📣Calling all Folk Musicians
Apply now for a Creative Bursary of up to £2,000

Deadline for applications: Sunday 31 May 2026.
Find out more and apply now: bit.ly/4cYCT4z

The website is really quiet at the moment.

The upside of that is if you were to order right now, we’d probably dispatch it VERY quickly.

A trade card with two skeletons on either side and a small animal skeleton in the middle.

Trade Card of Nathaniel Longbottom, “Supplier of Skeletons in St. Thomas's Street, Southwark,” late 18th century. Longbottom would likely have had interactions with bodysnatchers (or “resurrectionists”) to help him procure skeletons for his shop.

Image: Wellcome Collection #medicalhistory

Hurrah! Spotted my first swallow of the season this morning up by the river! Interesting to note this is the first year I saw the first swallow before hearing the first cuckoo...

Oh my dog can be a dick at times but I don't excuse it by saying he wants to play, I tell him off 🤷‍♀️

Wow!!!

Getting really tired of the same dog walkers who insist that their dog who is barking aggressively in my dog's face 'just want to play'.

There are currently 6 permanent full time history jobs in the whole UK. 500+ PhDs being produced a year - not all of whom will want to pursue an academic year but likely most, and of course years will stack up onto each other. What a sector.

I wish I could tell you but I inherited these currants from the people who held the allotment before me so can take no credit for their success. However I do know early flowering and lack of bees due to climate change is an issue for currants.

From “The Simpsons” house genius John Swartzwelder, interviewed in The New Yorker by Mike Sacks

Close up of a gooseberry bush with some tiny gooseberries growing

Close up of a blackcurrant bush with some flowers turning into berries

Big excitement at the weekend as our fruit bushes at the allotment look like they are gearing up for a nice crop of gooseberries and blackcurrants. Hopefully enough for multiple crumbles!

Manchester University Press is proud to launch Radical Histories, a new series dedicated to the individuals, movements and ideas that have challenged political, social and cultural authority.

Call for proposals now open. Find out more: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/blog/2026/04...

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit

Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here

Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse

Media and universities: AI is here to stay

Free webinar course: introduction to becoming a public intellectual, for folks with a PhD *or* midway through a PhD degree, in a historical discipline (doesn't have to be History)!

Applications close April 20.

#academicsky 🗃

Radical Histories - Manchester University Press The Radical Histories series encourages innovative and field-defining research in the history of individuals, groups, movements and ideas which challenged the political, social and cultural status quo...

I'm pleased to announce I'm a founding co-editor of the new @manchesterup.bsky.social book series, Radical Histories.

Do let me know if you have a proposal for a book that fits our inclusive remit on radical histories.

manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/series/radic...

So glad I’ve got over 7000 mostly publishing and media contacts on LinkedIn because this shit is going straight on there so everyone can see what @bloomsburybooksuk.bsky.social have been up to.

Digital rights organizers warn UK is too reliant on big tech, urge digital sovereignty The Open Rights Group calls for open source tech to drive digital sovereignty in the UK public sector and protect national security

"For years, a handful of Big Tech companies have used their power to gain control of the UK’s digital infrastructure, locking the government into wasteful contracts and shaping tech policy in their favour."

🗣️ ORG's @jim.killock.org.uk on our new report calling for UK Digital Sovereignty.

<screams into the void>

I am speaking in the John Clare Theatre at PETERBOROUGH LIBRARY on 22nd April about life and death in the Victorian city. Expect a bit on the coroner's court and lots on the railway, poverty, healthcare and the infirmary, murder, riots and other weird stuff!

2:30pm, £5 on the door.

Ex-libris bookplate featuring a shield with a chevron design and two flowers, and a knight’s helmet with plume and a motto banner reading ‘Je suis de Campagnon Bon Seigneur’.

Mystery Bookplate! I’m trying without any luck to identify this bookplate after checking through printed sources and online databases, and would be grateful for any advice! 📖🔎

Had to be in town for a 9.30 meeting but when I got on my bike I realised the tire was completely flat. Grabbed the old backup bike and my goodness it made me appreciate my normal bike. It was like cycling through treacle! And every time I went over a bump the chain came off. Made my meeting though!

When it comes to the energy transition I'm a glass half full person.

I know: plenty of people would say that's terribly naive. They point to the scale of the challenge. They point to vested interests. They point to hard-to-abate sectors.

And they're not wrong. But here's what they miss.

🧵

A screenshot of the opening slide for Prof. Caroline Edwards' inaugural lecture featuring a black and white image of Bowerman's Nose, Dartmoor and the text "where is hope taking us? the utopian art of desecration amidst capitalist ruins."

I've been writing my inaugural lecture this week - lots of weirdness about woods, rocks, mycelium, intimate cross-species relations & some quite personal bits about my childhood. Goodness! Still time to grab a ticket for Tues 14 April (in-person or live-streaming): www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...

The cover and a spread of History Today. The cover story is Servants on the Grand Tour. An early modern engraving shows a man, standing next to some ruins and gesturing up at a statue.

🚨 Job alert! History Today is hiring a PT freelance copy editor, either remote or in the office. Please share widely! www.historytoday.com/jobs

Really can't take credit for today's seeing as it was our 14yo daughter who scooped the pangram.😬

Congratulations Willow, looks wonderful!

Yes! Watched ep 1 but not got round to 2nd yet.

Small hedgehog emerging through a bush

Yay! Our little hedgehog is back 😍

A Queen of Spades by Pushkin Mythic Delerium The Old Nurse's Story Skin Thief by Suzan Palumbo Wuthering Heights Uncanny An image of two women in a forest from Carmilla Dark Matter magazine Carnivorine by Lucy Hopkins William Hodgson Jamaica Inn Dragonwyck Sing, Unburied, Sing A Rose for Emily The Monster of Elendhaven I am Stone by Robert Murray Gilchrist Through the Woods by Emily Carroll The New Mother by Lucy Clifford

It's up! You can book!

My new course with the University of Liverpool starts in May!

'Transformations of the Gothic'

Online. Open to all. You can join from anywhere. No previous experience necessary. Just bring a love of the subject!

www.liverpool.ac.uk/continuing-e...