James Connolly

Glazed and confused In a piece for the Guardian Jeremy Ettinghausen introduced me to a term I hadn’t come across before: glazing. Ettinghausen’s article draws on eighteen months of chat logs between three …

“That’s what history as-a-process-of-finding-out-about-the-past actually is: a series of constant shocks and disorientations. You thought you knew something …, but you are repeatedly confronted with you own ignorance and forced to adapt your ideas.” 🗃️ williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2025/07/29/g...

I have a lot of praise for my GP surgery, but they do have a habit of telling me, after various tests, "The doctor will contact you if there's a problem" - then sending an automated message the following day that I assume is bad news but is instead a request to rate my experience.

Slightly shocked to have found dozens of formatting, spelling, and punctuation errors - alongside some minor but genuine factual inaccuracies - in a *fifth* edition of a text. But it goes to show that we all make typos, and small problems can pass by reviewers and editors.

This is sad to see. I wouldn't be where I am today had I not received AHRC funding - I felt lucky and privileged even back then, but it's even tougher now.

Sounds great! I'm gutted to have had to pull out of the conference but enjoying hearing people's thoughts here.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend and participate in the big French history conference in Paris that starts today. Sad to be missing out, but I hope everyone has a great time, and I'll be following here somewhat jealously.

Décès de Jean-Pierre Azéma, immense Historien de la Seconde Guerre mondiale

(My son is three and therefore has no idea what a YouTuber is)

At a picnic at the primary school where my son will start in September, he was playing football with a much older boy. The boy looked at him then said, "I know what you're going to be when you're older: a YouTuber." Absolutely no idea what that meant, or whether it was an insult or a compliment.

Years ago, I was at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France updating my reader card. The BNF employee asked me if I'd be consulting "old" books, so I said no. She asked what publication dates I meant, so I said about 1919, and she laughed, saying that was very old.

A law scholar commented that it was amusing that us hisorians wanted to look back further, when for him the WWII or post-WWII occupations were a very long time ago. This reminded me of the following incident:

At the very enjoyable and interesting Occupation Studies Network conference on Thursday and Friday, the question of periodisation and perspectives came up - e.g. do we consider there to be military occupationsvpre-1789, or is the notion intrinsically tied to notions of popular sovereignty?

Il fort être assez doué pour monter un tel gâteau (a terrible, mispronounced attempt to cram in 'Fort Douamont')

You know you're a modern French historian when you check the time on your phone, see it's 19.40, and then immediately think, "Fall of France." Of course, that is then followed by, "It'd be funny if I received a call (appel) now."

Une fois en 2010, j'étais dans la salle de lecture des Archives départementales du Nord. Je revérifiais que mon appareil photo était silencieux avant de commencer. Puis un vieux monsieur arrive en portant un gros scanner, le branche, et se met à scanner bruyamment des documents. Toute. La. Journée.

Very cool!

Despite having constant work deadlines, plus birthdays and other events in my personal life, for some reason it is the constant checking of use-by and best before dates on food that hammers home the relentless march of time. "This goes off on 8 July... How is it July already?!"

Desperately trying to make a pun about the most famous book and film adaptation about sharks, but I'm Jaw-ing a blank. More seriously, interesting question and topic!

Bilingual parenting moment: son asked me what "repeat" means, so I said it's "répéter" in French then tried to explain the concept. He understood it as "re-péter" (fart again) and burst out laughing.

I find it means I know random stuff that can come in useful during pub quizzes. But it also means that when it comes to a 'history' round, people think you know everything that has ever happened everywhere...

I had no idea you were pregnant - congratulations!

Aïe... mais la plupart de mes compatriotes ne savent pas utiliser les apostrophes en anglais donc franchement avant de pouvoir écrire des mots en français, il reste du pain sur la planche.

Yesterday I was watching the first season of Andor, immediately thought of French resistance parallels, then wondered, "Has there been an episode of Paroles d'histoire on this topic given how much André Loez likes Andor?"

Congratulations!

Can't help with Duke Nukem but still have three Doom cheat codes seared into my brain; IDDQD, IDQFA, and NOCLIP. And yet I forget much more important information.

That was a good lunch, and was my first conference-style event since 2019! I actually haven't done any more since then... Finally getting back into the swing of things in two weeks, but unfortunately I've had to pull out of the Paris French history conference next month.

Courage !

Just had a quick search online, and it seems it can vary but your version is more common/correct! Kind of proves my point about expectations for number sequences, which can trip me up!

But yes, that logic can easily escape us on the phone!

There's the added complication here of what the expected number sequences are. It's been 11 years since I lived in France, so I may be wrong, but I have a feeling the most natural French way of saying that would be in double digits then a single: soixante-dix-neuf, trente-quatre, zéro.