Jobs! Three jobs! I am hiring three full-time, three-year postdocs to research the long history of song at Newcastle, from any disciplinary background (within reason), starting 1 October 2026. Spread the news far and wide – all details in the link below...

jobs.ncl.ac.uk/job/Newcastl...

New article! It considers how travelling activists - lecturers, wandering outsiders & Clarion caravanners - figured in the landscape of socialist organising in the late 19thC & argues that experiences of intimacy, friendship, & frustration were key in generating socialist ideas & making socialists

Brilliant! Congratulations Stuart!

Neal Ascherson · Soup at La Marmite: Communards in Exile Solidarity with Commune veterans on the part of British working-class movements was usually more symbolic than active....

‘In​ its short life, the Commune could fulfil little of its programme. But it transformed Paris into a network of elected democracies, cancelled rent arrears and abolished religious education.’

Neal Ascherson on the Paris Commune in Britain.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

@marawilson.bsky.social 🧡

Googled my favourite Matilda quote to find a clip of the relevant scene and the auto AI overview that I can't seem to turn off came through with something accurate for once

Parliamentary History Click on the title to browse this journal

All articles in our 2026 special issue, edited by Naomi Lloyd-Jones of @histparl.bsky.social can be read free online between now and the end of June!
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1750...

Neal Ascherson · Soup at La Marmite: Communards in Exile Solidarity with Commune veterans on the part of British working-class movements was usually more symbolic than active....

‘Once, the men and women waiting for soup in Newman Passage had believed that everything was possible. Now they knew it wasn’t.’

Neal Ascherson on the Paris Commune’s refugees in Britain.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Hey everyone, a collective I'm part of is starting a radical bookshop and community space in Newcastle, a city where the last radical bookshop closed around 40 years ago. We've just launched our crowdfunder. Please take a look a share widely!
www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/booksfromb...

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Such a brilliant book!

Yes of course! laura.forster@york.ac.uk

Don't buy it - it's a rip off! Very happy to send over a pdf if you'd like!

Neal Ascherson · Soup at La Marmite: Communards in Exile Solidarity with Commune veterans on the part of British working-class movements was usually more symbolic than active....

Hey look - a lovely review in the @lrb.co.uk of @lauracforster.bsky.social's magnificent book about the exiles of the Paris commune! www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Happy St. Patrick's Day, New York.

Thanks Joe!

Call for Papers
New Left Histories and Historiographies: Mapping a Renewed Research Field
Workshop to assess the current state of research on the New Left.
Cfp for an event to be held in November at QMUL.
Info here
www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...
@bbkhistorical.bsky.social
@qmul.bsky.social

Thanks Katrina 😊

'...a lively, scholarly account, full of bold personalities and surprising connections'

Thanks to Neal Ascherson for this generous review of 'The Paris Commune in Britain' in the @lrb.co.uk today

Particularly pleased to read that the book took Neal to the Newman Arms in search of the Communards 🍻

Neal Ascherson · Soup at La Marmite: Communards in Exile Solidarity with Commune veterans on the part of British working-class movements was usually more symbolic than active....

‘Solidarity with Commune veterans on the part of British working-class movements was usually more symbolic than active. Plenty of “Vive la Commune!” and “Down with Capitalism!”, but no barricades.’

Neal Ascherson on the Paris Commune in Britain.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Thanks Constance!

'...a lively, scholarly account, full of bold personalities and surprising connections'

Thanks to Neal Ascherson for this generous review of 'The Paris Commune in Britain' in the @lrb.co.uk today

Particularly pleased to read that the book took Neal to the Newman Arms in search of the Communards 🍻

In it we have a chapter on the policing of friendship. It covers #spycops, and, precisely as you put it, the infiltration of political intimacies, the state poisoning of activist intimacies

Myself and Joel White recently wrote a book - Friends in Common (Pluto) - which connects the late nineteenth century with the recent past (c. 1970s - 2000s), in terms of how friendship was a key component in both radicalising and animating political commitments

thanks Dave - the short answer is yes! Not explicitly here, but my thinking about forms of intimate activism and interest in the explicit desire for and practice of friendship as part of political organising has certainly grown out of frustratiion with easy crits of post-68 period

This is really excellent and informative, as ever. From the best @eskandarsadeghi.bsky.social

The rest of the special issue can be accessed here (much of it open access): onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17500206... it's full of brilliant scholarship on political organising in the 19th century

It argues that intimacies shared on the road – flashes of affinity, mishaps, meals, beds & boredom – were central to making socialists

Travelling Activists, Radical Hospitality and the Intimate History of Socialist Organising in Britain, c.1880–1914* This article considers the political lecture tour, and particularly the travelling socialist caravan tours organised by Clarion socialists at the end of the 19th century, to argue that, for socialist...

I've got a new article out @parlhistjournal.bsky.social 💥 It's about late 19thC socialist caravan tours & the production of everyday forms of cross-cultural connection & provincial internationalisms that were vital for the development of socialist ideas in this period

🥳🥳🥳 so happy to hear this Constance!! Richly deserved!