Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller” (1936)

Back in York for the first time in over 5 years and am reminded of just how it feels to be in love with a place.

'The University of Bristol has embarked on a path like a death spiral' UCU members are opposed to academic departments across the university having to make at least a 50% operating surplus

The university death spiral is everywhere, and for everyone: they're all just on a convoy into the same black hole. Oxbridge, LSE and Imperial excepted, they must all *necessarily and inevitably* end up crushed to the size of an Oxo cube if we go on like this.
www.bristol247.com/opinion/your...

Sorry but this wins best architecture pun

Brought students to the @ashmoleanmuseum.bsky.social a couple of weeks ago, and had a great time talking to students about how poisonous and toxic everything was in nineteenth century art. At least they didn’t have to worry about microplastics?

Except instead of murals on the walls of the Old Library, it’s print

Today is print day at the Bristol Common Press, and Jamie and I have settled for a chaotic Pre-Raphaelites at the Oxford Union type energy.

This is what @themerl.bsky.social have been saying for a long while

I hadn't know that in 1920 E.M. Forster wrote (in a review of Wallis Budge's memoir) such a concise and magnificent f*ck you to colonial collecting in general and the British Museum in particular: archive.org/details/p1at... (attn @alexanderchee.bsky.social!)

date inscribed Bequeathed by Sir Hugh Walpole 1941

Max Beerbohm, Spring Cottage, Hampstead, 1860, 1917
https://botfrens.com/collections/14375/contents/1077727

I’m catsitting and forgot to make the bed after a nap, and Morty is so cute in his ammonite form so I guess I’ll just freeze. @pamplemoussepam.bsky.social

I have taken
the resources
that were in
the budget

and which
you were probably
saving
for higher education

Forgive me
they were needed
to feed the AI bubble
and to dismantle the humanities

Trust me I’m a Romanticist

This is why Romantic literature exists and you can’t convince me otherwise.

‘Come on friendly quokkas and fall on Slough’ has now replaced ‘Not with a bang but a whimper’ as the best way the world ends.

Actual photo of me in Edinburgh, fuelling my obsession with smoked fish

I'm Julius Ceasar being stabbed to death by ChatGPT, Google Search AI, Grammarly, Microsoft AutoCorrect

I just want to teach them to write...

‘Writing for art’

A medieval picture of Jesus, crucified, having a little boogie as his hips don’t lie (and aren’t nailed to the cross)

When you have to be crucified but a banger just came on –

That’s the Wordsworthian lyric for you

Did Elizabeth Bishop write this

I do, sort of! Sometimes better than others. But I have a consistent theme I use that my students refer to as the ‘Deborah font’, so that’s branding I guess?

Last year for Christmas, I asked for a head torch. This year I’m asking for a toolbox. They say most boys grow up and date someone like their mum, but my boyfriend is dating his dad.

Today, I got taught what a womble is by English staff and postgrads, and I wonder now why wombles aren’t in the Life in the UK test as they seem much more culturally salient than Wordsworth.

Ada Phoebe Gorman’s embroidery of a William Morris commissioned pattern The panels are embroidered in wool on linen and features a pattern of alternating rows of clumps of stylised flowers, large blue artichoke heads and blue flower-heads against a background arabesque pattern of stems, leaves and small flowers. It is embroidered using stem, satin, long & short, French knots, split and back stich.

“Who can say how little we should know of many periods, but for their art? History (so called) has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; Art has remembered the people, because they created.”

Could I be added please? Tah!

Drawing of Morris exhausting his friend, Edward

Drawing of Morris fishing

Drawing of Morris making a wood block for a book

Drawing of Morris living large, sleeping after eating

To get in on the fun that @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social seems to be having posting William Morris designs, here are some doodles that Edward Burne-Jones made of Morris 1/4

This is why I love Burne-Jones!

God is dead, Ruskin is rolling in his grave.

Half an everything bagel, with William Morris's Strawberry Thief pattern overlain on the cream cheese.

proud to say that I am and will always be a deeply unserious person