Nigel Biggar misrepresenting people, while also accusing other people of lying? Surely not

How does an Allen Lane paperback by a Wolfson Prize winner get the name of a prime minister wrong?

Plotting the chapters for the final section of the book I'm writing and, out of context, it looks like I've finally cracked:

After the Know-Nothings in the 1850s and the Union Party in 1860, the biggest third-party delegation in U.S. congressional history (25 reps) was the Anti-Masonic Party in the 1830s. They believed that the Illuminati and the masons were corrupting the world. Plus ca change.

The Spectator in 1921: "Mrs. Webster shows what a bad influence certain sections of the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe have played in fomenting revolution ... Our own strong impression is that [she] is getting on the right track in connecting the Protocols and llluminism"

Serendipitous discovery that the first (and maybe the last) Englishman to meet and write about Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati, was Henry Crabb Robinson during his German years

Bizarre dream in which I went back to my old college. I was given palatial rooms (study, library, living space, ornate furnishings) for life, free food, and a massive wine cellar. Then I realised I had just become a fellow.

Truly the worst day of the year as I attempt to wrestle this creature to the vet for her checkup

Alcaraz dedicating his victory to the Code of Justinian

Ahem

It's (online) publication day! Delighted to have edited the latest volume in @royalhistsoc.org's Camden Series for @cambridgeup.bsky.social @alexpreston.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Yep. Immensely learned work, but not sure I agreed or enjoyed it

I endorse this message … and thank you to @nigella.bsky.social!

Do I want to pay £3066 to make a short book review available via OpenAccess? No, I fucking don’t

Such a magnificent book

Men! What’s stopping you from drinking under the watchful eye of the German imperial eagle?

Holidays are all well and good until you start missing your cat

It is a source of endless delight that when the (real) Illuminati collapsed from 1784-87, they were essentially brought down by the Dowager Duchess of Bavaria. A formidable, acerbic matriarch ...

Help needed. There is a quote from the Bavarian playwright Marieluise Fleisser about the Ingolstadt Minster looming over the city like "a mother hen surveilling her brood" but I can't find the original source anywhere ... any ideas?

“Was ist Eurovision?”

Many congratulations to Sue Prideaux for winning the @duffcooperprize.bsky.social for her biography of Paul Gauguin. And many thanks to Artemis Cooper and the other judges for the honour of being shortlisted.

Massively kind words from the Duff Cooper judges … and from my reviewers!

Shortlisted for the @duffcooperprize.bsky.social A book of the year in @thetls.bsky.social, @economist.com & @bloomberg.com Described as “marvellous” @theguardian.com, “beautifully written” @historyextra.bsky.social & “everything that popular history should be” (Lit Rev) … And now in paperback!

Can we please draw up a list of places that a cat who is taking flea medication should not be?

Great to see @fivebooks.com briefly become Six Books to embrace the titles on The Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize shortlist! @mhtaylor.bsky.social @4thestatebooks.bsky.social @faberbooks.bsky.social @newcollegeoxf.bsky.social @liveright.bsky.social

On the back of the reparations news, the major understanders of the history of slavery have been logging on to the other place, and the discourse is mighty

Lovely to see this paperback beauty come in - published on 20 February! @mhtaylor.bsky.social @watsonlittle.bsky.social

On the home stretch … @cambridgeup.bsky.social @royalhistsoc.bsky.social

Checking the proofs of my next book - coming soon with @camhistory.bsky.social as part of @royalhistsoc.bsky.social’s Camden Series - and I have called for expert assistance

Immensely honoured to be shortlisted for this year’s @duffcooperprize.bsky.social

The Harrowing of the North? The Hammer of the Scots? Eat your heart out …

Honestly, I’m fucking fed up of the frauds writing history books … get to the end of something you really enjoyed, and the acknowledgments state: “Thanks to my assistants and PhD students for doing all the actual work, y’know, the research and stuff”

Absolute scenes at Ingolstadt in 1785 as one of the Illuminati’s allies is banished for the crimes of “wearing his habit in a gallant style” and “saying Mass in seven minutes at most”

For those of you who missed the announcement before Christmas, just to let you know of the publication of Darwinism's Generations. Available from OUP, and for those with a subscription via Oxford Academic online. It has implications across Victorian history and culture. academic.oup.com/book/58805

Publication is drawing nearer for my book Contesting Earth's History in Transatlantic Literary Culture, 1860–1935. Among other things, it discusses magic mushrooms, camels from Atlantis, Moses's interest in Ichthyosaurus, creationist poetry, reincarnated cannibals, and Satan the pterodactyl.

The incompetence of Freemasons/Illuminati continues to astound: in 1782 the Strict Observance rite of Freemasonry decided to hold a secret summit to resolve an ideological schism, but arranged it to take place at a popular spa resort at the height of the summer season

Oh God, 2025 actually begins tomorrow, doesn’t it? The first Monday of a new year … ugh

Really looking forward to Nigel Biggar’s maiden speech in the House of Lords

Start your Christmas with a comparative history of education in C18th Germany!

History Reclaimed doing History Reclaimed things: "Leave aside the fact that by 1814 Britain had outlawed the slave trade and was well along the way to a total ban on slavery" Somewhat hard to square with the fact that the British Anti-Slavery Society was not founded until 1823

This interview remains peerless. Shame it never happened.

Reading a lot about the John Birch Society. Really so, so much madder than I had thought

This is ridiculous. Jeremy Black in one breath despising historians who load judgments “with moral overtones”, and in the next he demands praise for Britain’s “benign” institutions and “national greatness” and insisting that “we should feel pride” in British history.

This cat is no respecter of work calls

It says a lot that I’ve found a corporate job in tax law, managing litigation worth tens and hundreds of millions of pounds, much less stressful than life in junior academia www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Honoured to have “Impossible Monsters” named as one of the TLS’s Books of the Tear www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-feat...

Unacceptable that I haven’t yet posted a cat photo on this platform, so here you go:

“We need more BORTS numberplates. I repeat, we need more BORTS.”

This has arrived in the post and it seems to contain a lot of discussion of tax policy, and I’m more excited about that than I should be

For obvious reasons I would not post this on the other place, but when the Trump-Musk combustion happens, the fallout will be glorious to witness