@historianhelen.bsky.social
Cambridge Historian, London-dweller, author of Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood, now writing the social history of retirement for Penguin/Allen Lane. https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/people/prof-helen-mccarthy
I don’t think Churchill & Austen etc are entitled to stay on the banknotes forever but as a lifelong and avowed enemy of all things ‘twee’, I do fear for the future of our currency.
Interestingly, as my kids get closer in age to my students, I find that I have more insight into their cultural worlds and feel less bewildered or distressed. (Although, admittedly, I experienced plenty of those things watching Louis Theroux's Manosphere documentary last njght...)
Revisiting the pioneering @demos-uk.bsky.social study, The New Old (2003) & it's fascinating to consider how the Boomer discourse has transformed in two decades as this cohort has aged. (Also, 'TV dinners' anyone?!)
Five intense minutes of me eye-balling you in a confined space on The Social Democracy to Neoliberalism Metanarrative and How Historians Have Sought to Complicate It. It would certainly be pedagogically innovative...
Maybe this should be the new way for academics to deliver lecture content?
The more interesting point (possibly what T-C was attempting to get at) is how film exists as a genuinely popular art form, unburdened by the 'elite' associations of opera & ballet & through which quite sophisticated & complex ideas can be communicated to mass audiences www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Excellent news - this will be an immensely important archival collection for future historians of gender, politics and public life in the Thatcher and New Labour era.
I didn’t! Need to freeze-frame and magnify…
Maybe most Gen Z men don’t have wives - ask them again in ten years?
Lots of bared flesh in Cambridge today. Guys, I love your spirit, but it’s really not that warm.
Also: what is the book that Jude Law is reaching for on the shelf in the shop in the Uber Eats ad.
Why am I startled by the hard thud of a phone hitting the floor - on a bus, plane, in a cafe etc? Is there something uniquely disturbing about the timbre of it or is it simply because phones are now the primary thing that people drop in public spaces? (Is what I have been thinking about today.)
We are advertising a two-year lectureship in Modern British History at University of Cambridge, please spread the word!
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assista...
I loved that song! (But if memory serves, Eurovision really didn’t.)
Honestly, not sure 'distinctly British wit' is going to win it for us, but worth a try.
Friends, can I ask you to spread the word that we have a THREE-YEAR postdoc in American history at Cambridge up for grabs - ANY field, but applications are due March 1 so don't delay - apply, apply, apply! networks.h-net.org/jobs/69790/u...
For all my tech-themed plaints, there is something tender and wonderful about sitting at my desk at home, watching three beloved dots (2 x daughter, 1 x husband) on a map on my phone screen gradually converging as they make their way back to me.
Was planning to give this a miss but Carry On Heathcliff actually sounds like a lot of fun.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
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...
My daughter's rucksack is a graveyard for withered satsumas.
For anyone interested in our 18-month post in British Studies please follow the link below. @ihr.bsky.social
www.jobs.london.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...
Recalling how Mandelson visited QMUL in 2011 to unveil the charming statue of Clement Attlee that stands in Library Square (one of the very few political statues I would regret to see torn down) and a group of spirited students heckled him. How right they were. www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2...
Three scholarships for PhD in Arthur Scargill Archive - quite the opportunity. Believe me when I say that I am sure that some of the stuff in here will be quite the eye-opener! (if the good stuff hasn't been already shredded or slapped with an embargo)
Job opportunity: 18 month fellowship in British Studies working @ihr.bsky.social to undertake own research and prep for NACBS2027 @thenacbs.bsky.social
www.jobs.london.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...
I have an essay in it on the political pen of the socialist intellectual Beatrice Webb, which explores how elite women used writing to assert expertise - purposefully, artfully, and never without cost.
Interested in writing as a way of 'doing' politics? Then read this new collection of essays, Writing Politics in Modern Britain, edited by @richardtoye.bsky.social & @garylove.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/books/w...
Very cool talk on Vivienne Westwood and Britishness by Margot Rashba on Feb 11th. Corsets and safety-pins optional.
www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...
The dynamic between the host and visiting games teachers at a school sports fixture intrigues me. A simmering mix of professional amity, tribal rivalry, status anxiety and occasional sexual tension.
Save the date! Join us for an online archival workshop with @gpadmoreinstitute.bsky.social and @irrnews.bsky.social to explore the materials and histories of Black activist publishing in the UK from the 1970s: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/archival-w...
