Rebekah Higgitt

I love the wearing of the gown, like a barely-there rolled up schoolgirl's skirt

I heartily agree. Worth it for the part-finished raised carvings alone – incomplete art, frozen in time.

But also: a four-odd thousand year old dress! In pretty good nick!

Rameses III's girdle!!

If you can, do go. It really makes you look at the objects in a new way and you feel in touching distance of the people behind them

For another spotty-breeched Academic Macaroni by W. Hutchinson, lamenting the cutting off of his queue (pigtail) ready to take holy orders, see www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

The textiles did, literally, make me gasp. Just incredible survivals and the sash was gorgeous

Flaked fragment of stone with writing on it. See next image for description.

Museum label describing a 1550-1069 BCE limestone fragment and its text about absences from work, to attend a funeral, receiving a bite, being sick and 'did not work'. It is from the Louvre.

Close-up detail from a stone shrine belonging to the Fitzwilliam. It shows figures and hieroglyphs and right in the centre you can just see a faint inscription from the person who made it.

Get to Made in Ancient Egypt at the Fitzwilliam Museum, if you can. Reveals the makers, techniques, mistakes, trials and gorgeous successes 📜

Important to keep warm: shivering would play havoc with your precision

Splendid #puttiofscience at work

Royal Observatory Greenwich Drawings and Paintings : George Airy crossing the Front Court at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich Pencil drawing, dated and signed by 'E.S' [Elizabeth Smith]. In this view, the Astronomer Royal, George Airy, is shown crossing

And, on top, George Airy's huggy bear coat cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk//view/MS-RGO...

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The labour of knowledge! Thanks for the ping

Thank you - I'm very lucky! I was at the ROE today, too

Another observatory for my to-do list (though first comes Tartu Observatory, which I'll be visiting next week!)

Is that now Lillypot? Is there a connection?

Many thanks for reading and reviewing! Now that I'm back in Scotland I'm particularly sad that I didn't include the Schiehallion experiment in the Maskelyne book (that was partly because Nicky Reeves had recently published on it, but I can see now that it should have been there nevertheless)

One for the Christmas hols, perhaps?

Lilliputian? (It's in fact next year, for all that I'm convinced it's 2026 already, so there may yet be room for some Laputians, Yahoos and the rest)

That's some name! I wonder if he felt the need to live up to it, or to be quite the opposite

Yes, exactly this for me too, age and year. Always anticipating, and, I suspect,only speeding up! Except when I'm convinced it's still 2015, of course

Which is definitely what I should have pretended I meant all along! It possibly was a factor in my mental confusion. Anyways, we really should be having celebrations from 14 August 2025 right through to 28 October 2026 (the actual publication date)

Honestly, I did, and still felt sure of myself!

As has rightly been pointed out to me it is, in fact, not yet 2026*

Sooo... Gulliver's Travels is 300 *next* year. What do we have planned?!

*I blame overwork plus the fact that I first mentally noted this anniversary 12 years ago, which is ages to wait!
www.theguardian.com/science/the-...

Thank you! I have spent the last day or so being convinced that it is 2026 in at least one portion of my brain. (Which is a bit of a worry!)

I didn’t realise but Daston has also contributed to an LRB podcast about my book. Check it out here: www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...

After listening, I felt like she had come away thinking deeply about lots of issues I’d raised, such as the nature of epistemic injustice, which is amazing!

What a great artefact to have!

Oh, thanks for that! I'll take a look

Yes, well worth a watch!

Agreed. The old technique of creating a villain as a foil for your personal hero isn't great when the maligned individual is long dead, but it's clear defamation when they're alive (see my old post on the former, inspired by Langley www.theguardian.com/science/the-...)

One was boosted by military and Cold War interests and the other (on Naomi Oreskes's reading) was delayed by them. #histSTM

Either there's a feeling that is sufficient, or they're planning an episode before the end of this anniversary year