Since they are suddenly back in the spotlight, here's a link to an old essay that Josephine & I wrote for the New Left Project (back when that was a thing) that touches on the unlikely combo of the 1880s Fabians and gay sex.

“My wife went to Riyadh to see an edgy comedian” “Jimmy Carr?” “No, she went of her own accord”

Since they are suddenly back in the spotlight, here's a link to an old essay that Josephine & I wrote for the New Left Project (back when that was a thing) that touches on the unlikely combo of the 1880s Fabians and gay sex.

A good day to join the Fabians… fabians.org.uk/membership/j...

I've been podcasting again! This time I spoke about how 'Plato: a civic life' provides the historical background to Plato's thought and helps to explain how his ideas developed - with Morteza Hajizadeh from New Books Network: newbooksnetwork.com/plato

I thought it would be impossible for a party to misunderstand their election victory and coalition, as well as the wider political landscape, more than the Conservatives during the last parliament. Clearly, quite a few in Labour who wish to prove that wrong, unhingedly so.

A fine obituary to the brilliant radical English poet www.thetimes.com/uk/obituarie...

A wonderful poet. One of the great experiences of my teaching career was having to take over a module on classical reception for literature students and being able to devote a class to his various reworkings of Greek plays and reflections on his own complex relationship with Classics.

Labour restores whip to two more child benefit cap rebels

Just stopped at a French service station and had not had Cannonade of Valmy dress-up being on sale. To be fair we were at Valmy but ...

Hello! 👋🌍 You can now listen worldwide to our very funny episode of BBC YOU’RE DEAD TO ME about Hannibal of Carthage My guests are the fantastic comedian Darren Harriott and the brilliant ancient historian Professor @josephinequinn.bsky.social — listen wherever you get your podcasts!

Calling it a Britcard would seem to contravene the Good Friday Agreement in terms of the agreement to respect the right of people in Northern Ireland to identify solely as Irish. I would have thought that would have been a fairly easy thing to avoid.

CHOTINER: You've been cited by some pretty heavyweight contemporary figures. Is that vindication? THUCYDIDES: All one can hope for is a few discerning readers who really get what the work's about. CHOTINER: Henry Kissinger, Steve Bannon... THUCYDIDES: I see where you're going with this.

Hello lovely people. My little ones are doing a fundraising walk for Gaza, absolutely no pressure to donate but the link for their fundraising page is here: www.launchgood.com/v4/campaign/...

It's almost like Andy Burnham has looked at the Labour leadership election rules or something

CHOTINER: Sure. But you do say that you weren’t able to record the exact words of speeches. THUCYDIDES: Well, I wasn’t always there, and eyewitnesses aren’t always reliable… CHOTINER: But you present them as if they’re transcripts? THUCYDIDES: I… make the speakers say what was appropriate.

On the blog today - a new book from @bodleian.ox.ac.uk Publishing which is perfect for any booklover - Looking After Your Books! More here: kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2025/09/25/i...

What an excellent cat.

All right everybody, time to read (or reread) The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. Ground rules: we are not reading for the history of 1848-1852 France, but we're also not looking for direct parallels to the contemporary US. We are looking for broad lessons on politics and just generally good lines.

Marc Bloch will be admitted to the Pantheon in Paris! The date for the "Panthéonisation" is set for 16 June 2026. Meanwhile, @sorbonneparis1.bsky.social has launched a website to keep track of the many conferences to celebrate the event. Some of them start this month. marcbloch.pantheonsorbonne.fr

Seconded. (Somewhat tangentially: as someone who doesn't really "get" opera, I've often felt that maybe what people get from opera is what I get from this scene.)

This may be the finest scene in all of cinema.

My grandfather was Antifa en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_R...

Every single person who speaks with Isaac Chotiner does their own version of “it never worked out for those people… but it might work for us” and then they walk straight into the buzzsaw

I have eaten The leaves That were on the Mini rose plant Which a student Gave you In June As a thank you. Forgive me They were so crisp Going down And coming up again. (Yes, Mitzi is making herself at home already.) 🐈‍⬛🐈 #cats

New from @EmpirePodUK LIKE A WOLF ON THE FOLD- THE ASSYRIAN WAR MACHINE COMES TO GAZA With Professor Jo Quinn Our 12-hour-long deep dive into History of Gaza is already our most popular series ever- people are super hungry to understand all the nuances of this contested past

Today, the survey gets an overview of Phoenicia. Had to get out and reread some of one of the best books ever written on the subject—by @josephinequinn.bsky.social. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

What’s the most Tory-coded thing you actively love? Cricket. Rugby. Opera. (Country music doesn't count, because it is USAnian.) (I also like the novels of Anthony Powell.)

Last week I had a bit in @theguardian.com about how rhetoric provides a vocabulary for people to think/argue with. Here's my colleague @robtoes.bsky.social explaining how exactly that was done by online reactionaries inventing 'Boriswave'. Read & learn. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Now that the Equinox has been and gone, I rename the enormous folder of unread pdfs on my desktop "Autumn Reading", by way of marking the passing of the seasons and the inexorable march of time.

Thanks to a Google News alert, I've discovered I'm not the most embarrassing person with my name.

Time to talk about one of my favourite Oxford buildings, 26-27-28 Cornmarket!! Popularly known as The Old Pret

Are you dying to know if Hegel hated ersatz coffee? Then boy do I have the piece for you. Very happy to be part of the JHI blog forum on political economy in intellectual history!

This is really nicely done.

Geweldig interview met @josephinequinn.bsky.social, hoogleraar Oude Geschiedenis aan Cambridge. Naar aanleiding van haar boek over 4000 jaar geschiedenis van het Westen. Over broederschap, beschavingsdenken en Brexit. Nu wil ik die pil op mijn nachtkastje… www.volkskrant.nl/boeken/de-we...

With another 9 @ucu.org.uk branches now calling on UCU to do the right thing we wonder if @drjogrady.bsky.social is listening to her members.

Can’t be a worse idea than “universities have been marketized for almost 30 years and things have only gotten worse, so they need to just marketize themselves harder”

Schumpeter, of course, loved nothing more than bureaucracy and centralisation

He's already on the first- and third-year undergraduate Politics syllabus here at Cambridge, so perhaps we should add him to the second-year syllabus, too? #zombieuniversity #brains

Reading about the 1844 business where the authorities in London were intercepting Giuseppe Mazzini's post. He noticed something was awry because his letters were arriving two hours after they should have done.

I was in the United States as a PhD student throughout the second Clinton term--which didn't feel up to much at the time, but in retrospect looks like a golden age.

Chris in finest roguishly handsome mode here. Passengers on the train be warned: do *not* play cards with this fellow. You *will* lose everything.

My little Plato: a civic life, as reviewed in the New York Sun earlier this year - paywall but you can read one article for free.

It all comes back to 'you can't run a campaign literally entitled "Change" and then wonder why voters don't reward you for things not meaningfully changing'.

So, THIS is happening "Rewild the Internet: How to Resist Big Tech" will be published by Simon & Schuster in NY and Bloomsbury in London. Every bit of power we take from Big Tech takes it away from autocrats like Trump. Showing how is what I'm doing to meet this moment. (tk u @robin.berjon.com)

Jo was interviewed by de Volkskrant, who asked about Ptolemy. www.volkskrant.nl/boeken/de-we...

Unfortunately any academic has a certain % of Casaubon in them and we can at best control where we are on the slide between 1% and "the key to all mythologies".

This venture was always going to fail but it’s simply astonishing how quickly it has happened. What a bunch of amateurs. The left deserves better

"Democracies risk falling into a doom loop, in which restrictions on immigration mean ever greater demands on the purse of the native-born population and ever worse services, which in turn deepens opposition towards immigration" @stephenkb.bsky.social calls for honesty. www.ft.com/content/43da...