A photo of the cover of DEAD ENDS featuring a cartoon of a doctor zapping a patient in a coffin back to life. There are signed book plates and medical oddities all around the book.

There's a lot of bad in the world right now. But @tealcartoons.bsky.social and I have a new kids' book coming out called DEAD ENDS that reminds us that failure isn't just inevitable but essential to success. There are a limited number of SIGNED copies from @mysteriousbookshop.com - shorturl.at/1A9CS

Close-up shot of Ananth Viswanathan's eyeball with the supertitle 'Filmed at the Royal College of Opthalmologists'

One of John McKenzie's instruments, held by Ananth Viswanathan

Still from a film demonstrating an eye operation

It's now 2025. We visited the RCO a few weeks ago to film John's instruments in the their care, and being used by the extraordinary eye surgeon (and magician!) Ananth Viswanathan. It's been nearly 10 years since John's death and it's a privilege to have had a part documenting his remarkable legacy

Hospitals in the global north tend to use disposable instruments, so John's collection represents an obsolete craft. He was keen his work was preserved, so entrusted his collection to Roger, who a decade later found a home for it at the Royal College of Ophthalmologists in London 2/3

Roger Kneebone (left), in discussion with John McKenzie (right), about his ophthalmic instrument collection (foreground).

Some of John McKenzie's instruments up close, in 2015

In 2015, Roger Kneebone (left) and I (behind camera!) were privileged to film John McKenzie (right), who over a lifetime made thousands of tiny ophthalmic surgical instruments in his shed. You can see some of his collection in the foreground. John died shortly after we made this recording ... 1/3

You're right, of course. I apologise to the nacho-munching community!

I didn't think my first post in weeks would be about nachos ... I'll now have to temper this was something deep and meaningful!

🤣

I don't charge her, Margaret! 😉

Filmic Humanities and Film-Making-As-Research

One for academic historians at Oxford!

Medical Humanities and HSMTE have invited me and Cal to give a talk about film production as a research methodology for historians.

Should have mentioned this earlier, but it didn't occur to me to share on here!

Less than a week to go now. All preorders greatly appreciated! Numerous options via

geni.us/RingOfFire

Thanking James, @thehistoryguy.bsky.social @iaindale.bsky.social @charliehigson.bsky.social and James for their kind words 🙏🏼

@iainmacgregor1.bsky.social @headofzeus.bsky.social

All On Account of the Tariff - 1890 song YouTube video by patriciahammondsongs

Patricia Hammond (mezzo-soprano, historical music specialist, and my wife!) found and performed this 1890s piece of American sheet music with a contemporary resonance ...

@patriciahammond.bsky.social

An old tombstone that reads: DEWEY 1898 - 1910. "He was only a cat" but he was human enough to be a great comfort in hours of loneliness and pain.

For #Caturday: a poignant photo by my friend Paul Koudounaris of a beloved pet's tombstone. "'He was only a cat,' but he was human enough to be a great comfort in hours of loneliness and pain."

Check out Paul's book on pet cemeteries, FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH: bookshop.org/p/books/fait...

Thanks so much! Are you the Stuart Semmel who wrote Napoleon and the British? (If so, I read you back in my PhD days!)

The girl with no name When a now anonymous teenager sold her tooth for transplant, she couldn’t have predicted that she’d end up at the heart of a troubling story about 18th-century beauty ideals.

Surely there's a lesson here: we should think twice before letting the rich run our societies. Even the best of them have blind spots. If a man as famously ethical as Boulton can deny humanity to a child, what can we expect of the even more individualistic rich today?

Anyway, here's the story!

4/4

What I can't quite wrap my head around is that Matthew Boulton is celebrated for his stance against slavery and famously looked after his own workers into their old age. You get the sense, reading his letters, he has a tender heart. So, why did he think it okay to see a child's body as property? 3/4

Cover of the Hardware Man's Daughter: Matthew Boulton and his "Dear Girl", by Shena Mason

Cover of Matthew Boulton: Selling what all the world desires by Shena Mason

We sometimes celebrate the eighteenth century as a time of individualism (big issue today too!). And the stories of Matthew and Anne Boulton are both stories of strong individuals. But when it came to the girl who sold her tooth for a guinea, they don't even bother to find out her name 2/4

Images from from The Costume of Great Britain by W.H Pyne

I tried to write about a girl with no known name, no description. Bloody hard to do! Nothing to go on but the fact that in 1787 she sold one of her teeth to the industrialist Matthew Boulton. He paid a dentist to prise it from her mouth and transplant it into his own daughter, Anne ... 1/4

Diary entry reading 'I wonder where he is'

Diary entry reading 'Zoo with Daddy'

Diary entry 'Mummy had a blackout'

Diary entry reading 'rain'

I can oblige! We've finished the rough cut of the film and I'll be sure to share when it's done (though it's really rather more upsetting than I thought it'd be)

Diary entry from Friday 24th July, 1942, reading 'Air Raid in the Night'

Diary entry from Sunday 26th (month unknown) reading 'Uncle Walter came. We picked our first tomato'

Diary entry reading 'in case of accident please inform WIFE'

Diary entry reading '1st wedding anniversary'

We're making a film about a man who started collecting other people's pocket diaries after discovering something dark in his own childhood diary – something he'd repressed. More about that later. For now, I wanted to share a few of my favourite tender, funny or laconic close-ups!

Grappling With History By Sarah Elizabeth Cox | Rediscovering the wrestlers and boxers of late-Victorian London

If you like stories about bad men doing bad but also sometimes v. funny things in the 1880s, I have new blogs!

👊🏻Denny Harrington, Irish, drunk, jumped on sailors
👊🏻Constantine Morris, Brummie, drunk, bad hitman
👊🏾Felix Scott, Barbadian, less drunk, bit a cop's ear off

www.grapplingwithhistory.com

Very proud of @oispooky.bsky.social, who is set to become a lot cooler than me soon with her own amazing projects on the horizon. She runs one of the best history blogs on the internet - all about the gritty world of Victorian bare-knuckle fighters. So vivid you can smell the sweat. Follow her!

A photo of Lincoln's gloves which have yellowed with age. Near the cuffs are visible blood stains.

Bloody gloves belonging to Abraham Lincoln. When the President was shot by John Wilkes Booth, some of the blood ran down his sleeve and pooled in the pocket which contained the gloves.

Photo: Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

Photograph of a prescription log book, open to show two pages with handwritten text.

A donation recently on display in our new acquisitions case, this 1890s prescription log book of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen was examined during his trial in 1910 for the murder of his wife Cora Crippen (aka Belle Elmore). #SomethingNew #Archive30

John Williams, author of Stoner

In his novel Stoner, John Williams's eponymous character has a full-time, tenured position as an assistant professor at a the University of Missouri. And he's considered a failure. Today, that kind of stability would be an impossibility for many academics – a dream job. How things have changed!

Or maybe a new income stream for JanePlan

The proprietors of these incredibly popular 'shows' (the Mr Beasts of the '30s!) sold tickets. Vast queues formed of those hoping to gawp at the starving young couples. The clergy, politicians and many others denounced the shows, though, and they were outlawed in 1935 2/2

h/t David Hewitt

A newly wed woman in a glass 'coffin', starving for 30 days for £250 in the 1930s

1930s, Starving Bride sideshow, Blackpool's Golden Mile

In Summer 1931, there was a new sideshow in Blackpool, Lancashire. ‘Brides and bridegrooms straight from the altar starve for 30 days’. The deal: newlywed couples were challenged to stay in glass 'coffins' without food for a month. If they made it, they'd win £250 (about £18,000 today) 1/2

Seconded! Thirded! The fact that anyone could have the slightest problem with Lindsey or any aspect of Lindsey is baffling; she's honestly how you know that you can be a success and an uncomplicatedly good person. I want to be like her when I grow up!

This kind of thing is paralysing. As someone who's worked with you a bit, I promise you that you're worth far more than this awful system makes you feel. Doesn't help much, I know, but you're a gem and deserve better.

The article and film is a plea for historians (and other knowledge professionals!) to make more use of film to publish their research and for journals to encourage film publication. It's hard to study the body and things like performance, craft and art when writing is your only option 4/4