A description of a machine that manufactures lies, from Gianni Rodari’s ‘Telephone Tales’ (1962).

A description of a machine that manufactures lies, from Gianni Rodari’s ‘Telephone Tales’ (1962).

Some excerpts from my piece in the current issue of BBC History Magazine @historyextra.bsky.social on the stories that museums can & should tell with a focus on my new book & Charlotte Schreiber’s incredible collection of over 5,000 objects that are now spread across the V&A & the British Museum

Exciting things are starting to happen @thebrooking.bsky.social (where I am a trustee). If you’re interested in buildings and their history you should be following! @constructionhist.bsky.social one for your followers maybe?

Fab conference on 19th-century museums coming up in Birmingham next month. Taking the focus away from the big names to think about the regions, the empire and the working classes. Hope to see you there!

I haven't had the capacity to keep up with moderation lists for a bit, but this one is really obvious, so I'm stealing some energy from Future Me: a list for the extremely obvious wave of inauthentic accounts following today's newly-created US gov accounts bsky.app/profile/did:...

As Halloween creeps closer, I'm chuffed to have been invited to share spooky tales with the young folk of the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust. Online, laid-back, and free to people aged 18–30 who live, work, or study in Coventry, Warwickshire, Solihull, or nearby. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/webinar-fo...

Apply for this free PhD course on Energy Humanities in Stavanger, Norway! Please pass the opportunity on to students you know. Students from anywhere are welcome. #envhum #envhist

This is a problem.

Likelihood of getting any work done this afternoon: severely limited.

RAPTCHA

Are you free next Sunday? Do you live in Oxford? I'm running a noticing workshop at Caper Books for children ages 5 to 9. We'll be finding joyous, tiny stories in ordinary things to help with overwhelm and discover magic in the everyday! And tickets are only £3! To book: tinyurl.com/4tutvvfm #oxford

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’ Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

The contract is signed so it’s official - I am joining the Future Ecologies of Clay project at Westminster Uni/V&A as a Research Fellow. If you are a museum collecting contemporary ceramics please watch this space!

📢 Reminder: the deadline for the Social History Society Small Grants is coming up soon! 💷 Up to £1000 available to support research, events & activities in social & cultural history 🗓️ Apply by 1 October for events Dec–Apr 🔗 socialhistory.org.uk/funding/smal... ✨Apply today!

If you're aged 16-18 and are looking for help achieving your artistic, academic, or creative goals, the Arts Emergency mentoring programme might be exactly the opportunity you need! More info 👉 www.arts-emergency.o... Applications close 29 Sep 25

g o o d m o r n i n g

Some wonderful work at this year’s British Ceramics Biennial.

🚨JOB Alert🚨 We are looking for another postdoctoral researcher to cover the history of veterans in the British colonies of Southern and/or East Africa in the interwar period. 24 month contract, deadline October 03. Please share widely. universityvacancies.com/maynooth-uni...

Cosy.

Keen to reach new audiences? We are offering up to £8k to humanities and social sciences researchers to deliver public engagement projects working in partnership with a gallery, archive, library or museum. Deadline 15th Oct www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/shap...

Can anyone help - I’m trying to find a publication I used in a class I taught 15 years ago (alas, younger me was not good at filing). It was a micro history of a village, I think in East Anglia. There was an archival reference to rice or rice pudding that revealed a global network of trade.

An excellent point, and one addressed by many of the contributors to our recent (free, open access) book ‘British Local History and the Black Atlantic’.

SPAB fellowships in traditional builiding trades. www.spab.org.uk/learning/fel...

Kids are away, so he and I have spent two solid days writing, breaking only to go for (separate) walks. A blissful glimpse of the future.

Some shows we (13yo, 10yo and I) especially enjoyed at the Fringe this year: - @matricardo.bsky.social‘s masterful vaudeville - Fly You Fools! Pitch-perfect LOTR parody by Recent Cutbacks - John Hegley - sharp, moving and very funny. Also the Steve McQueen exhibition at Modern Two was captivating.

Had a particularly good one of these today, which gave me a reference number to quote in all communications, but no contact info except the ‘no reply’ address.

The fruit trees this year are like a Samuel Palmer painting. This from a stroll across the common - the whole place carpeted and scented with fermenting plums.

First fig of the year from our garden - almost exactly a month earlier than last year. They like the sunshine!

PSA if you pay self-assessment tax in the UK that HMRC seem to delight in actively not reminding you about the second instalment, due on 30 July.

Does anyone here speak Japanese and understand knitting patterns? I’ve figured out the rest, but I can’t work out what the bracketed lists of numbers marked in yellow are for. I guess they must indicate increases and decreases but how?! Really grateful for any suggestions or shares. Thanks!

Does anyone here speak Japanese and understand knitting patterns? I’ve figured out the rest, but I can’t work out what the bracketed lists of numbers marked in yellow are for. I guess they must indicate increases and decreases but how?! Really grateful for any suggestions or shares. Thanks!

Research Fellow in Decarbonisation of the Heritage Sector- UCL - Bartlett School of Environment, Energy, and Resources #skystorians 🗃️www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNS437/r...

20 years ago today my now-husband called me at work to tell me he’d heard an explosion from his office in Bloomsbury. I didn’t really believe him, kept trying to persuade him it must have just been a car crash or something.

This is tomorrow! I’ve got some lovely pictures of crazy Victorian terracotta buildings to share!

Hi @blindboyboatclub.bsky.social I enjoyed the yogurt podcast and thought you might appreciate this early 20th century ad for Bulgarian Health Milk and proto-fro-yo from the baths in Leamington Spa.

This conference on C19 museums will be brilliant. Please submit your proposals that expand the field beyond the nationals and London-centrism - regional museums, international/colonial networks, mechanics’ institute collections etc etc. Deadline 12 July.

Tell me how well a machine can interpret historical sources for you, and I’ll tell you how mechanical your interpretation of historical sources already is.

I’ll be at this workshop next Tues. It looks like a really interesting programme - come along if you’re in Oxford.

If you want kids off devices, get rid of the cars off their streets. Build more LTNs. Stop building car dependent sprawl. Kids want to play outside; it’s their parents who don’t let them because of subconscious (and understandable) fears about them being hit by drivers.

£2 may not seem a huge amount to some, but I promise you it underwrites the most established independent youth service in UK culture, enabling all kinds of wonderful outcomes and opportunities☀️

There is a hugely important campaign to save my local 6th form, a vital community led college which provides for often the most underserved communities and does a superb job. In 2023 50% of the Black students who studied History at Oxford came from there. Please sign! chng.it/bBdk5CWdcr

First hatchlings of the year.

A 🧵 about stonecutting: A few weeks ago, around the same time that I read the piece by the incomparable @katewagner.bsky.social‬ about the Regional Car Dealership Rococo of the present White House I noticed this little pecked spandrel beside the entry arch of the old Carleton County Courthouse…

We are hiring a new PhD student in the history group @unistavanger.bsky.social. There are several possible topics, including «Intersections between history education and education for sustainable development/environmental citizenship», which should be interesting for the #envhist #envhum crowd.

Picked up this glorious beast for free from the very expensive florist in town - apparently it wasn’t worth their while to pick off the scale insects. It’s a good four feet across! Will take up most of the bathroom, but it’s welcome to it.

Pendant in the Form of a Frog Greater Nicoya, Costa Rica, 1000- 1500 AD. collections.carlos.emory.edu/objects/1869...

It's a fundamentally conservative idea that art is good when it's detailed, realistic, and predictable. This impulse also promotes neoclassical architecture, three-point-thesis writing, and pristine audio production. It's a boring blight on creativity and expression.

Happy birthday to the best little old man, 16 today.

Great job everyone