www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTqX... #musicsky #nowplaying #vicchesnutt

I’m about to meet one of my real‑life heroines!! This week, I get to talk to the beautiful & brave writer, Arundhati Roy, about her newly restored *In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones* as part of London Indian Film Festival The film will screen before our Q&A! whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/defau...

Who Are the Palestinians? | Palestine Deep Dive with William Dalrymple @willdalrymple.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n83...

As well new research for my new book on MUD, it's a pleasure digging back through my past work, from my PhD on Guthlac and the fens, to archive mudlarks and a VCH ghost story via MR James, plus a forthcoming piece on bog bodies and storytelling at Alderley Edge. There was always so much more to say!

Pyramus/Thisbe: kissing the wall's hole😳 #MoonMad www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/slo... Extremely (w)holesome Pyramus (Emmy Stonelake) & Thisbe (Shahin Rezvani), with Quince (Scout Worsley) as the wall, in the current @the-rsc.bsky.social family version of Dream❤️ dir. Rachel Bagshaw & Robin Belfield

Here Is My Space - A Twist of Rotten Silk page 14 #ATwistOfRottenSilk #booksky #poem #poetry #Shakespeare

Recommend this novel - one of my favourites this year for its oddness, sweetness and strange optimism.

Ich vermisse Lehrmeister Shuntarō Tanikawa.

I can't wait for this event on Sat 3 October, with one of my favourite bookshops: Teasel & Skylark in #Dorchester. Lovely to be in my home county of #Dorset! Come along to discover 25 time machines into #history, from 1066 to the Miners' Strike and more... www.teaselandskylark.com/events/a-his...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NifZ... #AbdullahIbrahim #nowplaying

Crisis of Petrodollar, with Richard Wolff & Yanis Varoufakis www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAX9...

So grateful to our publishers at Bookchef for making this happen: #TheDawnOfEverything #Ukraine #DavidGraeber

Also walked through the Star Trek tunnel (my name for it) between the Radcliffe Camera and the Old Bodleian. Beam me up, Scotty!

So… my new #book project is a human #history of #MUD! Not a study of geology or earth sciences, it’s a cultural history, seeking out where mud meets human stories, experiences and imagination across the centuries, delving into the muddy, intriguing edges between history and literature. 1/5

Today’s Midsummer Day so final #MidsummerNightsDream. Not in my OWC edition but maybe in my NEXT book (stay tuned ;-)) dir Atri Banerjee at Regent's Park.Loved Bottom & Puck A LOT. Also, l somehow manifested my cover art colours for a pic:)  Preorder here: tinyurl.com/mre4rwtu

“Why, this is very midsummer madness.” - Twelfth Night, 3.4 #SummerSolstice https://bit.ly/4vIf8UW

Today’s featured production from my #Introduction for #OWC #MidsummerNightsDream is the adaptation & translation dir. Habib Tanvir, *Kamdev Ka Apna Basant Ritu Ka Sapna*. Tanvir's casting+use of dialects drew attention to class divisions & rural/urban divides in MND. Preorder: tinyurl.com/mre4rwtu

Poem sighting from a reader in France. The poem is “Kickshaws”, the book “A Twist of Rotten Silk” (“Une torsade de soie pourrie”?), the reader-writer the boulanger and novelist Fabien Granier –

I love the turn in this poem by Caroline Bird, how she connects two things that couldn’t be more different. Then the sequence of the most unusual images that seamlessly stitch both parts of the poem together. #poetry #poemoftheday

📣 Calling all alumni! Join us and 100+ worldwide Shakespeareans for the Shakespeare Institute's 75th Birthday🥳 📅Thursday 16 July 2026 🕟16:30-18:00 📍New Place Garden, 22 Chapel St, Stratford-upon-Avon CV37 6EPP Please message for a link to register by Tuesday 30th June.

Today’s featured production from my #Introduction 4 #OWC #MidsummerNightsDream is *Midsummer Mechanicals* (dir Kerry Frampton+Lucy Cuthbertson). So joyous - it created a sense of community in the theatre. My interview with Frampton: www.buzzsprout.com/891835/episo... Preorder: tinyurl.com/mre4rwtu

Join us @imc-leeds.bsky.social! Very excited for this session with the brilliant @eleanormaybaker.bsky.social, @realmandeville.bsky.social and @saracharles.bsky.social on writing trade non-fiction - from finding an agent to working with trade publishers, the media and beyond. #medieval #imc2026

It doesn’t matter how far down the font list you hide Times New Roman, Word, I’m still scrolling through and selecting it.

The puppet Venus & Adonis (first saw it 2004) is still the most heavenly thing 💕One more performance in Cambridge tonight, Oxford next week. GO! an hour of love, lust, horses, a terrifying boar, an adorable hare, & Shakespeare's great poem read by the inimitable Simon Russell Beale, dir. Greg Doran.

Day 8 of my #MidsummerCountdown Today’s featured production from my new #Introduction for #OWC #MidsummerNightsDream is Peter Brook's production for @the-rsc.bsky.social I love Sally Jacobs' set that emphasizes the worlds-within-worlds of the play Preorder MND: tinyurl.com/mre4rwtu Set Model: V&A

🎧Listen to BBC Radio's The Verb hosted by @imcmillan.bsky.social including guest writer @kymdeyn.bsky.social and the "deep and sonorous wells of folklore" reimagined in their shapeshifting debut #poetry book, FOLKISH. Superb readings and discussion - a great listen. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

My Keynote speech for the British Palestine Project PALESTINE'S PLACE IN HISTORY youtu.be/62sN7LTuONA?...

Across oceans and centuries, England and India emerge not as distant worlds but as entangled histories of movement, trade and imagination. Join Nandini Das and William Dalrymple for an in-conversation event on 9 June in partnership with the Jaipur Literature Festival. https://ow.ly/tSFn50Z7ZIM

@jackewilson.bsky.social talks to Marjorie Garber about the long reach of authors like William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Thomas Kyd, and others, whose works exposed the lies and hypocrisies of one of America's darkest periods. #books #literature @yalepress.bsky.social

Why not have a look at my book, A History of England in 25 Poems? 25 diverse voices, from the eighth century to the present day, all offering perspectives on what it means to be #English, and what #England might be... www.penguin.co.uk/books/461263... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Very touched by Peter Marshall's review of This Little World in the latest @historytoday.com, his recognition of its 'bittersweet ironies' and what studying the past can tell us about belonging.

Day 4 of #MidsummerCountdown Today’s featured production 4rm my #Introduction 4 #OWC #MND is the @dasharts.bsky.social 1 dir. #TimSupple Indian & Sri Lankan actors performed in English &six SouthAsian languages with astute wordplay! Prod lmage: @the-rsc.bsky.social Preorder: tinyurl.com/mre4rwtu

Day 3 of my #MidsummerCountdown Today’s featured production from my #Introduction for #OWC #MND is a web series by TheCandleWasters from New Zealand. The 'Mechanicals' are reimagined as Gen Z & they are fiery! Webseries here: youtu.be/hacdY1hJdHk?... Preorder the MND edition: tinyurl.com/mre4rwtu

Day 2 #MidsummerCountdown Today’s featured production from my #Introduction for #OWC #MND is Adrian Noble dir. stage&film version where Titania’s bower is an upturned umbrella, a nod to the play’s wet &rainy weather. Image from SBT @shakespearebtrust.bsky.social Preorder MND: tinyurl.com/mre4rwtu

Day 1 of my #MidsummerCountdown Today’s featured production from my new #Introduction for #OWC #MidsummerNightsDream is Julie Taymor dir. at Polonsky Shakespeare Center in NY. It began with Puck going to bed, implying that the entire play is perhaps Puck's dream. Preorder: tinyurl.com/mre4rwtu

Sad to hear Marjane Satrapi, author of this extraordinary memoir, has died

"My book came out, and they were talking about this false naive style of drawing. There was nothing false about the naivety of my style. I couldn't draw better. This is it." What a star Marjane was...

Are you free next Tuesday 9th June, 7-9? Join me online here and become madly, desperately obsessed with line-breaks www.arvon.org/writing-cour...

A Twist of Rotten Silk or Words to That Effect (2026) "Generous and generative" – Emma Smith “Mesmerising” – Luke Kennard “Surprising and haunting” – Stephen Greenblatt #ATwistOfRottenSilk #Booksky #Shakespeare

Is anyone else watching the Loch of the Lowes osprey nest? I recommend as a masterclass in raptor patience, as well as glimpses of two very fluffy chicks scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/things-to-do...

It’s #Midsummer month& *AMidsummerNight’sDream* is on preorder tinyurl.com/mre4rwtu. Intro by me+text ed. Terri Bourus. Emma Smith gave me this #Dream project. Celebrating by sharing productions I cite until Midsummer Night #MidsummerCountdown. Today’s joy: giant flowers on the cover by Sarah Young.

There's still time to register for our upcoming live #Shakespeare webinar on 1 June. This time Prof Emma Smith @oldfortunatus.bsky.social will be exploring ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM with guest Dr Iman Sheeha. 🗓️1 June 2026 at 6pm 📍Online via Zoom All welcome! Free but registration required.

And today? Who are the demons and who the pirates? Paul Klee, Demon as Pirate, 1926 #art #history #news #PaulKlee

It's @nicosiamarissa.bsky.social in my newspaper! share.inquirer.com/tayMsR

26 May 1583: A notable birth and a notable death today. The birth (or strictly speaking the baptism; she will have been born a few days ago) is Susanna, daughter of the 19-year-old William Shakespeare and his wife Anne, who's 26 or 27. Susanna will live to 1649. 1/ #earlymodern

Some 2,000 years ago, a Roman fresco painter transformed a room into an enchanting garden filled with lush plants, trees, and birds, all under a clear blue sky! 🌿🌳🐦‍⬛ 😍 House of the Golden Bracelet, Pompeii 📷 by me #FrescoFriday #Archaeology

I think the touring English Shakespeare Company histories at Bradford Alhambra were my teenage lightbulb moment. Thank you.

Delighted that the article based on my Historical Research Lecture (Nov 2025) is now online in the @ihr.bsky.social / @oxfordunipress.bsky.social journal Historical Research. 'Can popular #history be radical?' A real honour: thanks to my colleagues, especially journal editor @saracharles.bsky.social

harpercollins.co.uk/products/how... #booksky #history #language #linguistics #linguicide