I am a mere £275 away from my goal of raising £2500 for Step Forward, and I smashed my face and knee up for the privilege so please help if you can!

Lot of feelings today, after working on this book for so long. Mostly I hope people find it useful for thinking and talking about this often still unthinkable and unspeakable topic.

For PhD/ECR members of @fwwsoc.bsky.social - the Society has a call for papers out for 'New Voices in First World War Studies' - a virtual conference planned for June.

It's a great opportunity for members to showcase their amazing new research. See here for more:

drive.google.com/file/d/12DLx... 🗃️

In my essay I situate the stories among Ford's other war writings, and return to their original periodical publication context. It's a long essay (thank you and sorry editors...), but I believe these are the only published close readings of some of these. www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/13...

This special issue of Humanities, on Ford Madox Ford's War Writing, has been published as a volume. I've got an essay in it on Ford's First World War short stories, 1914-20. You can download it for free, and you can also buy a book version. www.mdpi.com/books/reprin...

This is incredible

The other thing that I was talking to the theatre manager about is this new fad for instant everything: the thing novel, the short play, the tiny epic. Eventually, if we're not careful, all our arts will be down to the length of a commercial, because people actually can't sit and [...]

[...] watch. Some evenings – and I'm sure it wasn't just the production – I lost about a third of the audience during Henceforward. . . IW [Ian Watson, the interviewer]: Because of a lack of concentration? AA [Alan Ayckbourn]: Well, they wanted to go on to other things. They came, they touched base, and they moved on. They were restless before the play even had a chance to bore them.

Alan Ayckbourn, in Conversations with Ayckbourn (2nd edn, 1988), on his perception of the growing need for immediacy. (The comments are about a season in Houston, TX.)

Change Everything No 82: The neoliberal university model has failed. What next? Edinburgh Union Debate: 'This House Believes Universities Have Forgotten Their True Purpose'

I share my thoughts from a debate at the University of Edinburgh Union.

I didn’t catch the numbers of the vote, but yes, unsurprisingly my affirmative side won. Students get it

@edinburgh-uni.bsky.social @scottishgreens.org
@younggreens.bsky.social
nataliebennett.substack.com/p/change-eve...

Isn’t it weird how “AI literacy” being pushed on students isn’t about learning how it works, the cost of how it works, learning to spot disinformation, media and tech literacy. But instead is just “employers will like it if you get it to write your emails :)”

I think you're right, although you can see how my brain went refuge -> fortress!

I'd keep going with the Balkan and Levant trilogies before getting into any of the other stuff. They're really remarkable (and alarmingly, depressingly now). Starting to look at some of the other stuff, but for me it's not of the same order, though there are always striking moments and phrases.

Really, male readers...

When Laura took The Times Literary Supplement to school, Gilda had scornfully said: "Men don't like girls who read papers like that," and it was true of Camperlea men, if of no others. Yet the library, a dark toast-rack of battered, grimy books, had once been Laura's refuge and the fortress of her early imaginings.

No suc person, of course, was to be found in Camperlea. Only the most dismal young men came to the public library. They all looked like Hen Clarke: thin and stooped, glasses slipping down long, damp.noses, limp bodies hung with raincoats of no known colour.

Olivia Manning's withering, disillusioned take on libraries and readers in The Play Room (1969).

This is the situation we find ourselves in

Wikipedia now has higher standards than all universities

Chatty Jeeps?

Could be worse, you could be in it

There are just a few days left until the deadline to apply for scholarships for SUISS - closes on 24 March (deadline for all applications 24 April). It's always a really great event to teach at - this year I'll be giving the lecture on Imagism on the Modernism course.

Good 🧵 from Hannah, who's currently the lead judge for the fiction prize

We can beat this overhyped stuff just by not using it bsky.app/profile/more...

Some great-looking books on both the fiction shortlist and the biography shortlist!

Scott's a great scholar and colleague, and whoever gets this post will be doing some really important work in Scottish Literature - do consider applying.

Depressingly on the nose summary of this Labour govt

Lecturers at four Scottish universities to go on strike in job cuts dispute The industrial action will affect Aberdeen, Dundee, Heriot-Watt and Strathclyde universities.

Inter-union solidarity to @ucu.org.uk colleagues at Aberdeen, Heriot-Watt, Dundee and Strathclyde. Our scheduled @eisunion.bsky.social strike day today at Edinburgh Napier is postponed for negotiations, but there are still 8 days booked in after Easter. ✊🏻 news.stv.tv/west-central...

More wins... Keep 'em coming
bsky.app/profile/edne...

I normally get the special edition one from Pirongs, but didn't like the pattern. So strong colour it is!

An A5 sized diary in mint green with 2026-2027 in silver to the top right. On a white background.

What's the most radical act of optimism in UK HE in 2025/26? Buying an academic diary for 2026/27...

This is the flouridation bit from Dr Strangelove, but apparently for real

Delicious consequences bsky.app/profile/fray...

Well, I reckon this has been the most miserable winter (literal and figurative) since I moved to Edinburgh, but we might yet make it out of it (literal and figurative)