Rather lovely portrait spotted in the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum in Lichfield this weekend. Elizabeth Hunter (later Seward), 1712-1780: daughter of Johnson’s headmaster at Lichfield Grammar School, painted in 1755 by Henry Pickering. Her daughter Anna Seward (1742-1809) was a poet & critic.

This was both a powerful and artful memento mori: an elegant woman looking into the mirror, and rapidly aging with the paper flap. This was printed in 1510 Germany, #skystorians

A real jewel

Ooh this will please @aglmasters.bsky.social who is doing his best to memorise one or two!

Industrial action at the University Library is scheduled for:
Tues 21st April
Wed 22nd April
Thurs 30th April
Fri 1st May

We aim to maintain services during strikes and minimise disruption, but some last minute changes may occur. Stay updated: www.lib.cam.ac.uk/using-librar...

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Verdant Cambridge.

Ha. There was a concert on that evening 😂

Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Tim Curry in Clue

Tim Curry in The Three Musketeers

Tim Curry in Muppet Treasure Island

Happy 80th birthday to Tim Curry who has always, *always* understood the assignment.

Just a few days left to apply for our Living with Print in the Eighteenth Century scholarship (full PhD funding for three years), working at Sydney with @nicolaparsons.bsky.social and at Glasgow with me.

Full details here: www.gla.ac.uk/scholarships....

Deadline 21st April - questions welcome.

If you or your students research any aspect of British, Irish or British colonial/imperial history (Roman empire to today) and need a tool that will never hallucinate sources, check out the BBIH. It develops research skills rather than repressing them. Instit. & indiv. subscriptions available.

Scriptorium: Master of Manuscripts - Official Launch Trailer YouTube video by GameTrailers

youtu.be/FkTiaWqpnIQ?...

Book people! Am informed by @aglmasters.bsky.social that there’s a new computer game out: ‘Scriptorium: Master of Manuscripts’! 🤓

Visited Tamworth Castle yesterday. The site served as a residence for the Mercian kings in the 8thC & after the Viking attacks was restored by Æthelflæd (daughter of Alfred the Great) in 913. The stone castle was begun in the 12thC & thanks to the Ferrers family the interior is now mostly Jacobean.

This was the height of class for my family on high days and holidays when I was young…

Always reminds me of a Viennetta…

We put his face on a bookplate so occasionally I find him staring back at me in the stacks.

Gorgeous first visit to @lichfieldcathedral.bsky.social today in bright sunshine. The feet belong to John Hacket (d. 1670), Bishop of Lichfield & Coventry and donor of some quite nice books to @theul.bsky.social.

An ancient artifact on display in a museum: a clear glass vessel in the shape of a dove, mostly full of a clear liquid, with a small heap of pinkish substance in the bottom, and dark substances in the head and tail.

Roman blown-glass unguentarium or balsamarium in the shape of a dove, found at Rovasenda near Vercelli in N Italy, sealed since its manufacture about 1900 years ago, containing the remains of a cosmetic and the liquid in which it was once suspended. One would have snapped off the tail to open.
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Books, and a lute, and really what more could you possibly need in the 1620s or ever? By Jan Davidsz. de Heem, born on this day in 1606. #BookSky

Ha. I mean, he was only 29, but had been Lucasian Professor for three years…

‘Not having heard from you since [my last letter] … makes me a little suspicious whether they came to your hands. I should be glad to heare they did, for I would not willingly have them lost.’

@theulspeccoll.bsky.social Add.9597/2/12. (2/2)

Nothing changes. Isaac Newton writing in 1672 to the mathematician John Collins, grumbling about the postal service:

‘About a month or five weeks since, I sent you an answer to you[r] last, accompanied with a little draught of problems about the constructions of equations’. (1/2)

The leather-bound St Cuthbert Gospel.

The British Library announced it had acquired the St Cuthbert Gospel for the nation #OTD in 2012, following a successful fundraising appeal. An 8thC manuscript copy of the Gospel of St John, it is the earliest surviving intact European book. 📸British Library

Bibliographical Society Lecture| 21 April 2026

Our next lecture will take place on Tuesday 21 April 2026 at 5.30 p.m., at the Society of Antiquaries, London, and online via Zoom. Matthew Payne, Keeper of the Muniments at Westminster Abbey (also Treasurer and a Vice-President of the Society) will deliver the Graham Pollard memorial lecture.

We’ve got it all @theulspeccoll.bsky.social. From 1867. Shelfmark 140.4.98(14).

Well this was a fun afternoon.

If it’s 16 April, it must be... YES, OF COURSE! The 248th anniversary of Parson Woodforde’s ‘Piggs’ being hungover

University of Exeter and University of Cambridge Libraries & Archives - Collections Connections Communities

Fantastic PhD studentship opportunity - Spitting Image: political satire in Britain in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Working across @exeter.ac.uk and @theul.bsky.social in partnership with the @camglamresearch.bsky.social and drawing on the Roger Law archive.

#PhDsky

Someone's hand is taking a forkful of red velvet cake. The subtitles read: "What is red velvet?" "It's some American nonsense."

Tasting potential wedding cakes on Love Is Blind: Sweden