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Will Webster

@willwritesword.bsky.social

Lover of history, geography, bad jokes and lists. I write about most of them in rockpeoplerivers.substack.com. Here to share the best bits I learn along the way – and do a lot of learning in return.

288 Followers  |  925 Following  |  74 Posts  |  Joined: 26.06.2025  |  1.4549

Latest posts by willwritesword.bsky.social on Bluesky

Being able to react to an email with an emoji is one of the all-time great tech time savers.

Right up there with that phone feature that lets you automatically fill in verification codes.

30.09.2025 12:56 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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How losing my sight helped me see productivity differently | Caitlin Rozario | TEDxBeckenham YouTube video by TEDx Talks

Earlier this year, my very talented wife had the opportunity to do a TEDx Talk.

She decided to lay herself bare and talk about the most challenging, traumatic event in her life.

I may be very biased, but I think there’s lessons for us all in what she shared!

m.youtube.com/watch?featur...

29.09.2025 17:53 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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St John's church, Glastonbury peering out of the mist. Photograph taken this morning from Glastonbury Tor on Michaelmas day.

29.09.2025 09:48 — 👍 3344    🔁 482    💬 65    📌 51

We should all be allowed to hope that, like Robert Redford, when we eventually leave this world we’re remembered as:

1. Good
2. An owner of ‘weapons-grade good looks’*

*Stolen from my favourite obituary so far

17.09.2025 11:49 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

What‘s popular at the moment, Gareth?

10.09.2025 12:13 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

With a touch of Leandro Trossard

09.09.2025 20:31 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

My life ambition!

04.09.2025 09:31 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Is ‘did this need to be a book?’ the new ‘did this need to be a meeting?’

04.09.2025 08:20 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Amazing photo!

03.09.2025 16:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

It doesn’t seem fair that one place can be home to a land’s best beaches and tallest mountains.

But I guess nature is famously cruel.

03.09.2025 11:14 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
A large open plain, before County Kerry’s MacGillycuddy’s Reeks mountain range.

A large open plain, before County Kerry’s MacGillycuddy’s Reeks mountain range.

It’s said you’re either a beach person or a mountain person.

Well, I say you can also be a Kerry person and have both.

03.09.2025 11:14 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

😍

02.09.2025 21:06 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Taking the Ancient Pass Through Ireland’s Highest Peaks A short history of the famous shortcut.

On our honeymoon in Kerry, my wife (still odd to say) and I accidentally stumbled on the Gap of Dunloe – the coveted mountain pass through Ireland’s ceiling.

Naturally, I got home and started writing about it substack.com/@willwritesw...

02.09.2025 15:17 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
The front cover of the book, ‘Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War Two’ by Robert Kurson.

The front cover of the book, ‘Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War Two’ by Robert Kurson.

And now I’m onto this.

A slight change of direction, but I don’t know if I’ve encountered a book more up my street.

Recommended by Ryan Holiday, so already off to a very good start before getting to page one.

02.09.2025 11:22 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Is VAR football’s Brexit?

It’s made everything worse, most don’t want it anymore and yet we’re seemingly stuck with it forever 😐

30.08.2025 12:08 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
A large oak tree in the middle of parkland

A large oak tree in the middle of parkland

Tree of the day – at South London’s best kept secret, Beckenham Place Park.

17.08.2025 11:12 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Would recommend reading this twice…

04.08.2025 13:08 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Post image 25.07.2025 11:32 — 👍 3337    🔁 378    💬 104    📌 16

This is a real problem

24.07.2025 11:29 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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*30 seconds into the book title brainstorm

"Yeah, that'll do."

23.07.2025 16:11 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

2025 has taught me that rain hits different when you have a garden.

20.07.2025 14:54 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Perhaps the greatest present a boy could get on his 32nd birthday

18.07.2025 08:45 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

‘Hog not included’

17.07.2025 18:21 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Subscribed! Looking forward to reading this

15.07.2025 07:58 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
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A pride of cats!

Or technically – as I’ve just learned – a ‘clowder’

15.07.2025 07:15 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

It’s cool that Vienna and Belgrade began life as Roman settlements, when the empire used the Danube as its northern frontier.

It’s cooler that, if you look at a map today, both modern cities still mostly sit on the river's southern bank – just like the Roman sites they grew from.

13.07.2025 14:30 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

And it seems like 'A Philosophy of Walking' is perhaps next...

I'm already sold!

11.07.2025 12:57 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Clash of cultures: exhibition tells story of when Vikings ruled the north of England Viking North at Yorkshire Museum features UK’s largest exhibition of Viking-age artefacts, including era’s ‘cheap’ jewellery and evidence of slave-owning

*books train to York*

*sells house*

www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

11.07.2025 06:55 — 👍 6    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

I feel like this should be bigger news

09.07.2025 08:54 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

The Danube starting in the Black Forest and ending at the Black Sea is such a neatly-named journey.

Made even better by there being absolutely no reason for it.

09.07.2025 08:19 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

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