We are thrilled to announce that Pauline Van Thienen will be presenting 21st April on 'Reconsidering Catherine de' Medici's Wedding Negotiations: The Scottish Dimension'. Please follow the link to sign up for this free, online presentation!

EDINBURGH RHAPSODY IN BLUE:—View across the Old Town. #Edinburgh #hyperlocal #news

St Andrews may be the most American university in the U.K. “You think you’re coming to get this Scottish or international experience, and there’s just so many Americans.” 🔗 on.wsj.com/4rvrJs5

🚨🚨 Announcing: SUMMA 🚨🚨 Simple spreadsheet software for calculating with Early Modern English currency. gjhilton.github.io/Summa/

When a Community Comes Together: People Power and the Lessons of Kenmure Street by Gerry Hassan bellacaledonia.org.uk/2026/03/19/w...

I wrote this about art restoration for the FT. www.ft.com/content/bfa0...

What a fantastic day of Scottish History awaits! Join us on 28th March for our conference, AGM and presidential lecture. Free to members, £6 non-members Register here: www.tickettailor.com/events/scott... Please share!

Interested in fifteenth-century Scotland, England, Atlantic voyages, or whether Scottish women had the most beautiful headdresses in the world? Then this new edition of Pedro de Ayala's letter from 1498 could be for you! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Tomorrow at 5:30 GMT, tune in to Amy Blakeway's lecture ‘The Anglo-Scottish Wars of the 1540s: occupation, reconstruction, “rough wooings” and rape’. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/john-durka...

🎥Watch the 2025 Sue Innes Lecture, now available on our website, where @vawright10.bsky.social explores women-led grassroots campaigns for improved housing across Glasgow during the twentieth century Watch here 👇 womenshistoryscotland.org/news-and-eve... #WomensHistoryMonth #ScottishHistory

Can anyone recommend a good narrative history of La Salle, the French explorer?

🚨NEW Blogpost🚨 We all know about the #OldFirm. But what's the 'oldest firm' in the history of Scottish #football? ⚽🏉 The answer takes us back to #medieval and #earlymodern St Andrews, where university and city invested in an unlawful game. 👇 ludicrushistories.wordpress.com/2026/03/12/t...

Neat way to tell a century of personal and public history. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/n...

Until 31st May applications for the Research Bursary are open! We’re offering one £500 bursary to support research in women’s and gender history. Find out more and apply via the link below. Let’s keep discovering and sharing Scotland’s women’s histories! womenshistoryscotland.org/projects-and...

Have finished the splendid Cynthia Neville festschrift Crossing Borders (eds @kjkesselring.bsky.social & Sara Butler). Scottish essays of particular note for me are @kiritekatawa.bsky.social on banishment, Amy Blakeway on spies, and Steve Boardman on battle of Harlaw.

What is an SHR article? Laura Stewart, Convener of the Scottish Historical Review Trust, tries to propose an answer. You can read more about it here: www.euppublishing.com/do/10.5555/n...

Who else has found mythological first names in their Scottish records? I've a couple of Hectors and Herculeses and one each of Dionysus and Lancelot.

16 July 1643, the kirk session of Culross hired a painter named Valentine to whitewash the kirk walls. Other session business that day included fining John Aidie 12s for fishing on the Sabbath and an ordinance for residents of both "town and land" to "attend the watching of the witches".

Think this deserves a bit more attention. The ‘favourites’ of James VI have recently been the subject of popular history books and representation on television. But what do Scottish early modernists think? www.thenational.scot/culture/2584...

Video and audio recordings are now available of the Society's latest lecture (6 February): ‘Alike in Appearance but not in Scope’: Queens and the Making of Medieval Europe' with Professor Charles West (University of Edinburgh) bit.ly/46j42f5 @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social #Skystorians

From the NY Times Best TV shows of 2025. Unforgotten is the best, but not unforgettable.

Any suggestions for where I might find information on early-1600s Edinburgh tailors? Looking for William Elder, tailor and burgess.

Siobhán McSweeney modeling the scholar at work and play.

“Paws on Parchment” - this exhibition looks amazing as do the visiting kittens. (Image below of four foster kittens who visited the exhibition at the Walters Museum shortly after it opened). www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a... #medievalsky

Come for the loos, stay for the sleeves.

Guitar Center Institutes 72-Hour Waiting Period https://theonion.com/guitar-center-institutes-72-hour-waiting-period/

In December 1644, Canongate kirk session organised a clothing drive for "their souldiers in the north". Donated were, quote: 1. new clothes 72 stands 2. old clothes 126 stands 3. new hoise 25 pair 4. old hoise 40 pair 5. old boots 35 pair 6. shoon 9 pair 7. sarks 62

James II on his way to the siege of Roxburgh where he was blown up by his own cannon - probably The Lion, wore a cloak made from four and half ells of purple velvet which must have looked quite impressive. ( Quatuor ulnis cum quarta panni serici dicti vellus purpurii colouris)

So much for voice technology. The earworm in question turned out to be Crocodile Rock 🤷🏻‍♀️

Pleased to learn today the origin of, 'know which side your bread is buttered on'. I thought it was something archaic and literal, but it's in a poem about an arguing couple from John Heywood's 1562 'Epigrams & Proverbs'. The man says his wife can't tell who's bad or good for her, and she says:

A new post for the new year: "A New Year’s Gift: Fish, Flesh, and ‘Unlawful Diet’ in Early Modern England" legalhistorymiscellany.com/2026/01/06/a...

Skating on Inverleith Pond today

What sort of crossword clue is this, NY Times??

My top leisure reads of 2025. Honorable mention to rereads The Leopard and The Great Gatsby.

On the 6th day of Christmas 1574, Aberdeen kirk session disciplined Elspet, Marione, Isabell, 4 Jonets, 3 Nans, 2 Mages, Alexander Fydleris wife, and Andrew Buk's servant for "plaing, dansin, and singin off fylthe carrolles on Yeull Day, at evin, and on Sonday, at even, thairefter."

Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play In Time, Place Shakespeare Intended https://theonion.com/unconventional-director-sets-shakespeare-play-in-time-1819569151/

Return of the mystery portrait! This time in Top Hat (1935).

A clue for you all!

New Discover page I wrote looking at momentoes of the First and Second World Wars to accompany our current exhibition "Maps: Memories from the Second World War" at the National War Museum, Edinburgh www.nms.ac.uk/discover-cat...

Delighted that a copy of Nathan Hood’s first monograph arrived in the post today! Nathan’s work to date on emotions in early modern Scotland has been outstanding. I am sure this is going to be great too and I can’t wait to read it.

Worth a listen for this observation alone: It wasn’t their fault that centuries of unwise marital choices had led them looking like this.

This almond butter sounds delicious (Jane Parker, Wellcome 3769, 1651)

Good gravy does this ruffler have a sensational history. 1620s, English, owned by Sir Edwin Rich (b.1594) to Dame Zandra Rhodes (b.1940). Sold for 30x upper est. I'd like to know the story behind one of the holes and its corresponding blood stain! Unboxing video on auction house's insta.

In one of our newest #OpenAccess articles, @allankennedy.bsky.social (from @dundee.ac.uk) views petitioning in early modern Scotland as a mechanism of interaction between ruler and ruled: 'Petitioning the Justiciary Court in Restoration Scotland, 1660–88' tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

“No news of my book. O Publishers why are you so slow in deciding what is so obvious—that it is a good, a very good book?”—Chips Channon, 21 June 1926

At least 50% of Underground stations sound like an early 17th c plot to overthrow the Stuarts.

Patriots Starting To Regret Drafting 130-Pound Linebacker Based Exclusively On Strength Of Cover Letter https://theonion.com/patriots-starting-to-regret-drafting-130-pound-linebacker-based-exclusively-on-strength-of-cover-letter/

Mistress Young's Edinburgh macaroons c. 1640, 'beat 4 or 5 eggis the wheits of them with a tuig till it be all turned to fome', full recipe in ALT text