last night? So good, had to watch ep 2 on iplayer. What joy to watch a lot of older women on screen. Scores highly on Bechdale! That cloak of invisibilty that descends on the older women is beautifully drawn by Sally Wainwright. Fabulous www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

‘Virginia Woolf admired Jane Austen above all for her ability to grasp the exceptional moment as it arises out of and then subsides back into the “ebb and flow of ordinary existence”. There is more Austen than Joyce in Mrs Dalloway.’ www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

An excellent essay from @slobpodcast.bsky.social Sophie Gee about #JaneAusten and her 'misfit' older female characters. Jane Austen would have loved Sally Wainwright's #RiotWomen!

Friday essay: foggy, flirty and too much – Jane Austen’s menopausal women solicit compassion while making us laugh theconversation.com/friday-essay...

In the #DecodeME study the genes associated with ME/CFS are found to be involved in neuronal development & communication in the brain. The genes highlighted are not uniquely linked to ME/CFS. But the DNA signal around them is often different. tinyurl.com/heans3zb

Dr Nigel Speight writes that ME families are still encountering charges of FII (Fabricated and Induced Illness) formerly called Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy. In the UK he believes the current paediatric guidelines regarding FII need to be changed. tinyurl.com/44c4zykd

IMHO the commonest practical problem is the expense of ME/CFS. It's really fucking expensive, as you cannot work once at moderate level. DWP's paltry PIP and ESA 'welfare' in the absense of ANY clinical support from the NHS means poverty while trying to stave off a worsening of the disease.

And @bethjohnsontv.bsky.social‘s review of the series is excellent, too.

That doesn't mean that I haven't accidentally misgendered people, even if they were sharing their preferred pronouns. I'm not proud of it, but it happens.

TOMORROW

NEXT WEEK!

I hope this fascinating book comes out in paperback! Now following @bethjohnsontv.bsky.social many thanks @ctimmermann.bsky.social

The excellent review in The Conversation is not by me; it's by @bethjohnsontv.bsky.social, an expert on Sally Wainwright's work. Check out the book on Wainwright she published with Kristyn Gorton: bsky.app/profile/manc...

@whatsontvclass.bsky.social - it was a pleasure to discuss the impact and context of big topics related to HIV and living with a disability on EastEnders with BBC BITESIZE www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/art...

Watched #RiotWomen yet? Once again, Sally Wainwright proves why she’s one of TV’s finest #screenwriters/producers Find out how Wainwright's reshaping representations of women on screen in a new article by Kristyn Gorton and @bethjohnsontv.bsky.social manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/blog/2025/10...

Thank you so much!

The best review I've read of Sally Wainwright's brilliant, beautiful new drama (on BBC if you are in the UK) Thanks to @ctimmermann.bsky.social writing in theconversation.com Unmissable! #RiotWomen #SallyWainwright

Riot Women is a must-watch. theconversation.com/with-riot-wo...

That's multiple instances in the last 24hrs where women have either been invisible or women being invisible has been referenced. See below and BBC1's Riot Women. mymodernmet.com/jessica-wade...

Move over, coffee mornings: it’s Riot Women Sally Wainwright’s latest tv series is an uncompromising celebration of women in all their messy, middle-aged glory By Su O'Brien @yorkshirebylines.co.uk

Riot Women review – Sally Wainwright’s menopausal punk drama is one of her best

Scientists develop world’s first blood test that diagnoses fatigue with 96% accuracy interestingengineering.com/health/me-cf...

Along with Truss' mini budget which cost the country billions why don't journalists also ask about the £billions wasted on VIP lane for unusable PPE during pandemic? Tories make out they borrowed billions to 'save' us, nobody mentions the Tory cronies they hugely enriched with the PPE procurements

@BBCNews @bbcpm.bsky.social Ask the Tories about £billions wasted on useless PPE during pandemic. #ITVFollowtheMoney

Manchester synagogue attack: why so many people in Britain’s Jewish community felt a sense of inevitability that this day would come theconversation.com/manchester-s...

www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-mone... Scapegoating a common tart Whodathunkit 🤨

Here I am in 2020 in the flimsiest, most pitful PPE - like so many other NHS staff, some of whom died from the Covid they caught in their hospitals. Tory peer Michelle Mone - who today lost her legal case & must repay the govt £122m - dares to claim she’s been ‘scapegoated’. What, Michelle? 🧵

Book Review: The Shakespeare Ladies Club: The Forgotten Women Who Rescued the Bawdy Bard, by Christine and Jonathan Hainsworth tonyriches.blogspot.com/2025/10/book... #BookReview

Virginia Woolf said, "Thinking is my fighting," and what better way to aid our thinking than by reading books -- particularly those they try to ban. Thank you, brave librarians! bloggingwoolf.org/2025/09/23/f... #VirginiaWoolf

From the September 2025 Chronic Living Therapy @chronicliving123.bsky.social newsletter Articles and useful links from around the web during August and September 2025. Covering Gulf War Illness, Functional Neurological Disorder, Lyme Disease and more… chroniclivingtherapy.com/4-elsewhere-...

Pssst, if any Long COVID (or ME/CFS, IACCI, etc) friends are thinking of using the new free RTHM AI tool, worth noting that their terms of service explicitly grant them permission to use any medical history you upload to train their models.

A fascinating podcast for people who don't know about the issue of testing people to establish their gender in sports. What is ideology vs. what is the science of gender?

Another issue where I see a lot of parallels with ME/CFS: a small marginalized group subjected to pseudoscience. www.cbc.ca/radio/podcas...

Oooh, this is really smart. When I still had the physical strength to attend protests, I carried my own #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis kit w/ me. Great to see our most prominent advocacy group laying out a blueprint for everyone w/ post-infectious illnesses. #pwME #pwLC #LongCovid

Jonty chats to English literary critic and Virginia Woolf biographer, Hermione Lee, in this must-listen episode for Woolf fans and all classic literature lovers alike! The best part? You can tune in now, wherever you get your podcasts 🎧 #virginiawoolf #biography #writingcommunity

It would be hard to overstate the shock Virginia Woolf felt on the arrival of the major 19th-century Russian writers—Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Turgenev—in English in the early 20th century. In her diaries & essays she writes of them with awe, like they’re newly discovered continents.

“Happiness is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.” ~ From ‘The Waves’ by Virginia Woolf (1883-1941) #Art, ‘Falling Rose Petals’ by Harold Davis.

Joy Battick, the first woman of colour to have a statue in the capital (London), which now has two, making her just the second non-royal, after Virginia Woolf, to be honoured in this way. www.positive.news/society/monu...

“For most of history, anonymous was a woman.” ― Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941. 🙏🏼🌍🕊️ 📷 Classic Literature