Claire Cock-Starkey

When will the UK government wake up to the wholesale destruction of HE that's happening?
This affects towns and cites across the UK, our businesses, the NHS, schools, young people, our global standing, everything! Higher Education, Universities, contribute over £265 BILLION to the economy.

Congratulations 👏

Regret to announce that we’ve reached Wrong Coat season. Every coat you wear from now til mid April will be The Wrong Coat for the weather

Call for applications!

We are looking for a small press to take up a temporary residency at UCL!

£5,000 to spend flexibly, an opportunity to work with outstanding collections & collaborate with brilliant students and staff!

blogs.ucl.ac.uk/special-coll...

IHR Internships IHR Internships support new researchers to develop their skills and broaden their experience within and beyond the historical research community.

We have just launched our IHR 2026 internship with the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH), focusing on environmental histories. For more information and to apply visit: buff.ly/Vzpz6G3 (application deadline 15 April 2026, 11:59 pm BST).

A ballock dagger handle, missing the tang-attached blade. For those who want to complain about the spelling we use, both this and the one you use are correct, but spelling it with an 'a' avoids issues with filters...

Victorian antiquarians called this type of dagger, of which 65 were found on the Mary Rose, a 'kidney dagger', as the lobes on the handle apparently resemble a pair of kidneys.

The Tudors called it a ballock dagger, after a different body part, but we don’t see it ourselves...

Congratulations!

Plenty of watery ditches but not certain any nearby ponds. I'll just keep hoping a frog hops by soon!

You're so lucky! We're on year two of our pond and have yet to attract a single frog 😔

Just listen to what Andrew’s nickname was amongst royal protection officers.

🚨 Urgent Casting: 🚢⚓️
We need a speaker for Saga’s Spirit of Adventure on short notice!
🗓️ Feb 28 (Funchal) – March 5 (Portsmouth)
💰 Paid Engagement
Looking for fresh topics (NO Royals, TV, or Nature).
Interested? Email casting@pastpreservers.com
#PublicSpeaking #CruiseJobs

Cambridge, UK. It's not unusual for blackthorn to start to blossom about now, it's an early starter!

One tiny white may blossom peeking open on a branch with lots of buds

We had a break in the relentless rain yesterday and the sun came out for an hour or two. I can only assume this may blossom saw it's opportunity and popped open! First one of the season 🌸

History: Serious about Play: Childhood, Play and Policymaking in Wales, 1945 to the present (RS936) - Swansea University We offer a wide range of funded and fully funded research scholarships in all subject areas. Explore your options and apply now.

Please do share this doctoral opportunity with MA/MSt students - four years of AHRC funding to work on the history of children's play in Wales, supervised by me and the lovely and brilliant Dr Jacky Tyrie. Any questions get in touch! www.swansea.ac.uk/postgraduate...

Dog sleeping by its master's side on effigy tomb in the church of St Giles, Chesterton

This week's dog theme begins with a real rather than phantom pooch. Folklorist FW Bennett heard a witch predict that his grandfather would die in 5 days. When asked how she knew, she said that her dog told her by its howls. Bennett’s grandfather died at 9am on the 5th day.

Close Reading Is For Everyone Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant Call for Pitches Based on our previous Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century, we are at work on a new version that’s shorter, slimmer, and aimed at a more general audience. We’re looking for a new set of contributors who would write excellent, brief, model close readings of texts that high schoolers might know and care about. Think: “The Gettysburg Address,” Macbeth, and Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” but also song lyrics, idioms, or even a visual image. What is your best, most instructive, most exciting, most welcoming example of how a close reading builds a real argument out from a tiny, perhaps overlooked detail? If you’re interested in pitching us, please send us your 250-word close reading of the text you propose. Your close reading should be mappable using our vocabulary of close reading: the five steps of scene setting, noticing, local claiming, regional argumentation, and global theorizing. (Our close reading of “The Red Wheelbarrow” in the early pages of our introduction is the sort of thing we’re seeking.) If we think we can use yours, we’ll ask you to expand it to a 1,200 word essay in which you explain how your close reading works step by step. We seek close readings both of texts that are canonical and also ones that aren’t. And so we invite contributors both from the discipline of literary studies, and other disciplines across the university, and the public humanities beyond it. Send your pitches—please include your name and contact info—to daniel.sinykin@emory.edu and jwinant@reed.edu by March 15.

CALL FOR PITCHES

@dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience.

We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not.

Details below!

This is going to be the next thing in tech: companies offering AI blockers, AI firewalls, AI free security and hosting solutions…
a whole new market, well done everybody.

Did I remember to switch the heated airer off when I went to bed at 10.30 last night? No. Did I suddenly remember at 2.30am and have to get up? Yes. Why am I so good at remembering in the middle of the night 😩

a cartoon duck is writing in a notebook with a pencil ALT: a cartoon duck is writing in a notebook with a pencil

Submissions to our anthology (up to 500 words on the theme of BRIDGES) & our Microfiction comp (up to 100 words, no theme) are now OPEN until 15 Feb. Our anthology editors & judges are poised ready! You can read more here: www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk

Reform proposal of keeping 450,000 children in poverty to save *5p* on the price of a beer is actually a perfect illustration of the sort of thoughtless vandalism and arbitrary cruelty we could expect from them in government, so this tracks.

Hard to think of a worse idea than this in living memory.

good morning to sociologists from this historian.

The news from Scotland

My amazing bestie and team are organising a conference! If you are interested in 19th Century Literature - send in an abstract!! #19thcentury

Every American needs to watch this:

We are organising a big "Festival of Social History" at the IHR, Friday April 24. The ticket price is an absolute steal for SHS members (join!). Trust me when I say this one's built different, it will be a hands-on day demonstrating how vibrant and engaged UK social history is. ONLY £10!

Festival of Social History To celebrate 50 years of the Social History Society, we’ve teamed up with the Institute of Historical Research to host a Social History Festival! The festival will feature two expert discussion pan…

See the full list of panelists and our amazing keynote here:

socialhistory.org.uk/events/festi...

"No I'm fine, you just make sure you get your fucking video first"

Beautiful!

Can anyone identify what type of creature this was meant to depict? I believe it's Native American