You too Mary!! And you and Bettany did make me want to travel. Great fun. Hope we can do it again sometime.

I so hope so!! (still jealous.)

Can't wait to listen later, Mary!

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Travel Travel past and present and broadening the mind? Travel journalists and historians debate.

Seriously thrilled to be on the panel for tonight's episode of Free Thinking on BBC Radio 4 on the subject of travel. I'll be joining host Shahidha Bari and historians Bettany Hughes, Lucy Powell and Alun Withey and philosopher Julian Baggini. It's also on BBC Sounds.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Would so love to come to this!!

Hehehe

Wonderful!!

Goodness I am shocked as anything to read this! How I loved his writing!

Do you know the Thomas King short story, "One good story that one" ? it's perfect. As is this.

Historian attacks ‘ludicrous’ changes to statues with slavery links Professor Sir Tom Devine, an emeritus professor at Edinburgh University, said he was opposed to changing artefacts to suit modern sensibilities

'Responding to the decision, Devine, 80, said: “In principle I am opposed to changing historic artefacts to suit ­today’s tastes. To do so is presentism, imposing 20th-century values on those of the distant past.'

'20th-century'? Bit of an own goal Sir T.

Very excited indeed to be speaking at this tomorrow. Do come by if you are in Cambridge at 5pm. I'll be rioting with Austen (and sure, obliquely with Dickens, too), at the English Faculty. @universitypress.cambridge.org, @cam.ac.uk, @bsecs.bsky.social

Such important reflections!

The Rape of Lucrece?? Bit of a deep cut that. Errr Burton?!!!

Yes!!

Hmm...what about A Ramble in St. James' Park by John Wilmot. Always getting their fundaments confused, those Restoration fellas. (Except hang on. The timing for this wld be off. It's paper 3 or Shakespeare)

Graphic showing double page opening of emblem book from Stirling Maxwell Collection featuring portrait of a man on the left and a printed emblem of text and image on the right. The image is overlaid with information about the fellowship scheme welcoming researchers and repeating closing date and URL to follow.

📣Our UofG Library Visiting Research Fellowships are now open for applications!

We’re delighted to invite scholars from across the globe to apply to work with our internationally significant collections.

Apply at: www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/li...

📆Closing date: 5 January 2026

#UofGLibraryFellows

Yes! I am saving mine until next week anyway...

@drbibliomane.bsky.social More exciting than new Pynchon? Possibly?

Yes. That society having to morph, in order to accommodate them...

So delighted that this long-gestated brain child is now out and in the real world. I'll be talking about it at the English Faculty in Cambridge, @cam.ac.uk on Thursday of next week at 5pm. Do please come along if you're in town!

Private eye article about “Austen novel finally being adapted for screen”, “stopped the constant adaptations of Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, William Makepeace Thackeray and Ann Radcliffe”

@sophiecoulombeau.bsky.social Saw this and thought of you :)

I taught it for the first time last year at Oxford and it was fantastic. It was for a course about word and image. We ended up spending far more time thinking about missing mothers than anything else. !

I absolutely love Ali Smith!! How to be Both is one of my favourite novels of the last 50 years. So excited to read your thoughts on her!

It's not fair I mean when was the last time a white male novelist won a Booker. You'd have to go all the way back to 2023

Me too! It's magnificent!

But volume 2 is perhaps more Proustian. The final paragraph made me squeak!

Interesting!! Yes, the papers are very loaded, aren't they. I read the first volume as being about a marriage failing. Two people who are in love who begin to inhabit different worlds in the same space, and who cannot recover their twoness. maybe even an alzheimer's allegory! Very not Proust!!

I also adored it. The Paris aspect of lost time would seem to urge this reading, but I hear nothing else of Proust, anywhere in Baille. Do you? How can I wait (!!) for the next installment. I feel like a lover of Tristram Shandy, circa 1763...

Cambridge people! I’m going to be giving a talk on TJ Wise, detritus, stolen leaves, and made-up books on Thursday at 5pm. Do come along! www.english.cam.ac.uk/cmt/?cat=6

Cover of Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone by Alvin K. Wong. Cover features a sculpture by Jes Fan against a soft white background. The sculpture consists of a stack of organic shapes in marbled pastel shades of green, pink, and brown. A clear bubble sits atop one of the shapes.

Cover of Hemispheric Blackface: Impersonation and Nationalist Fictions in the Americas by Danielle M. Roper. The cover features art by Leasho Johnson, Banshee #2. The artwork contains a black silhouette of a human figure, which appears to have its back to the viewer. A conglomerate of colorful, textured swirls covers the figure's neck and the lower half of its head. The swirls include blue, red, orange, yellow, light green, and pink streaks. Amidst the swirls, there is a golden shape that resembles a lyre.

Cover of The Future of Futurity: Affective Capitalism and Potentiality in a Global City by Purnima Mankekar and Akhil Gupta. Cover has a black and dark gray background. The title is written in blue capital letters. The author's names are written in green capital letters. The subtitle is written at the bottom in a small white font.

Check out our upcoming April titles, including "Unruly Comparison" by Alvin K. Wong, "Hemispheric Blackface" by Danielle Roper, and "The Future of Futurity" by Purnima Mankekar and Akhil Gupta.
buff.ly/0pkTAfs