Vivienne Dunstan

⏰ Time is running out! Submit your 8–10k word essay for the Leah Leneman Prize by 22 Dec 2025. Open to students & independent scholars working on women’s or gender history.

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A view over a ploughed field towards an ancient barn topped with snow. There is a hard hoar frost tracing cobwebs and making the going hard for the corvids in the field

Ladybird Artists Advent Calendar
Window 7
‘Frost’
Artist: CF Tunnicliffe

A close-up image of a brown, orange and grey bird perched on a curved branch filling the frame set against an out-of-focus brown background. They have a thin silvery black beak and jet black eye. The top of their head and their back/wings are dark brown. Their forehead, chin and upper breast are bright orange; their lower breast and underbelly are fluffy grey individual feather "hairs" visible. They were watching a white-throated dipper feeding in the river nearby.

A robin. They were watching a white throated dipper by a very swollen Dighty Burn. 📷📸🎞️🪶 #birds #ukwildlife

A close-up image of a fluffy brown, black and white bird perched on a branch above the camera. They have a black head with jet black eye and bright white cheeks. Their fluffy breast is several shades of pale brown. Their distinctive white nape is not visible.

Coal tit. 📷📸🎞️🪶 #birds #ukwildlife

A small bright yellow/black bird perched horizontally on a branch. They have a bright yellow eyebrow, jet black eyes and black on the top of their head and wings. Their breast is bright yellow with hints of streaks near their wings. Their tail is forked. They are surrounded by round brown alder cones and green/brown catkins.

A male siskin feeding on alder cones/catkins in north Monifieth. 📷📸🎞️🪶 #birds #ukwildlife

A dipper bird perched facing right standing, head raised, with a bank of fallen brown leaves behind it, and river in front and in the background.

A redwing perched in a tree with white sky behind. Its body is facing somewhat towards us, and head turned a little to our left. Ir has a soft light grey tummy, then above that grey with brown flecks, and red markings on its wing that we can see.

A grey heron seen side on, facing right, in a rather gloomy picture. The bird is bent over, standing on the edge of a river, and has caught a fish in its long orange beak.

A goldcrest just after taking flight in the woods. The bird is seen side on, flying to the right, with its wings spread wide.

Some bonus photos from my husband's Saturday walk in the Dighty Burn wooded river valley near our home in eastern Dundee, Scotland 📷📸🎞️🪶

A herring gull calling loudly from a lamp post with white sky behind. The bird is mid picture, body facing left as we look, but its head is turned towards the camera. It has a soft matte light grey back and wing, black around its tail, and white elsewhere.

A wood pigeon seen side on, facing to the right as we look, in a tree. It has a dark grey wing, lighter grey/purple chest and tummy and dark stripy tail feathers.

A siskin perched in an alder tree looking towards the camera. It has a cream front flecked with brown markings, some green colouring around the top of its head, and darker back and tail feathers.

A female blackbird perched facing left in a tree with white sky behind. She has a soft mottled brown tummy, and lighter colouring than male blackbirds.

Some photos from my husband's Saturday walk in the Dighty Burn wooded river valley near our home in eastern Dundee, Scotland 📷📸🎞️🪶

a black clown looking sea duck with an orange and white beak and white eyes, wings down, background edited for contract

a black clown looking sea duck with an orange and white beak and white eyes, wings up, background edited for contract

a black clown looking sea duck with an orange and white beak and white eyes, wings vertically up and down, profile of the face, background edited for contract

This morning I got the best in flight surf scoter shots of my life thus far. Great weird duck season for in flight shots!

A solid 20 other people near me, no one else ever tried.

We must organize more bird photographers to be down with the clown. 🪶

A dipper bird perched facing right standing, head raised, with a bank of fallen brown leaves behind it, and river in front and in the background.

A redwing perched in a tree with white sky behind. Its body is facing somewhat towards us, and head turned a little to our left. Ir has a soft light grey tummy, then above that grey with brown flecks, and red markings on its wing that we can see.

A grey heron seen side on, facing right, in a rather gloomy picture. The bird is bent over, standing on the edge of a river, and has caught a fish in its long orange beak.

A goldcrest just after taking flight in the woods. The bird is seen side on, flying to the right, with its wings spread wide.

Some bonus photos from my husband's Saturday walk in the Dighty Burn wooded river valley near our home in eastern Dundee, Scotland 📷📸🎞️🪶

A herring gull calling loudly from a lamp post with white sky behind. The bird is mid picture, body facing left as we look, but its head is turned towards the camera. It has a soft matte light grey back and wing, black around its tail, and white elsewhere.

A wood pigeon seen side on, facing to the right as we look, in a tree. It has a dark grey wing, lighter grey/purple chest and tummy and dark stripy tail feathers.

A siskin perched in an alder tree looking towards the camera. It has a cream front flecked with brown markings, some green colouring around the top of its head, and darker back and tail feathers.

A female blackbird perched facing left in a tree with white sky behind. She has a soft mottled brown tummy, and lighter colouring than male blackbirds.

Some photos from my husband's Saturday walk in the Dighty Burn wooded river valley near our home in eastern Dundee, Scotland 📷📸🎞️🪶

YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES: Why You Need To Watch This Criminally Underseen Adventure To an entire generation, this Steven Spielberg produced Victorian era adventure may feel like a fever dream. But it’s real and it deserves some love! Written by GREMLINS screenwriter Chris Columbus, we’re celebrating 40 years of YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES.

FYI: To an entire generation, this Steven Spielberg produced Victorian era adventure may feel like a fever dream. But it’s real and it deserves some love! Written by GREMLINS screenwriter Chris Columbus, we’re celebrating 40 years of YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES.

Back to interactive fiction game design, and working on another chapter. I was very happy to just type this bit: "Nearby you can see an old mercat cross, a tall pillar with a unicorn on top, the national animal of Scotland." This game will have a very strong historical element running throughout it.

YouTube video by TALE: The Archaeology Lecture E-library Tayside Treasures: Innerpeffray Library

Tayside Treasures: Innerpeffray Library @innerpeffray.bsky.social youtu.be/4bUw46KZAPc

A small brown rabbit on the left is being approached by a small grey squirrel from the right with their fluffy tail swishing across a mossy green lawn seen from above with long shadows cast by the afternoon winter sun.

A grey squirrel quietly scaring off the rabbit that had been quietly mowing the office lawn for most of the day. They scampered up behind the rabbit swishing their tail. 📷📸🎞️ #rabbits #squirrels #ukwildlife

A white gull with a patchy dark head and red beak is flying towards the camera with long wings seen edge on in a vee shape. The out-of-focus background has blue water below, pale blue sky above and hints of buildings in the distance.

A black-headed gull flying along the edge of the River Tay in Dundee. 📷📸🎞️🪶 #birds #ukwildlife

A white gull with a patchy dark head and red beak is flying towards, and looking directly at, the camera. Their wings are seen nearly edge-on and form an M-shape with their body. The out-of-focus background has blue water below, pale blue sky above and hints of buildings in the distance.

A black-headed gull flying along the edge of the River Tay in Dundee. 📷📸🎞️🪶 #birds #ukwildlife

The Women of the Lymond Chronicles Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles may be one of the most influential series of novels that most people have never heard of. The books follow nobleman Francis Crawford of Lymond on his high-stakes ad...

“…some of the most compelling women characters you’re likely to find in print. [… Dorothy] Dunnett’s female characters have both feet firmly planted in a sixteenth-century world”

Historian @yvonneseale.bsky.social on the women of THE LYMOND CHRONICLES
#BookWormSat 💙📚
yvonneseale.org/blog/2019/05...

Aerial view looking down on a river running through a village. The focal point of the picture is a pink-painted inn on a stone arch bridge in a valley covered with snow.

Ladybird Artists Advent Calendar, window 5
‘Snowstorm in a Pennine Valley’
Artist: SR Badmin

Museum staff 'devastated' after drawings worth £500,000 destroyed About 1,700 military drawings from the Royal Engineers Museum were destroyed in the theft last month.

This is such a sad story! An important collection that had been sent for digitisation (though why from Kent to Scotland, I'm not sure) 📜 www.bbc.com/news/article...

YouTube video by British Library The Dark is Rising: Susan Cooper, Natalie Haynes, Simon McBurney and Robert MacFarlane.

It's nearly the time of year when many people reread Susan Cooper's magical fantasy book "The Dark is Rising". Just a reminder that there's still a wonderful British Library chat/panel with her from October 2023 free to watch celebrating 50 years of the book. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfsK... #Booksky

A hardback book resting on a red sofa. The cover shows an eighteenth-century woman in tartan dress holding a white flower in her right hand. The book is “Shaping Jacobitism 1688 to the Present” edited by Leith Davis and Kevin J James.

Pleased to get my purchase from the Edinburgh University Press half price St Andrew’s Day sale. Got one of the last in stock copies of this Jacobite cultural history book before it went to reprinting. Looking forward to reading the contributions. #Booksky #Skystorians

It’s the monthly read for my book club which is why I’m reading it now. Off to a good start already. I was reading about the album on Wikipedia the other day :)

Wrangling with DPD website - particularly flaky and unreliable today - to rearrange an EUP books flash sale delivery to another day. Managed to get tracking info from EUP by email. Not sure the package would fit through the door unaided! Very happy managed to nab this book before it went to reprint!

Thank you! Very much enjoying so far :)

Anything that affects how the brain processes information might do it. Including MS, strokes, dyslexia, my progressive neurological illness cerebral vasculitis or more. And yes, quite possibly ADHD.

Screenshot of a Flickr photo stream showing a series of photos of a painting of a ginger cat in a green and white dress going down stairs. Getting more close up nearer the start of the 6 photos visible.

Highly amused. My husband @martin-dunstan.bsky.social has just been testing his new camera lens with 1.4x and 2x teleconverters added to it. Photographing my framed Ladybird book “Smoke and Fluff” art print on the study wall. 😜 More pics on his Flickr feed www.flickr.com/photos/mndun...

Two screenshots side by side of Kindle Paperwhites. On the left is a Sherlock Holmes story, in the default font, with nearly 20 lines of text visible. On the right is the same story with just 9 lines of text, much bigger and more spread out.

This is the sort of font I read on my Kindle. On the left is what it started up with by default when I set up a new Kindle a while back. On the right is how I adjusted it for my preference. I don't need a humungous font for visual impairment so much as brain impairment (cognitive). #Booksky

I have a big gap in my reading of them - have read some of the early ones, but no others - but jumped to this Scottish one as a fun read!

Screenshot of a Kindle Paperwhite e-reader in portrait mode with a black and white screen. The view shows 6 book covers, in 2 rows of 3. At the top are "The King of Elfland's Daughter" by Lord Dunsany, "Stone & Sky" by Ben Aaronovitch, and "Echolands: In Search of Boudica" by Duncan Mackay. Then on the second row are "Wintering" by Katherine May, "Restoration London" by Liza Picard, and "The Black Archive #72: Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead" by Dale Smith. Each book has a percentage number showing progress so far. Some are further through, e.g. 26% on "Wintering" and 17% for "Restoration London", while others are newer started.

My current main reading, on my Kindle, so I can read with the utterly gargantuan font that helps me keep reading with my progressive neurological illness. The 6 books shown are the ones I'm currently mainly cycling through. A mix of fiction and non fiction reads. #Booksky

A village scene featuring lots of activity around a frozen pond with children skating, walking and playing

Ladybird Artists Advent Calendar, window 1
‘The village’
Artist: SR Badmin