Closing today - please repost!

Photo of bluebell carpet in woodland glade

Photo of deep pink apple blossom

Look I know I wasn’t meant to be taking more pictures of flowers but look at these beautiful bluebells! and this lovely apple blossom! (It’s Bradninch Black, from the Devon heritage apple orchard at Rosemoor)

Someone in the archive, examining an old document, wearing gloves.

Our MA Early Modern Studies trains you in palaeography, book history & archival research skills, plus options in information & literary studies, history & language.
Join us for a taster lecture, learn more about the course & ask questions
📅1 May 2-3:30pm BST online
app.geckoform.com/events-embed...

Would love a boost for this post to get it to those interested in Arabic manuscripts please and thank you. #Skystorians #MedievalSky @soasuni.bsky.social @soaslibrary.bsky.social @soas-speccoll.bsky.social @soashistory.bsky.social @britishlibrary.bsky.social

Buried 30 paragraphs into this abysmal BBC piece blaming renewables for the high cost of UK electricity is the actual reason it's so expensive, which is fossil gas. But Justin Rowlatt seems uninterested in this detail.

Photograph of a stone monument commemorating a violent hailstorm in Sherborne in 1709

I did, however, find this gem which is a monument in Sherborne Abbey to the Great Hailstorme of 1709

Yes this daffodil cluster is perfect Anna, no you don't need 30 different out-of-focus photos of it

Frantically deleting photos from my phone after a camera-happy day in the British Library yesterday and the themes seem to be: plants in my garden, plants in the allotment, other people's babies, plant babies, old books, plants seen out and about.

Cover of a book published in April 2016 entitled 'Charles Areskine's Library: Lawyers and their Books a the Dawn of the Scottish Enlightenment'. The main colours are a very vivid yellow and an electric blue. The illustration is of three eighteenth-century gentlemen complete with wigs who are sitting at at table which has some books on it. Behind them are book shelves and a door. There is a red carpet under them. Just visible in front of them is the head of a small spaniel. The spaniel is looking at the three men hopefully, no doubt wanting a more exciting activity to participate in. It's a crop of a fuller version in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.

Not all books are destined to be best sellers, but this one, my first, means a lot to me. And it has a birthday this month! www.kgbaston.co.uk/2026/04/10/h... ✒️📖

I'm a data scientist @ourworldindata.org and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸

We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto.

The researcher who maintained it, Prof. Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.

Photo of the double spread of an open book of printed music, over which have been trodden cat-sized paw prints in ink. Reference: Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, F. 1756 A LP, "Tomus secundus psalmorum selectorum" (Nürnberg, 1539).

Attention #earlyModern #bookHistory and #earlyMusic types!

You have to the end of the week to register for the @dormeme16.bsky.social conference Marking Music: The Use of Music Books in Early Modern Europe, at KCL. Registration and the brilliant programme are at www.tickettailor.com/events/aheve...

Just out in 17th Century - my new article on Leonard Wheatcroft, the bard of Ashover, ”Poetry and the Politics of the Parish”. Featuring weathercocks, a non-elite manuscript miscellany, and lots of bellringing!
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

LibGuides: Archives and Special Collections: Ronald Duncan Stipend for Southwest Writing LibGuides: Archives and Special Collections: Ronald Duncan Stipend for Southwest Writing

📢 Great news for South West writers...

Applications are now open for our 2026 Ronald Duncan Stipends! 🎉

If exploring archives sparks ideas for your writing, this might be the opportunity for you 📖

✍️ For more info and to apply, please visit our LibGuide ⬇️

#WritingCommunity #AmWriting #Archives

Discover the fascinating world of Renaissance botany on 7 May at 6pm with John Gerard’s magnificent 'Herball' or 'Generall Historie of Plantes' 🪴

This is a small group workshop; booking is essential: exeter-cathedral.org.uk/whats-on/events/in-the-library-with-herball/

Photo of the double spread of an open book of printed music, over which have been trodden cat-sized paw prints in ink. Reference: Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, F. 1756 A LP, "Tomus secundus psalmorum selectorum" (Nürnberg, 1539).

Attention #earlyModern #bookHistory and #earlyMusic types!

You have to the end of the week to register for the @dormeme16.bsky.social conference Marking Music: The Use of Music Books in Early Modern Europe, at KCL. Registration and the brilliant programme are at www.tickettailor.com/events/aheve...

Step into the world of Shakespeare at the Cathedral Library and Archives! 🪶📜

Come & celebrate the South West Shakespeare Festival 2026 at our pop-up display of Shakespeare and the brilliant writers & thinkers who shaped his age.

📆 24 April, 10am-2pm
🎟 Free tickets: bit.ly/shakespeare-fest-exeter

Call for Chapters: Evident Tongues, Evident Bodies Language, Sense, and Proof in the Early Modern World. Deadline for submissions: 12th April 2026.

#CfP 📢 "Evident Tongues, Evident Bodies", eds. Mary Katherine Newman and Rana Banna

Seeking chapter proposals on how language and the senses shaped evidence in the #earlymodern world (c.1492–1700).

⏰ Deadline for abstracts: 12 April 2026

🔗 www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...

#HistoryOfKnowledge

I'm looking for suggestions of museum/heritage education consultants for a small project, ideally south-west based. Any ideas or recommendations greatly received!

Photograph of landscape with gorse blossom in foreground and sea in background

Photograph of sea and sea cliffs under bright sunshine

Photograph of grassy cliff-top path with blue sea and sky in background

Gloomy here today, but on Saturday it was glorious (when it wasn’t hailing)

I’m leading this London Rare Book School course on the history of collecting. Ideal for anyone interested in studying the history of libraries and how and why books have survived. We’ll be looking at why special collections are special. 22-26 June. #bookHistory👇📚📖

ies.sas.ac.uk/study-traini...

Painting by Joos van Winghe (circa 1600) entitled 'Elegant company, playing with torchlight'. Group of musicians playing lute, flute, harpsichord and a singer, with other instruments on a table in the foreground.

⚠️Register before 12 April ⚠️
Marking Music: the Use of Music Books in Early Modern Europe
11–12 May 2026 @cemskcl.bsky.social & online
For scholars of music, book history & related to explore how people engaged with books containing music in early modern period.
www.tickettailor.com/events/aheve...

The Bodleian Daybook and the Purchase of Second-Hand Books | The Library Oxford, Bodleian Library, Library Records e. 9 (the Daybook) is a ‘Book of Accompts for the Librarie’ that covers the seven-year period following the death of Sir Thomas Bodley. It contains details of two consignments of second-hand books purchased by ...

Long in the making….here’s my new article about second-hand books and the Bodleian www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...

the worst!

And the sheer fury when the context is one of those ebooks that you have to access through an unstable browser application which only shows you one page at a time

The jump scare of googling things close to your research and then having your own thesis pop up in the results

Just found out that Catholic writer Thomas Harding, to whom John Jewel wrote his "Reply", was not only also from Devon, but was actually born just six years earlier in the next village.

Just reading the abstract here is giving me flashbacks to some of the spreadsheets I've dealt with. Font formatting as a means to store information: don't do it!!

...darkenes to light [...] I hate as Apostates from the faith and traitors to Gods true Church".

Over a page of this stuff!

When your will is actually just another piece of polemical writing. Matthew Sutcliffe, Dean of Exeter in 1628:

"Those false teachers alsoe amonge us that palliate popish heresies, and under the name of Arminius, seeke to bringe in poperie and endeavour, with all theire little skill, to reconcile...