A fantastic piece

I’ll be talking to @herring1967.bsky.social this Friday about The Umbrella Man and Other Stories, which I’m very much looking forward to. In advance of that, he wrote a very nice and thoughtful review of the book on his website. www.richardherring.com/warmingup/14...

We visited one of the most remarkable churches I've ever seen in England. I wrote about it here mathewlyons.substack.com/p/history-in...

I’ll be with the totally brilliant @cathamclarke.bsky.social, @eleanormaybaker.bsky.social and Anthony Bale tonight, talking about writing medieval history for a general audience @imc-leeds.bsky.social #imc2026

Society for Renaissance Studies: Two scholarships of £4,000 each, to contribute to the costs of postgraduate study. rensoc.org.uk/apply/schola...

Amazing.

It's that time again. Ancient hundredal and manorial offices may or may not become relevant. So here's @vch-home.bsky.social with the only element either they or I really care about: Northstead of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern.

For centuries Queen Elizabeth I has been portrayed as prone to 'feminine' bouts of irrationality & rage. The emotional outbursts in her letters were a political strategy designed by Sir Francis Walsingham. Walsingham encouraged the queen to feign a hissy fit!

How heartbreaking is that date?

Can’t wait to read this … Just today a student asked me if she could write her BA thesis about the legitimacy of Matilda and Stephen. Now we’ll have some fresh thoughts to digest.

New on the Writer's Bookshelf: eight questions about writers, books, and reading with Peter Ackroyd. @reaktionbooks.bsky.social mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-writer...

We went to visit the grave of Tirzah Garwood yesterday, which also commemorates her first husband Eric Ravilious. The text at the bottom is from Luke’s Gospel: “Blessed are the eyes that see the things that ye see.” We also visited the house in Great Bardfield where they lived with Edward Bawden.

Now with a short introduction: jwikeley.substack.com/p/dark-news-...

Some weekend reading from me. First the latest edition of the Writer's Bookshelf with the wonderful @rickburin.bsky.social. mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-writer...

If you're an independent historian (freelance or otherwise unattached to an academic institute), do check out @indyhistnetwork.bsky.social headed by @lucyjanesantos.bsky.social and @emmabastin.bsky.social! They will be hosting semi-regular networking events. Great fun!

The paperback of The Basque Witch-Hunt: A Secret History is out next week, and @bloomsburyhist.bsky.social published a blog in which I explain why I called it a secret history. The witch hunt is well known but the familiar story never quite rang true for me: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/discover/...

Oh look New book

Very pleased to say that thanks as ever to jessesword.com and all my much-appreciated contributors, update #39 of GDoS is now available. A substack will posted later with a little backstory and I shall be creating a couple of files, in Excel and via Dropbox, to see what is new or predated. Enjoy.

I had the great pleasure of reviewing Andrea Wulf's wonderful biography of the radical eighteenth-century naturalist George Forster for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social. engelsbergideas.com/reviews/geor...

"Meticulously researched and, as if by alchemy, luring the reader heart and soul into the time and the place of this historical world. A triumph of a novel"—@essiefox.bsky.social Available now @hollandhousebooks.bsky.social buff.ly/tuetgQ3

It’s paperback day for #StoryofaMurder ! In honour of that, let’s answer a few questions about the Crippen murder… hop aboard…

Harboring a casual disdain for premodernity is how we end up with a nation full of people so committed to progress and innovation as abstractions that just using those words is enough to defend any proposition without debate.

Terrific review of Henry Power's Homer-Haunted from @ravoon.bsky.social in the Times. www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

I had the great pleasure of reviewing Andrea Wulf's wonderful biography of the radical eighteenth-century naturalist George Forster for @engelsbergideas.bsky.social. engelsbergideas.com/reviews/geor...

Thank you @mathewlyons.bsky.social for this fantastic review of "The Traveller"!!

Something here for fans of Elizabethan jewellery, the Duke of Wellington, Landseer's Highland deer, Nottingham alabaster, dead thrushes, galleries of grotesques, and more!

Forster rejected the racial classifications of his age, and his capacity for forgiveness was almost inhuman. Andrea Wulf lets the reader bask in his sensitive apprehension of the world. George Forster’s dazzlingly humane vision | @mathewlyons.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/reviews/geor...

My ten favourite works at this week’s Old Masters auctions in London. mathewlyons.substack.com/p/going-goin...

My ten favourite works at this week’s Old Masters auctions in London. mathewlyons.substack.com/p/going-goin...

“A vivid, evocative portrait of a society broken by the tumult of ideological fervour—and of the human cost…Gillis, in particular, is a wonderful creation, but Bruegel and his studio, his world, are superbly drawn” Thank you @mathewlyons.bsky.social! buff.ly/WCQKnqW

I think this might be one of my favourite answers to any question yet.

I’d love it if you’d sign this. It might not prevent me and my colleagues losing our jobs, but it will draw attention to the ideological vandalism being perpetrated by the wealthy execs running our university. Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter - sign the petition below! c.org/NpvY4sR9gH

This is such an rich and fascinating idea! I'm really looking forward to reading it.

New on the Writer’s Bookshelf this morning: eight questions about writers, books, and reading with the brilliant @rickburin.bsky.social.

✨"The register offers both hope and concern for endangered buildings. In the past, inclusion on the list has helped to prompt action: the Buttermarket in Redruth in Cornwall, formerly at risk, has been rescued by a community-led and award-winning renewal. " ♻️ observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

I admire Rick’s attention to novels (a rare thing in my own lights) but particularly lit up with the lessons he drew from Vonnegut:

I had a similar experience to Rick with Wodehouse. My dad reviled Wodehouse because he seemed to celebrate the idle rich. And that was enough to put me off discovering him until I was about 23. A wasted youth, if ever there were one.

Lovely review of SHAKESPEARE'S BORROWED FEATHERS in Early Theatre journal. 'full of meaningful insights and observations which are made all the more digestible by Freebury-Jones’s charismatic prose ... a valuable model for future scholarship.' earlytheatre.org/article/view...

New on the Writer’s Bookshelf this morning: eight questions about writers, books, and reading with the brilliant @rickburin.bsky.social.

So many sunglasses in Ledbury at the Poetry Festival! Dear reader, are all poets natural spies? Read this small stylish anthology and decide....

A lot of media coverage of the ‘AI’ reading of the Herculaneum scrolls really fails to understand what’s happened here. There’s no language processing happening, the AI/ML is not trained on a corpus of texts or language. It can detect ink to see shapes. HUMAN EXPERTS are then transcribing the text.

I don't usually gasp when I read, but I just got to: Uncle Pio said that when they had crossed the bridge they would sit down and rest, but it turned out not to be necessary. —Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

A little weekend reading from me. First the 70th edition of the Writer's Bookshelf featuring the wonderful @ailsaross.bsky.social. mathewlyons.substack.com/p/the-writer...

SLEUTH-HOUND is my attempt to bring Bell back into focus. Not a footnote to Holmes. Not a parlor trick in a consulting room. But a brilliant, complicated, deeply human man whose way of seeing changed literature forever. Coming Oct 20. UK 🇬🇧 trailer + cover below! Preorder: linktr.ee/drlindseyfit...

This is the first #poetry book I have actually gone out of my way to track down. In a time of #byron and #keats there was also ….. Barry. The kid has certainly got rhythm - if not much else ! #forgottenpoets

"But at some point, I stopped believing in my ability as a detective and instead became interested in the people. The witnesses had given their testimony, some more reluctantly than others. What interested me now was who they were and what that moment had done to them."

Ten little-known London films that capture the city in the mid-20th century. mathewlyons.substack.com/p/ten-forgot...

This looks like a great initiative!

Ten little-known London films that capture the city in the mid-20th century. mathewlyons.substack.com/p/ten-forgot...

A forgotten name on a Penguin book cover led me to a cache of Burberry illustrations rescued from a skip, a Vogue profile of a "spy writer's wife" and a story of how easily women's creative lives can disappear. open.substack.com/pub/stillske... #illustration #womensart #midcentury