I was a philosophy professor before I became a librarian. People from my former profession appear in the Epstein files, but none in my current one. As it happens, I’m happier as a librarian.

The Tank Cemetery at Ypres - Passchendaele 1917: the latest @OldFrontLinePod video out now: youtu.be/lKb6QdkTQuQ

It's pancake day - maybe not in the UK, but here in France it's Candlemas, and that means pancakes. It's suggested that the golden circles represent the sun of the coming spring. Of course, the French probably serve them with Nutella.

Patricia Maxwell Sullivan was a member of the Foreign Office and a passenger on an aircraft that crashed en route to the 1945 Yalta Conference, where the “Big Three” were due to meet to discuss the post-war reorganisation of Germany and Europe. 📍Imtarfa Military Cemetery 🇲🇹

There are always signs of hope if you look for them.

A warning from the past (1921). If you find pieces of very hot coke at your local gasworks, do NOT be tempted to take them home in a sack.

NO LIES 👇 DETECTED.......

The mysteries of the universe in Lego bricks? Sounds like an irresistible proposition...

PHOTO OF THE DAY. Londoners go about daily life in Fleet Street as smoke rises after the explosion of a German V1 flying bomb (1944). 📷 google images

Two clips from the amazing film 'A Day in the Life of a Munitions Worker', made in 1917 at the National Shell Filling Factory Chilwell, Nottingham. A massive explosion at the factory in 1918 killed 134 workers. Source: www.iwm.org.uk/collections/... 1/2

Fascinating novel, published in 1934 as the first of a trilogy, about the terrifying effects of the rise of Nazism. Sally Carson, real name Sylvia, spent a lot of time in Bavaria, so was recounting these frightening events contemporaneously, making this all the more important.

The house that chicory built... this extraordinary house, with extravagant interiors, was built for the Williot family in northern France - the first people to industrialise the production of chicory. What? You didn't realise chicory HAD been industrialised..?

My 73yr old dad, a local newspaper reporter from 1969-2015, was stopped at the door of a beer festival today by the Colchester Gazette and asked to vox pop on difficulties facing local pubs in the current economic climate. In his ELEMENT. Actor on Oscars red carpet excitement. Love this for him.

🏛️ The beautiful mosaic floor of the Roman baths at the sanctuary of Poseidon, Isthmia, Greece. The baths were built in 150 CE on the site of pre-existing ancient Greek baths. 📹 My own.

I'll be at Wigan Local History and Heritage Society talking about 'These Isles: A People's History of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales' on Monday March 9th, 7pm, Real Crafty, 9 Upper Dicconson St. Free entry, all welcome. Book due out Feb 26th, available for preorder.

On this day in 1944, a 15 year old Dutch Jewish girl arrived at Auschwitz along with her parents. They were murdered in the gas chamber after selection. Her name was Marie Brilleslijper Please support @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social

Holocaust victims remembered... the Roma population of northern France was rounded up by the Nazis and deported to the death camps. The people taken from Poix-du-Nord have finally been remembered in recent years, thanks to mayor Jean-Pierre Mazingue. Look at the ages.

Bourges was once the capital of France: Louis VII, husband of Elinor of Aquitaine before she married Henry II of England, was crowned in the cathedral here on Christmas Day 1137.

Dr Isobel Addey Tate was a remarkable female doctor who served with the Serbian Relief Fund during the Great War and died in Malta on this day in 1917. 📍Pieta Military Cemetery 🇲🇹

Sinkhole swallows walkway on Wales Coast Path. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Rolls of honour. St. Cuthbert’s Church, Norham, Northumberland. First and Second World Wars. #LestWeForget

I'll be talking about 'These Isles: A People's History of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales' at Friends of Marsden Library, west Yorks, on Thurs March 5th, 7.30pm, Mechanics Hall. Book due out Feb 26th, can be preordered from bookshops and websites.

Louise Blanchard Bethune (1856–1913) is generally considered to be the first woman to practice as a professional architect in the United States. Her enthusiasm and advocacy led to 200 women joining the profession by the year of her death.

The Sambre-Oise canal, where poet Wilfred Owen was killed as he tried to get across it, on November 4 1918. Famously, his mother received the telegram informing her of his death as Britain was celebrating the Armistice exactly a week later.

Curry-flavoured popcorn, in a bistrot in Albert, northern France, was a new one on me. But maybe I have just led a sheltered life.

This is William Garforth - Governor of the Merchant Adventurers from 1719-1721. He had a house built by John Carr of York in 1757 to house all his wigs (we assume). If you own a fancy wig collection too, his house is for sale for £3.5 million: rightmove.co.uk/properties/166982711#/?channel=RES_BUY

For those of us who live in Hebden Bridge, Happy Valley has different connotations.

Bill Richmond and Tom Molineaux are to be honoured with a blue plaque in London after years of lobbying by Black History Walks 🥊👊🏾🍻 Please join us at UCL’s large auditorium, the Cruciform Building, London, 15 April 2026, 6.30pm. Tickets are free! grapplingwithhistory.com/2026/01/22/c...

First archive visit of 2026 ✨️📚 A productive day at Glamorgan Archives looking at documents relating to Glamorgan County Asylum and Cholera 🔍 Here's a glimpse of what I looked at ✨️ • Patient Casefiles • Aberdare Board of Health • Medical Journals • Merthyr Cholera Committee #Wales #History

Yes yes, ruins, palaces, mosaics, gold coins, jewellery, all very impressive, but a prehistoric ladder and a mysterious structure makes me just as happy! This could have been a well or maybe even a steam bath! oxfordcotswoldarchaeology.org.uk/news/wonderf...

This time on MY LIFE IN THE PAST! Cracking the very cold case of the Thames Torso Murderer in 1880s London. lucyworsley.substack.com/p/two-sarahs...

Fascinating novel, published in 1934 as the first of a trilogy, about the terrifying effects of the rise of Nazism. Sally Carson, real name Sylvia, spent a lot of time in Bavaria, so was recounting these frightening events contemporaneously, making this all the more important.

History books on the First World War will have to be rewritten now that Donald Trump has explained to us that the war finished because of the Spanish flu epidemic.

Flora Lion, ‘Women's Canteen at Phoenix Works, Bradford.’ 1918. Source: www.iwm.org.uk/collections/...

When in France, I like seeking out Great War trench art. These were originally produced by soldiers behind the lines, but later they were often made as souvenirs for battlefield tourists. They vary in size: sometimes they are quite large but this one is less than 10cm tall.

Clipston war memorial lamp. Clipston, Northamptonshire. First and Second World Wars. #LestWeForget

This afternoon, @tealcartoons.bsky.social and I visited San Michele Cemetery. It's one of my favourite spaces in Venice - a whole island of the dead! Here's a thread on some of the more unusual graves we came across. /1

PHOTO OF THE DAY. An East London “knocker-up” whose job was to wake up workers in the morning (1929). 📷 google images

Cleminson Street, Salford. Salford pioneered play streets, traffic-free from 8am till sunset (borrowed from New York) in the 1930s. Legislation followed: there were 700 in England and Wales in the 1950s, all but forgotten by the 1980s.

1/17/1820 — b. Anne Brönte, English author, poet. Pseudonym Acton Bell; the youngest sister of the Brontë #literary family. Her notable works are "Agnes Grey" (1847) and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" (1848). She died of pulmonary tuberculosis at age 29 #womenshistory #womenwriters #BookSky #BOTD

🦷 “analysis of tooth enamel samples collected from the remains of people buried in England b/w the end of Roman rule in Britain around A.D. 400 & the arrival of the Normans around 1100 indicates that migration to the island was continuous throughout the period” 🦷 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Everyone knows that the invading German army committed atrocities in Belgium in 1914. But it wasn't just in Belgium. This account, from The Scotsman in 1921, is about Margny, which is near the Belgian border but is nevertheless in France.

In the latest @oldfrontline.bsky.social QnAs we discuss chaplains on the Western Front, were German machine-gunners really chained to their weapons, why were some sectors more heavily mined than others and the task of photographing wargraves during & after #WW1. oldfrontline.co.uk/2026/01/10/q...

#FontsOnFriday & the font at Hereford Cathedral Believed to be completed around the same time as the nave ~1140 The lions at the base are a later c14 addition The mutilation of the faces likely a product of the civil war

Miniature boat carved from a pit #photography, #potd2026, #photoaday, #pad2026-014, #olivepitcarving, #miniature, #hediao #boat, #macro, #upclose, #tinyart

The Strid, in Wharfedale, Yorkshire, looks lovely but has been described as the deadliest stretch of water in the world. The wide River Wharfe narrows to just two metres - but it's up to 65 metres deep. Many have died over the years after falling in, including a young nobleman in 1152.

A short video of the north east corner of Ardoch Roman fort in Perthshire, Scotland for #RomanFortThursday. Sometimes described as one of the best preserved Roman forts in the world, its multiple ditches are evidence of three periods of occupation.

A memorial to the crew of a Wellington bomber who were all killed when their aircraft crashed during a cross-country training flight on the outskirts of Hinckley on the night of 14 January 1945. 📍Burbage, Leicestershire 🇬🇧

The fog of war: you might expect a Victoria Cross recipient from Lancashire to have been in a local regiment. Of course, John McNamara was - until the destruction of the First World War led to him becoming an East Surrey man. East Surrey must have seemed a long way from Preston to this young man.