Joe Moran

Under the cover of darkness

'The newsreader Tina Ritchie imagines she is reading the midnight news to King Charles, who she knows listens in bed.'

Joe Moran on night as a space of fear and imagination

Brilliant news - Congratulations!

Oxford supervision, mid 1980s style. From Richard Flanagan's Question 7

Congratulations Claire!

Just added to my collection of graduation booklets (useful for recalling names of past students). No prizes for guessing why there are three for 2022 and none for 2020 and 2021

Call for Applications: Editorial Fellowships at History Workshop, 2025 History Workshop is advertising two part-time, paid Editorial Fellowships in 2025, open to early career historians.

Join us! We are advertising two part-time, paid Editorial Fellowships at History Workshop in 2025-27.

Our fellowships support early career historians to develop expertise in public, radical and digital history & to gain experience of working in an editorial team.
www.historyworkshop....

I wonder if the Microsoft Bing algorithm feels hurt that so many people type 'Google' into its search box

Witness in a Time of Turmoil by Ian Mayes review – a lively history of the Guardian A lively history of the paper from 1986 to 1995 covers global upheaval, internal conflict and a bold but brilliant redesign

I reviewed Ian Mayes's history of the Guardian here www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

The Universal Turing Machine now live. Read online for free. Think about how you'd write your own.
universalturingmachine.co.uk

‘It’s thrilling’: almost three centuries of the Belfast News Letter go online The surviving editions of the world’s oldest, continuously published English-language daily can now be accessed free

“It’s very important history, but above all, it’s very readable and enjoyable history.” bit.ly/43yzlS9

Histories of news in the news: surviving editions of the 'Belfast News Letter', the world’s oldest, continuously published English-language daily, can now be accessed free #Skystorians

Happy birthday!

VE Day 80 A day in which the BBC would try to capture the mood not just of Britain, but of the wider world.

‘‘The mood over in Germany was, inevitably, distinctly more sombre. The defeated country was under military occupation by the Allies, towns and cities had been devastated by bombing, and millions were on the move - refugees in their own homeland, hungry and afraid’

Listening to the BBC on VE Day

• Al Overview The idiom "you can't lick a badger twice" means you can't trick or deceive someone a second time after they've been tricked once. It's a warning that if someone has already been deceived, they are unlikely to fall for the same trick again. Here's a more detailed explanation: • Licking: "Licking" in this context means to trick or deceive someone. • Badger: The badger is a wild animal, and the phrase likely originates from the historical sport of badger baiting where dogs were used to harass

Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine

Richard Cobb did a lot of hanging around French villages. He writes about this in his memoir, End of the Line, I think. Julia Blackburn's Threads might be worth a look too.

What Is Free Speech? by Fara Dabhoiwala review – a brilliant history of a weaponised mantra This fascinating book questions whether such a misunderstood ideal should be lauded as an end in itself

I reviewed Fara Dabhoiwala's book about free speech here www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

Really enjoying this new book by @jakecampbell88.bsky.social . A modern pilgrimage through the north country in the footsteps of saints and poets

The Times / Sunday Times paywall is down all weekend, so here's👇where you can read all my stuff for free, with selected highlights to follow: 🧵

www.thetimes.com/profile/john...

A Decade of Crisis The UK's universities are in crisis. Dave Hitchcock on how the sector became 'broken' and why it must be understood as an interdependent system.

"universities are communities, sites of knowledge production, & of collective and collaborative problem-solving. However, they are no longer treated, funded, or indeed governed, as if they are any of these things."

Dave Hitchcock on a decade of crisis.

www.historyworkshop....

Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain by Sam Wetherell | Book review This history of postwar Liverpool begins, predictably enough, with the darkest period of its recent history: the early 1980s. The vast Victorian docks are

A truly lovely review by @joemoransblog.bsky.social of my book in the TLS (@thetls.bsky.social). www.the-tls.co.uk/politics-soc...

Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain by Sam Wetherell | Book review This history of postwar Liverpool begins, predictably enough, with the darkest period of its recent history: the early 1980s. The vast Victorian docks are

I reviewed Sam Wetherell's book Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain here www.the-tls.co.uk/politics-soc...

Thank you! And thanks so much for reading.

Every so often I make a poem out of the headlines to Adrian Chiles’s articles in the Guardian. This is the latest one

Thanks for tagging me into this!

You are not an angel (a letter to my students) This critical/creative essay takes the form of an imagined letter to my students. It suggests that in the online age we have come to see writing as angelic communion: intuitive, instantaneous, unme...

I wrote this piece, 'You are not an angel', as a sort of letter to my students (it's open access) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A great piece of writing

YouTube video by Fergus Craig Day four of walking from London to New Zealand.

Day four of walking from London to New Zealand... www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuAR...

Patrick McGuinness · Diary: Defending Mr Jefferies Much of what was great about Chris Jefferies was used to attack him and destroy his reputation when the media, unimpeded...

‘The things Chris Jefferies loved – books, music, theatre, opera, architecture, poetry – were, in the hands of the press, weapons to be used against him. They were evidence.’

@padrig.bsky.social on the ordeal of a former teacher wrongly accused of murder: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Living with the Dead: Memories, Histories, and the Stories Families Tell in Modern Britain Abstract. The dead are everywhere in family life. From a great-grandmother’s recipe made time and again, to a dog-eared black-and-white photo of a family o

Amongst the bleak news from every which way, I'm celebrating my book coming out digitally today 🎉

Living with the Dead interrogates family histories and the way they shape our present.

It's totally free to read/download academic.oup.com/book/59440?s...

#skystorians #familyhistorians #genealogy