Heh. I well remember. Read the novel again the other week, it stands up very well.

This makes me realise my own anniversary of this is in July. Oi, that's a while ago!

It is a big question, Al, you're asking mega quiz level here! Do we go with Keeanu Reeves as the Buddha, Ben Kingsley as the Mahatma, or a far better choice: Empire of the Sun, which is essentially JG Ballard's childhood.

Happy publication day to the swarthy bather on the right, Alexander Voloshin, who has waited a long time for his moment in the sun…

www.pauldrybooks.com/products/sid...

@pauldrybooks.bsky.social

A mumble of neither approval nor disapproval, although personally I don't think it is the best example of those types of biopics.

Ah no. You must get up and do the things that matter to you: reading, writing, thinking, talking, having a cup of tea somewhere, and all safe in the knowledge that whereas doing a PhD was a way of screwing up your life, your life is only really screwed by academics/academia if you let it be.

An inevitable function, sadly, of institutional greed and those academics who knew - who have known for years - that this would happen, but kept offering PhD work anyway. We were their chattel. And they do not and did not care.

a black and white photo of a man in a suit and tie . ALT: a black and white photo of a man in a suit and tie .

Off to teach this morning. Today's topic is the life and career of Charlie Chaplin.

Did they, uhem, then try defying gravity?

No Malones yet, though, @cathalmalone.bsky.social, so you're free of any nefarious connections!

And to build on this, I've now found the will, albeit only the index entry because y'know Four Courts go boom and all that, of my 6* great-grandfather from Ballyorban, Co. Cork. And the will of what was probably his grandfather, too, which gives me Irish ancestors from before 1750. Fascinating.

Very much enjoyed playing around with the 1926 Irish census today. Found a few lingering, albeit distant, relations in Cork together with some spelling ideas, ideas which then cleared up this section of the family tree right back into the 18th century.

Definitely ignore the ages. One relative of mine was on the 1911 census aged 34, she died a few years later aged 72! Which record to believe, eh.

The older database seemed more to the point, didn't it. Have you tried using the wills database yet, just in case they died between 1911 and 1926? That was how I narrowed down the search.

genealogy.nationalarchives.ie

Found a few ancestors on the site this morning, which was useful, though not as many as I thought. Will have to try again when public interest has calmed down a bit.

Got to see the L'Etranger film this evening at Chapter and, though slightly long, it turned out to be very good indeed. A faithful presentation of Camus' story and some excellent performances by the cast. Well worth catching if you can!

The ‘Scandal’ of Scotland’s Unmarried Mothers

For History Today, I wrote about what happened to ‘illegitimacy’ in mid-twentieth century Scotland, tabloid fuelled moral panic, ‘problem girls’ in Moray and elsewhere, ‘respectable housewives’ and ‘living with Granny.’ www.historytoday.com/archive/feat...

Bang-Bang You're Dead by Muriel Spark - BBC Sounds Sybil's friends see her in a new light when they watch film footage of her time in Africa.

Some classic Muriel Spark is on 4Extra this evening. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

I've been working on this stuff for years, I realise, because it is almost 20 years since I happened across a copy of Charlie Withers' Urban Highlanders in the old History Faculty Library in Oxford and then read it in one or two sittings at the KA opposite. Ahh memory.

🤣🤣🤣

Finally getting around to the Scottish history project I had intended for my PhD, but with a slight twist in that it uses family history as the core. All the glamorous places: Inverness, Paisley, Glasgow, Dingwall, and, erm, Auchtermuchty.

See, good news can happen.

Finally getting around to re-reading Foucault's History of Sexuality as literature rather than as work, and it is much more satisfying this time around. Shorn of the baggage of lecture and seminar and academic production, the ideas are attractive and relevant, if not always entirely convincing.

Brings to mind those scenes in Brideshead Revisited wherein Charles Ryder and his pals simply must bash a few Bolshies. What-ho.

Does it even say anything remotely new, Matt?

Dash it all.

*by more limited I mean in terms of what people have written about, rather than a limited subject which it absolutely is not.

A fascinating subject, eh! In terms of Hall-esque work, yes, and rightly so, but the intersection with Christian socialism is perhaps more limited. Secularism tends to have got more coverage - not least because of Callum Brown's wonderful work and that of his protege @charlielynch.bsky.social.

Excerpt from Women, Party Politics, and Welsh Local Government, 1945–1997, a forthcoming chapter on those themes.

I do still write "proper" history, y'know the sort with footnotes and things. This particular study details women's participation and representation in local government, a key theme of its own, as well as some tentative discussion of the election of ethnic and religious minorities.

Any time Fraser. Will keep an eye out for the finished piece.