Out now! Literary Review's September 2025 issue, featuring @willtosh.bsky.social on Christopher Marlowe @claireharman.bsky.social on Muriel Spark Seamus Perry on Tennyson Lucy Hughes-Hallett on the stiff upper lip Patrick Wilcken on Easter Island and much, much more: literaryreview.co.uk

This will be FAB 🧚🏻‍♂️

From apprentice to master playwright: Shakespeare learns his craft. ✍️ Will Tosh

In an excerpt from "Straight Acting," @willtosh.bsky.social tells the story of Richard Barnfield's meteoric rise in literary London in the 1590s and how his groundbreaking poetry influenced Shakespeare's sonnets. Read the full excerpt: www.folger.edu/blogs/shakes...

Absolutely chuffed and very grateful that STRAIGHT ACTING has been shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize 2024 - it’s made my week! www.str.org.uk/grants-prize...

Grazie mille to Fabio and Sonia Massai and all at Sapienza Università di Roma for having me!

I can’t promise this will be brilliant but I can certainly promise to have a brilliant time delivering it IN ROME. 🥳 indeed!

Absolutely delighted that #StraightActing is out in paperback (that’s like quarto, for all you early modern drama fans) today!

SOME NEWS: It's been a honour and a joy to have devised this celebration of the glorious life, work and wit of P.G. Wodehous, hosted by Sir Stephen Fry, with guest stars including Alexander Armstrong and Stephen Mangan. Tuesday 20th May, Wilton's Music Hall, in aid of the National Literacy Trust.

Everybody knows #Shakespeare. Beneath the surface, much of Shakespeare’s work surrounds ideas of gender and queerness. Welcome, @willtosh.bsky.social as we discuss his book 'The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare' @sceptrebooks.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/0aYb... #shelfie

Very glad to have had the chance to review Simon Goldhill’s queer history of King’s for @thetls.bsky.social t.co/CCdCXZNPtU

Enjoyed chatting to @mrnicklevine.bsky.social for this fun piece on Edward II www.bbc.co.uk/culture/arti...

What fun to go to the movies with Jason and get AWFULLY nitpicky about Shakespeare in Love - a film which I still adore, despite everything.

Hurry hurry! It’s a month or so till STRAIGHT ACTING: THE MANY QUEER LIVES OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE comes out in paperback, but order it from @waterstones.bsky.social today or tomorrow and get 25% off! #WPreorders #StraightActing www.waterstones.com/book/straigh...

This is the most dazzlingly written piece of criticism, and I’m not just saying that because Cheney very shrewdly reads Straight Acting alongside Marjorie Garber’s Shakespeare in Bloomsbury: read to the end for a powerful articulation of the consolations of literature in terrible times.

Wonderful - the whole film is available to watch via a link in the article. www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Are we at a turning point in world history? | David Motadel

We don’t talk enough about how utterly repellent the food looks on #TheTraitors

Will on Will…a wonderfully researched and nuanced take on the “was he or wasn’t he” question Friends…he was. @willtosh.bsky.social did all the incredibly researched and passionate legwork, inadvertently definitively answering the question and, more importantly, casting WS accurately in his time

A widely used #Christmas time special of the European past was to buy and wear a paper crown. A paper crown, #skystorians? Yes, a printed paper crown. And the tiny street seller highlighted in this #earlymodern painting is selling them. Let's have a festive 🧵

Currently reading #booksky #shakespeare @willtosh.bsky.social

Grateful to have the opportunity to review Simon Russell Beale’s intelligent and rather moving memoir-meets-character-study A PIECE OF WORK. I’m sure SRB isn’t: he comes across as deeply thoughtful and wise. www.spectator.co.uk/article/fort...

Get 2025 off to a grand start!

Now seems like a good time to remind people that your followers are not actually ‘followers’, they don’t give that many shits about you. You’re just a person with an account on social media, not fucking Jesus.

James Joyce admits how he funded the writing of his novels

Zoom in for a surprise. #barnetrevisited

I am a bat flying across the moon at the stroke of twelve, I am a wolf running through the trees, I am OVERJOYED that Midnight Treasure is @thetimes.com Children’s Book of the Year 2024! The 21 best children’s books of 2024 www.thetimes.com/article/612d...

Artists: The Folger Shakespeare Library offers 1,2, and 3-month fellowships, which can be fully onsite, fully virtual, or a combination of the two. $4,000 per virtual month and $5,000 per onsite month. Applications due 1/15/25. #theatre #art #playwrights #artists www.folger.edu/research/the...

Fantastic news that I can't believe I missed - finally the UK copyright status of photographs of artworks in the public domain has been clarified in the courts - in the right direction. If a work is in the public domain, so is a photograph of it. www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/12/29/c...

We’re looking for a Producer to join our amazing creative team (I’m not at all biased…) Please take a look, share, and let me know if you have any questions! smartify.org/careers/seni...

Did you complete your History PhD in the UK or Ireland? Did you publish your first academic monograph this year in 2024? Please consider submitting it for consideration for the RHS First Book Prize! Nominations open on Mon 1 December and close Fri 31 January 2025. 🗃️ royalhistsoc.org/royal-histor...

At the Irish Embassy in London last night to celebrate the publication of Oliver Goldsmith in Context @cambridgeup.bsky.social. Great to meet up with other contributors including the brilliant Norma Clarke (+ bonus @willtosh.bsky.social ) and toast the editors.

I’m a Broadway Direct festive book pick! Take that LRB Christmas round-up! #StraightActing broadwaydirect.com/2024-holiday...

Superb piece by the superb @katemaltby.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It *is* excellent and supported by the Shakespeare Centre London (KCL and the Globe) - do get involved!

Spotted @willtosh.bsky.social on display at Bridge Street Books in Georgetown

@willtosh.bsky.social It’s a wonderful book, Will! I waited a long time to find a book like this. Thanks for your scholarship. When I get a moment, I’ll post a review to Amazon - and maybe Goodreads? A marvelous read!

Well it’s very nice to see you all here in this genial new space! I’ll try and keep to my established ratio of 50% book posts, 25% photos of Huxley, and 25% whatever the hell is happening in that Frederic Leighton sculpture.