I'm giving a talk in York in a fortnight's time on how the torn-up landscape of northern France was repaired after the First World War - and what the people of Yorkshire did to help. It's at 2pm on Saturday June 13, and details are below.

Wonder if C. Harwood got in trouble for scratching his or her name on the pew door in the Wainsgate Chapel outside Hebden Bridge (now an arts venue) 65 years ago? Was it a really boring sermon that Sunday? Leaving a name was a bit of a giveaway...

Durham Cathedral has been called "the miners' cathedral". The Durham coalfields are now closed but the industry's links with the cathedral continue.

Ribblehead viaduct on the Settle to Carlisle railway, Yorkshire, 1986, photo by Denis Thorpe, Guardian photographer.

🧵Standing on the corner of Middleton Avenue and Denton Road in Ilkley is a rare surviving Penfold pillar box, one of the most distinctive Victorian post boxes still in use today. Its designer, John Wornham Penfold, was a prominent architect and founding member of the Royal Institution

🧵In the months following the liberation of the Netherlands, around 235 Dutch children arrived in Doncaster as part of a larger programme that brought thousands to Britain to recover from the effects of the devastating "Hunger Winter." They spent approximately two months at Warmsworth

Sittingbourne’s memorial to the First World War is an Avenue of Remembrance of trees and 181 name plaques of local men who died. Another 94 plaques were added for men who died in the Second World War. Sittingbourne, in Kent, was twinned with Ieper (Ypres).

I'll be talking about 'These Isles: A People's History of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales' at Litherland History Society, Merseyside, next Tues, June 2nd, 9.30 for 10am. English Martyrs Parish Hall, School Lane, all welcome, £2 inc refreshments.

Fleshmarket Close, Edinburgh, painting by Lesley Anne Derks, Scottish artist. The way to my office when I was editor of Scotland on Sunday, 1990s.

Can't help feeling there's a certain irony that this plaque is attached to the temple of consumerism that is the Manchester Arndale Centre.

Turnpike Roads, by Pam Smith. For historians, turnpikes reveal how people, goods and information moved across the landscape before the arrival of modern transport. how-to-history.com/2026/05/27/t...

Boulogne's geography was rearranged by Second World War bombing. But this is what it looked like in the First World War, according to a map drawn by my grandfather, a trainee RAF observer in 1918.

London Road Station, Manchester, 1912, now Piccadilly station (Archives+).

Gunner Jack Day, my wife's grandfather, survived the Somme and Passchendaele, but didn't escape the First World War uninjured. He played in a football match against the Guards and was tripped and knocked out. The next day, the Prince of Wales visited him in his tent to see how he was.

Well hot damn. Can the humanities be in crisis if Billie Jean King understands the value of a history degree? I mean, yes of course they can. But hell yeah! What a human. All hail the queen! www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

A few more from Eboracum.

Joseph Rowntree was born OTD 24 May in 1836 in York. Best known as the driving force behind the Rowntree chocolate empire, he was also a pioneering social reformer. One of his legacies was the model village of New Earswick. He wanted to build a genuine, mixed-community without the stigma of

I read an odd book about a cycling tour through France during the first weeks of WW1. Long out of print but I've linked to an online copy ( @nickjhistorian.bsky.social it occurs to me you might be interested in it if you've never run across it) open.substack.com/pub/jacqueli...

When I'm in Manchester, I like to visit Johanna Domke-Guyot's moving sculpture Victory Over Blindness outside Piccadilly station. More than 3,000 men lost their sight in the First World War, and this was believed to be the UK's first memorial to portray disabled soldiers.

Halifax Town Hall, in West Yorkshire, was designed by Charles Barry, of Houses of Parliament fame. It was opened in 1863 by the future Edward VII and 70,000 people turned up for the festivities. More recently (slightly), it was a location for the 1958 film Room At The Top.

In Yorkshire, we build things bigger. The Brotherton Library at Leeds University, opened in 1936 thanks to a gift from industrialist Edward Brotherton, was modelled on the Reading Room of the British Museum. Except, of course, it's 20ft wider.

This statue of a half-naked enslaved woman in chains is on display at the @nationaltrust's Cragside. The information board tells us it was a protest against slavery, but admits it might make us feel "deeply uncomfortable" today. That's how my wife felt. What do YOU think?

Under the French Code du Patrimoine, as strengthened in 2016, archaeological activity requires a permit and archaeological finds belong to the state. Under the code the French authorities have seized a private collection of WW1 artifacts built up without archaeological permits. Just sayin'...

excise officer William Deighton was murdered in 1769, prompting a government crackdown. Hartley was captured and hanged at York in 1770. The scandal later inspired ridged coin edges and remains one of Yorkshire’s darkest criminal tales. See Alts for more information.

farming to industry. The valley is most famous for the Cragg Vale Coiners of the 1760s, a notorious counterfeiting gang led by David Hartley, or “King David.” Struggling weavers clipped gold coins and forged counterfeit currency, exploiting shortages from the Royal Mint. Their reign ended after

🧵Cragg Vale, in Calderdale, evolved from a medieval hunting ground into an isolated Pennine farming community before becoming a centre of textile production during the Industrial Revolution. Rich water supplies from the surrounding moors powered early mills, transforming the valley from sheep

I've spent a lifetime as a journalist, specialising in the precise application of the English language. So it's sobering to remember that just a few generations ago, my great-great-great-grandfathers couldn't write their own names on their wedding certificates.

We've just discovered a minor (so far) carpet moth infestation. According to the guy in the hardware shop, this is very common round here as we live in a mill town. Even though most of the mills had closed half a century ago!

It's unusual to see women commemorated on British WW1 war memorials. Interesting, then, to see Staff Nurse MacBeth remembered in Pitlochry. Margaret Ann MacBeth, of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, died of flu in Canterbury on 31.10.1918.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese: (1941 - 2007): Historian, feminist, academic. After earning her Ph.D. at Harvard, she taught history at Emory University. There, she founded the Institute for Women's Studies and led the first Women's Studies doctoral programme in the US. #CelebratingWomen

Bob Dylan played the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on this day 1966 prompting a shout of ‘Judas’ from the audience for playing an electric set. Dylan replied: ‘I don’t believe you, you’re a liar!’ Photo by Mark Makin.

The "ghoul tower" in Eckford churchyard, in the Scottish Borders, is a reminder of the days of body snatching: a man with a musket kept watch at night for anyone disturbing a new grave. On the wall of the disused church is an iron collar worn by wrongdoers dressed in sack cloth.

Circa 1916-1918 silent newsreel footage of Alaskan sled dogs ferrying wounded in the Vosges mountains of France during World War I. French authorities bought over a 100 Alaskan sled dogs from around Nome & used them to traverse difficult trails. #alaskahistory #alaska

The remaining buildings of Hemingfield Colliery, known as Lower Elsecar Colliery in S. Yorks which was developed for Earl Fitzwilliam in the 1840's, under the management of Benjamin Biram, his steward, mineral agent & general manager. Digging out the shafts started in 1842 with a depth of /1

Whitby at night, photo by Denise Bartlett.

The next Labour leader must move decisively away from the status quo to beat Reform. That means giving power and wealth to working class people. It means a democratic revolution, rent controls and public ownership of water. It means someone who isn't Wes Streeting.

What a lovely evening at Hachette, celebrating the Libraro Prize. All the shortlistees were very strong, unique and original, and deserve congratulations, but special kudos to Donna, for her bold and insightful contribution!

Johanna Sophia Kettner (1724 - 1802), was an Austrian soldier. In 1743, Johanna enlisted in the imperial Austrian army as a man named Johann Kettner. Johann served in the prestigious Hagenbach infantry regiment of the Austrian army for about fourteen years. #CelebratingWomen

#DIBLives After the 1916 Rising, 171 were court-martialled, 90 were sentenced to death and #OTD 1916 Seán MacDiarmada and a wounded James Connolly were the last of the fifteen executed by firing squad in Kilmainham Gaol. Connolly was shot seated on a wooden box. www.dib.ie/biography/co...

Founded in Horbury in 1858 by the Rev. John Sharp and the Sisterhood of St Peter, the House of Mercy was created to "shelter and reform" young women labelled “fallen” in Victorian society often those facing poverty, pregnancy, or social stigma. Its history reflects Victorian values but also now

I found this 1939 painting by Humphrey Jennings in a box of rubbish in my late aunt's attic. Jennings helped organise the 1936 London Surrealist exhibition, co-founded the Mass Observation social research project, and became a documentary film-maker. He died in Poros in 1950.

Sometimes when I think I can't write, I like to look at the 1921 census and remind myself that my great grandmother Bridget couldn't remember how to spell four of her six (she ended up with ten) kids' names 😅 RIP Teresa/Theresa, Beatrice/Betris, Christian/Christine, Saraha/Sarah 🫠

Chapel congregations were once huge in industrial areas so, inevitably, many young members went away to the First World War - and some never returned. Wainsgate Chapel, in Old Town, above Hebden Bridge, is now an arts venue, but it still has its wonderful memorials to the lost generation.

I’ve always had blue plaque envy. Why can’t I live in a house like this one (on London’s Portobello Road)? Is there a blue plaque house you’ve ever fancied living in?

Many battlefield visitors have seen the caribou statue in the Newfoundland Park on the Somme - the scene of carnage on July 1, 1916. There are four other caribou on the Western Front. This one is in Monchy-le-Preux, where the Newfoundlanders defended a vital position in 1917.

The most imposing war memorials are usually civic monuments, but many companies chose to remember former employees who died during wars. This fine memorial to the dead of the First World War was put up in the entrance to a Manchester company's head office (and survived its conversion to a hotel).

Inside Shelley Methodist Church, Far Bank, Shelley, near Huddersfield which dates from 1785.

When I used to commute into London's Victoria station, I would think of the soldiers who once passed that way to the Channel ports and the Western Front. There's another Victoria station, in Manchester, and thousands of WW1 soldiers passed through this door too.

It would be nice to think there was some fascinatingly unusual reason for this crooked house on Lancaster quay, but it seems it's just subsidence. You can, however, stay in the house to find out for yourself if everything inside is wonky too.

I wonder how lucky he was?