SO excited to share this at last! WHAT IS HISTORY FOR? is taking place at JRRIL, 6 June, 10-4, as part of Manchester Histories Festival. There will be talks, workshops, and lots more. All ages, and completely free! For more information and to sign up: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/what-is-hi...
Promo code for The Disraeli Myth
As another Primrose Day comes to a close, I thought I'd share the promo code for a lovely 30% off The Disraeli Myth: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
Woohoo! My article, 'Conservative Crossings: Constructing Anglo-American Conservatism in the C20th' has been accepted by @jbritishstudies.bsky.social It shows how Conservative ideas and people moved between Britain and the US, contributing to the Cold War invention of 'American conservatism'.
On this post and the one on Black conservatives - historians can help! We are experts on context, contingency, the (re)creation of identities/meaning, and longer duree analysis that you can't see through opinion polls or fixed conceptions of ideology.
If you’re a student who’d love to see the You’re Dead To Me tour show in either Cardiff, Edinburgh or Manchester — and you don’t *already* have a ticket — DM me on here or on Instagram for a sneaky student discount code
Poster advertising talk in Venice
Lads, I'm going to Venice! So excited!
Maybe @richardtoye.bsky.social will know?
Ngram of term 'special relationship'
Out of curiosity I popped "special relationship" into Ngram. Of course a Churchill family legend (Jennie C launched the Anglo-Saxon Review in 1899 long before the term was coined by her son) but really a Thatcherite one? Or just a surge of social science publications now using the term reflexively?
Thank you!!
#Skystorians great new book klaxon! Out this summer! Highly recommended!
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Thank you!!
I am ill and so comfort-listing to Harry Potter (#6). Despite History of Magic being constantly pilloried I do love Dumbledore's historicism: 'Sir … is it important to know all this about Voldemort's past?” “Very important, I think,” said Dumbledore.
This is terrible, and made worse by fact that SHU has also historically been an institution which employs a lot of teaching only staff. My dad worked there for 25 years and him and his entire department (maths) were teaching only! (That might have changed since, but was case in 2015 when he retired)
Ooh... Will this horrible-sounding drink produce something morally good, or morally evil? ☕️👹
Precisely!
Mmm (historian incoming), I mean what is happening to the Conservative Party is without analogy so in fact historically very interesting. The best analogy for Labour I think is the Liberals c.1906.
Literally (as Europe remilitarises)!
Yep, Lib-Lab pact and all of the Irish Parliamentary Party MPs.
Not that anyone asks historians anymore, but I think my sense that the last GE was Labour's 1906 (they are the Liberals in this analogy) still might stand. What remains unique (and so without historical analogy) is that the Conservatives are being *successfully* challenged by a party to the right.
What do you do when you have no ideas? Steal some. Politics for the AI age.
This is in fact a very good illustration of what Paul Sagar was talking about on Past, Present, Future when he said that we need to bring together historical, philosophical, and psychological approaches in politics.
When these actions are connected to a sense of trust or 'authenticity' as we say now, they do matter because they are interpreted through that lens (not policy). One of mine is how you treat very junior front line service staff, having been on the receiving end of a lot of entitled people's ranting.
“Purely cognitive” is it?
Surely they’re not stupid enough to believe that word-juggling software actually thinks?
The whole point of word-juggling software is to produce the illusion of thinking. And that is all it is.
“With modern digital communication, and with ChatGPT, people are reading more for information... They’re trying to get the core idea out of something quickly, as opposed to valuing the process of immersing themselves in the text.” bit.ly/49KkcAb
Labour NEC: She'll have the lamb, rare, with very little mint sauce.
The dodo (an actual ideas-based political argument) lives!
'Reform to Conserve' has acquired an entirely new meaning.
