📢📢 Why listen to two blokes banging on about liberalism on a podcast when you can read me doing it in the new issue of History Today!

SO excited to share this at last! WHAT IS HISTORY FOR? is taking place at JRRIL, 6 June, 10-4, as part of Manchester Histories Festival. There will be talks, workshops, and lots more. All ages, and completely free! For more information and to sign up: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/what-is-hi...

As another Primrose Day comes to a close, I thought I'd share the promo code for a lovely 30% off The Disraeli Myth: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Woohoo! My article, 'Conservative Crossings: Constructing Anglo-American Conservatism in the C20th' has been accepted by @jbritishstudies.bsky.social It shows how Conservative ideas and people moved between Britain and the US, contributing to the Cold War invention of 'American conservatism'.

If you’re a student who’d love to see the You’re Dead To Me tour show in either Cardiff, Edinburgh or Manchester — and you don’t *already* have a ticket — DM me on here or on Instagram for a sneaky student discount code

Lads, I'm going to Venice! So excited!

Out of curiosity I popped "special relationship" into Ngram. Of course a Churchill family legend (Jennie C launched the Anglo-Saxon Review in 1899 long before the term was coined by her son) but really a Thatcherite one? Or just a surge of social science publications now using the term reflexively?

#Skystorians great new book klaxon! Out this summer! Highly recommended!

I am ill and so comfort-listing to Harry Potter (#6). Despite History of Magic being constantly pilloried I do love Dumbledore's historicism: 'Sir … is it important to know all this about Voldemort's past?” “Very important, I think,” said Dumbledore.

This is terrible, and made worse by fact that SHU has also historically been an institution which employs a lot of teaching only staff. My dad worked there for 25 years and him and his entire department (maths) were teaching only! (That might have changed since, but was case in 2015 when he retired)

Not that anyone asks historians anymore, but I think my sense that the last GE was Labour's 1906 (they are the Liberals in this analogy) still might stand. What remains unique (and so without historical analogy) is that the Conservatives are being *successfully* challenged by a party to the right.

What do you do when you have no ideas? Steal some. Politics for the AI age.

“Purely cognitive” is it? Surely they’re not stupid enough to believe that word-juggling software actually thinks? The whole point of word-juggling software is to produce the illusion of thinking. And that is all it is.

Man who ruined the country suggests more ways to do so www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

“With modern digital communication, and with ChatGPT, people are reading more for information... They’re trying to get the core idea out of something quickly, as opposed to valuing the process of immersing themselves in the text.” bit.ly/49KkcAb

Labour NEC: She'll have the lamb, rare, with very little mint sauce.

Andy Burnham 2026

The dodo (an actual ideas-based political argument) lives!

'Reform to Conserve' has acquired an entirely new meaning.

The Tories broke Britain, says Tory 🤣

Watching the Jenrick Press Conference: Really hoping a journalist asks him in the manner of Mrs Merton: "What was it about losing the Tory leadership contest that helped you realise that the Tories had broken Britain?"

It’s not long now until the official publication of the Hardback and Paperback versions of our new edited volume (29 Jan) entitled ‘Writing Politics in Modern Britain’. In anticipation of publication day a blog has been produced and is now live on the CUP website: cambridgeblog.org/2026/01/what...

I am so excited for this!

I'm at my mother-in-law's and she has these excellent figurines celebrating the early c20th Anglo-American union 🤣🤣

When Thatcher did this in the 80s, esp around 'Victorian values', the New Statesman did a special issue with @historyworkshop.org.uk detailing an alternative socioeconomic history, with a great cover of her mocked up as Victoria. I wait with baited breath @newstatesman1913.bsky.social

In case you were wondering if there was a time when people across the political spectrum used the past to think creatively and constructively about present-day problems, may I present the incontrovertible proof(s)!

Thrilled to announce that Dizzy's got his beard back!

And I won!! Sadly this was 2005.

😍😍😍

It exists! Still pondering the cover but... it exists! press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

I have a new article out. TLDR: Actively courting deportation by air is a way to claim rights as a stateless person and even as a refugee. academic.oup.com/past/advance...

'Churchill, you may recall, received the Nobel prize in literature and wrote in four volumes A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Though, if Badenoch had her way, not the English-studying peoples.' observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

'What we have lost, and what we desperately need to reclaim, is a different mode of cognition, a historical sensibility....t is a temperament that is comfortable with uncertainty, sensitive to context and aware of the powerful, often unpredictable rhythms of the past.'

Seen as we are 'battling for souls' again, I still think this (that I wrote in 2021) holds up pretty well www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...

The political culture has of course changed @lewisgoodall.com @newsagents.bsky.social - interview a historian and we will be able to tell you all about it!

Call for book proposals! Are you passionate about punk? 🤘 Do you have an idea for a book? 📖 Send us your idea for a fresh take on punk to mark the 50th anniversary, that could be the next instalment our acclaimed British Pop Archive series. 🎶 More details below 👇 #booksky #punk

The content we need. Although I now have the theme tune stuck in my head...

'She believed that her husband was one of those men whose memoirs should be written when they died.' Still finding this #Middlemarch re-read very amusing.

'Make It Happen looks at the financial crash of 2008 through the lens of 18th-century economist Adam Smith’s theories, pitting capitalism against morality.' Perhaps there is hope for a Burke play yet observer.co.uk/culture/inte...

“It matters that we understand the past and its complexities, […] because it helps us think critically, understand better, recognize complexity. …The inability or unwillingness of so many people around the world to recognize complexity is a really worrying trend.”

History & Policy will shortly be unveiling the first publicly-searchable database of historians with policy-relevant expertise. If you are a professional historian who would like to engage more with policymakers, there's still time to submit a profile. Register your interest here: bit.ly/3YMcsXu

All famines are man-made, all famines are political. Historians of empire and humanitarianism have known this forever. Gaza is not starving, Gaza is being starved, by Israel, and this starvation is enabled by our government and by every other government that does not step in to force food and aid.

FYI if any growth is recorded for the month of July I can confirm that it has been driven entirely by the sale of Oasis tshirts and bucket hats in Manchester.

Another great thing about being a historian is that when I hear about a man spontaneously taking his trousers off at work my mind automatically goes to John Stuart Mill.

This, this, a thousand times this. Past students of mine will recognize something similar as one of my very favourite rants. (Also, WFL 4 Evah)

A huge thanks to the brilliant Maya Goodfellow who recently interviewed me for @theguardian.com about my book, and the entangled histories of extinction and empire more broadly. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

@lauracforster.bsky.social presenting her wonderful book ‘The Paris Commune in Britain’ yesterday at the Bread & Roses, under the good auspices of John Burns himself. A warmly recommended read, highlighting everyday sociabilities and personal networks in political memory and movement construction.

If a government with over 400 seats and 4 years left to govern cannot summon the courage to level with the public on social care then I despair at the capacity of our political system to ever deliver the change we need.

Booking is also open for the Society's 2025 Prothero Lecture, on Weds 2 July, with Prof Peter Gatrell. Peter will speak on 'Refugee World(s): a Twentieth-Century Retrospective' and reflect on an academic career dedicated to refugee and migration history bit.ly/44Q4MYT All welcome. #Skystorians

Pass me a hat. Lots of gutted people in the friends and family WhatsApp chats today.