Student presentations done for the mid-term assessment, now for reading week! If you are considering running a freelance business, teaching part time, AND renovating an old house to move into concurrently, I recommend that you don't.

If anyone from outside the UK wants to understand the political system and how British people consistently vote against their own interests, any series of The Traitors will explain it.

Alan Carr pulling the least action movie face possible in the face of an explosion <3 #CelebrityTraitors

Nick Mohammed has proven himself to be not only a perceptive faithful but absolute cutie pie. Him and Joe Marler 4 Eva #Traitors

Good lord. www.glasgowbell.co.uk/raise-the-co...

If you've just heard me on BBC Radio 5 Live, here's the link to nominate a brilliant history teacher in the UK for the Inspiring History Teaching Awards - they can be primary/secondary/SEN etc, and don't have to be history specialists. The awards are run by HRP www.hrp.org.uk/schools/insp...

Happy Halloween! I found a 30 year old newspaper buried in our new house which showed how much things used to cost and experienced true horror at the world around me!

I need a sitcom wherein Alan Carr plays a grim reaper #traitors

Enough is enough - good to see #ReclaimTheNight featured in today's Yorkshire Evening Post.

Had an amazing day supporting English studies agrégation students in Bordeaux today - what a delight to talk about British social movements and think about their importance's in pedagogical practice. If only we did more of this on the other side of the channel!

It was Berthold's Political Handkerchief (1831)! It wasn't an extremely specific and nerdy dream!

@rs4vp.org and periodicals folks: I'm trying to find an example of unstamped newspaper publishers evading paper duty. I am quite sure I've seen pamphlets/flyers/news printed on cloth before, but a Google search is only trying to sell me handkerchiefs. Did these exist or have I gone insane?

If anyone thinks they're getting a bargain buying a house that was a student rental for 30 years, I implore you to consider the cost of paint stripper and sandpaper needed to remove 30 years of magnolia gloss paint for every conceivable surface.

Damn straight

Celebrity Traitors is doing more for the peace of the nation than any government could

A fab BHM lecture from @oliviawyatt1999.bsky.social on the Chapeltown Bonfire night incident of 1975. Wyatt situates elder Black women's activism on behalf of the Black youths on trial as part of caregiving in the community. More non-London Black history!!!

For reasons, it would be v. helpful to have information from a broad range of academic and non-academic (incl. GLAM) users of the BBC Written Archives OTHER THAN historians, briefly on: 1) What you've used it for and 2) How the proposed changes would impact on your research. Reposts welcomed.

Week two of home ownership: for when a flagpole in the garden isn't enough

Spent this morning's seminars talking to my first years about close reading and figurative language, and thought I'd do a bit about semiotics and theory. Ended up talking A LOT about traffic lights. Perhaps driving theory next term?

#OtD 9 Oct 1945 the UK Labour govt defended its jailing of 226 Spanish Civil War and anti-Nazi resistance fighters, describing them as "members of an enemy paramilitary organisation". Some killed themselves, others were deported to Spain for execution stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/1094...

Some news: I'm back teaching at the School of English at Leeds this term, and we bought a house with these treasures in the attic! Freelance clients new and old, don't fear - I'm still available for your research, writing, and copy-editing needs.

‘This is strength’: stories of enslaved Africans in Grenada made into searchable archive Depths of Paradise project backed by British family and created by Stephen Lewis, a descendant of survivors www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o... The database itself: www.depthsofparadise.co.uk #History 🗃️

TEN YEARS for settled status. Labour really do seem to have gone collectively insane. Just don’t play Farage’s game. Refuse. Try thinking about what you’re actually saying. And stop.

Great news! JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month www.jstor.org/action/showL...

The logical culmination of Gove’s ‘we don’t trust experts’. Now it’s ’we don’t know anything’.

big part of this is because they sent the health reporters, not the political reporters

Watching Legally Blonde with my partner, and by God you can tell that none of Elle's professors ever had to do their HEA fellowship.

As a scholar of messy factionalism in British left wing political history, I could really do with a rest from messy factionalism in British left wing politics.

"Job insecurity shreds productivity, both through the time and effort required to apply for jobs and the impact of such insecurity on mental wellbeing." Nail head hit.

Cats say a £22bn investment in Dreamies and new Catnip technologies will boost Britain's economy in the next few years

The great historian Joan Wallach Scott writing for the Boston Review (@bostonreview.bsky.social); h/t @jvmoltke.bsky.social; #skystorians: www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-g...

I've spent the last few days in the Austrian alps with a bunch of my brilliant friends for a wedding, and even if I never work in academia again, studying gave me an amazing international community of friends. For that alone we should be protecting HE.

I’ve been frustrated to see so much of the ongoing story about asylum seekers and the protests against them covered without hearing from those seeking asylum and now being met with hostility and hatred I set out to speak to those directly affected to find out about the impact this is having 👇

Big thanks to @sslh.bsky.social for a cracking #ChartismDay in Huddersfield! My brain and heart are full thanks to the rich papers, show and tell sessions, and Chartist biographies. The Charter and something more!

On the same day in the Telegraph:

Your last saved pic is your moral philosophy

Since the issue of appropriating national flags is a bit 'live', to revisit my favourite artistic exploration of the British flag: Eddie Chambers' 1978 'Destruction of the National Front'. I really like the piece of art because what it saying, as I see it, is that the appropriation of the... (1/)

When I was teaching I often set an episode of In Our Time alongside seminar reading - it was a great way for students new to particular topics to come away with a thorough overview and make sense of the readings. And the audio format fits in with a gym sesh/travel time/cooking dinner!

Reminder that I am open for business for all your research, writing, editing and copy-editing needs! Recent projects include creating a personal archive catalogue, and copy-editing English academic manuscripts for authors of other languages. Get in touch via website or DM! www.drvicclarke.co.uk

Join us in Huddersfield this weekend for Chartism Day 2025. All welcome. Booking essential www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/chartism-d...

Anglophone higher ed is in its toilet year

Well played.

I will remind folks those images of Nazi book burnings aren't burning just any books. They're burning the library of Magnus Hirschfeld; a gay, Jewish doctor who created an institute dedicated to LGBTQ sex education and healthcare. And a man who pioneered gender affirming care surgeries.

uhhhh

British "debate" on migration is in the gutter, but we should still be shocked that Labour's response yesterday was to criticise Farage for being insufficiently detailed in his plan for mass detention camps.

The NUJ has renewed calls for global action to end the Israeli government’s war on journalism and truth after at least 20 people, including five journalists, were killed in strikes on Nasser hospital on Monday. www.nuj.org.uk/resource/pal...

If you laughed Corbyn offstage for his proposals on broadband but are failing to ridicule this story at least twice as loudly, pop a quick apology to me in the chat below. Thanks! www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Bank holiday Saturday compromise: working on my article about 19C labour and political celebrity with Below Deck on in the background

we used to build household shrines to Going On The Computer and it's no coincidence that as we abandoned these we started straying further from god's light

YES!!!