Elizabeth Boyle

God love Kew, this is incredible

‘How is this possible?’: a new film looks inside the appalling abuses of the Alabama prison system In the year’s most shocking documentary The Alabama Solution, prisoners share astonishing footage in a plea for help

"Led by two long-incarcerated activists Melvin “Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun” Ray and Robert Earl “Kinetik Justice” Council, a network of sources provided the film-makers with years of evidence recorded on contraband cell phones. The footage is ghastly ..."

There is something about discovering Great Books for first time when you are older which is a completely different pleasure, for me at any rate

It has made my day to hear that someone enjoyed my book! 😊📚

But then a class discussion took an interesting turn and everybody mentioned Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark (which I had never read but am reading now) and Elizabeth Boyle’s Fierce Appetites was enthusiastically recommended and discussed by very brilliant classmate in context of life writing

Restitution row: how Nigeria’s new home for the Benin bronzes ended up with clay replicas The public display of artefacts looted by British colonial forces at the new Museum of West African Art was supposed to be the crowning glory of a decades-long restitution effort. What went wrong?

www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

That is iconic.

‘It’s a question of humanity’: how a small Spanish town made headlines over its immigration stance Mayor explains why Villamalea unanimously backed call to regularise undocumented migrants – across party lines

'There was a day when people who practise Islam went to the church & got to know the prayer space & then they did the reverse; the Catholics went to the mosque & experienced it,” said the mayor “& around 2 months later, the five religions we have in Villamalea came together to pray in the church.”'

Noooooo! If only he had eaten another kilo of cola bottles!

Barnsley man in hospital after three-day cola bottles binge Nathan Rimmington ate his way through 3kg of sweets - and doctors were shocked he survived.

I don't know why, but this is, from start to finish, one of the funniest things I have read in ages. I hope this man is living his best life now.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Definitely one for libraries to buy rather than individuals!

Catching up with this excellent essay

‘Almost unheard of’: experts find more music by English composer Henry Purcell Printed score and keyboard manuscript by Purcell, who died in 1695, unearthed in Worcestershire and Norfolk

New Henry Purcell music just dropped. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/o...

The Freak: script of Charlie Chaplin’s unfinished final film to be published Exclusive: Fantasy about ‘a beautiful creature with wings’ has been compiled from drafts, storyboards and sketches

'In one scene, she tells him that she hates her wings: “I don’t like mystifying and frightening people … I am afraid of everyone and everyone is afraid of me.” In another passage, Chaplin wrote that Sarapha “loved him in spite of the fact that he was without wings”.'

Tiny Homes Aim to Address Shortage on Lakota Reservation

"Hoping to develop an initiative that could relieve some of the pressure, the Y.M.C.A. of the Seven Council Fires partnered with Y.M.C.A. alumni from across the country to build high-quality, energy-efficient houses that people would feel proud to call home."

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/r...

We know what the comedians got out of the Riyadh comedy festival. What about the Saudi regime? | Jonathan Liew The tawdry event was an ultimately doomed attempt by the Saudi government to buy the kind of authentic grassroots culture it is unwilling to countenance, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Liew

I'd love to know what every comedian who played the Riyadh Comedy Festival thinks of this piece by Jonathan Liew. It's an electrifying read. And really hard to think what any counter-justification from the participating comics would consist of. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Next Thursday, 16 October, 2-5 p.m. ORB G.27
The McCarthy MSI project & The Department of Modern Irish @ucc.ie present:

The Quire and the Medieval manuscript
a seminar on how manuscripts are made

Fáilte roimh chách / All welcome

Enslavement, immolation and a HIV diagnosis: the artists expressing harsh truths with collage From queer relationships and migration to AI and colonial histories, a huge range of artists have spliced together photography and archive material to create images that challenge history as we know i...

"It is a show that considers the missing chapters and histories in the archives, and how they might be brought into being ..."

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Beyond migrations: travel and mobility in the early Middle Ages: Early Medieval Europe Early Medieval Europe is an interdisciplinary medieval studies journal covering European history from the fall of the Roman Empire up until the 11th century.

A new Early Medieval Europe virtual issue on Travel and Mobility in the Early Middle Ages, featuring five brilliant articles published over the past 20 years by Andy Merrills, Paul Dutton, Frank Riess, Ben Allport and Rebecca Thomas: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

A copy of Colmán Etchingham, Vikings in Early Medieval Ireland: Church-raiding, Politics and Kingship (Boydell and Brewer, 2025).

Just arrived. The posthumously published book of my late colleague, Dr Colmán Etchingham. Thanks to everyone who saw it through to publication. We plan to hold an event in Maynooth to mark its publication (details to follow). Available to order here: boydellandbrewer.com/book/vikings...
#MedievalSky

Medieval History job at DCU.

#MedievalSky
#Spéirghorm

Front cover of Charles West's Europe in the Eleventh Century

Chapeau to @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social for his wonderful new book which has just arrived, an amazingly global and ecumenical volume, in all senses! Beautifully produced by OUP (and before publication day!?).

A spur to others!

The Book of Lecan Conference - Royal Irish Academy During this two-day event in October 2025, speakers explored the production of the Book of Lecan or Leabhar Mór Lecain, its scribes and patrons, and the texts contained within the manuscript.

Papers from the @ria.ie @ceilteachomn.bsky.social @scs-dias.bsky.social conference on the Book of Lecan, which took place last week, are now available to listen to on SoundCloud. Enjoy!
#MedievalSky
#SpéirGhorm

www.ria.ie/audio/the-bo...

Hmmm. I'm hoping to get over to see it during my Christmas break. Definitely not a rave review. 🫤

‘This is a west African story’: how modern art tackled Nigeria’s identity crisis As the landmark Nigerian Modernism exhibition opens at the Tate, curator Osei Bonsu talks about the art in dialogue with ideas of nation-making

'... you won’t find stolen Benin bronzes here, or any other plundered art. “It was important to start where that narrative leaves off ... These are the artists who emerge on the other side of that violence, grappling with a loss of tradition and trying to relocate forms and techniques.”'

Reminds me of this excellent sign that I saw at the Tubman African American Museum in Macon, Georgia.

‘Stay true to yourself – and fly closer to the sun’: what I’ve learned from 50 years of rejection As a writer, I have been rejected thousands of times, and it initially led to shock, denial and anger. Then I accepted it. Here’s what you can gain from doing so too

"When you get down to it, rejection can do you a favour. It forces you to face objective reality. You find out, perhaps contrary to your longstanding expectations, that an entire universe exists outside your own head and the opinions of others might matter as much as yours."

Breaking: Jim Gavin withdraws from Presidential Election.

Street battles, invented languages and gigs in psychiatric hospitals: France’s lost rock revolution of 1968 Bands such as Magma and Art Zoyd provided a soundtrack for the student protests that shook the country. Little remembered now, a new book reveals their decisive influence on later successes such as Ai...

"... the French state’s brutal stifling of dissent had politicised a generation. ... French rock musicians were against what they considered fascist police-state apparatus ... They were looking for new inspirations, free of American whitewashed pulp. They found it in black American jazz."

Into the Dark Heart of a Novelist Who Was ‘Something of a Witch’

'Doppelgängers stalk her pages, where women are often polished off quickly and unsentimentally; consider the immortal lines “it’s a whydunnit in q-sharp major” (“The Driver’s Seat,” 1970) and, from “The Portobello Road,” in the ... 1950s: “He looked as though he would murder me and he did.”'