Amongst all of the responses to the news of cuts at Edinburgh, this adds some very important nuance re the teaching of Scottish Literature (which is actually being expanded, NOT cut, and with no Scottish literature courses closing).

Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco@joshpizpom.bsky.social · 2w ago

EXC: The truth behind Scottish Lit closures at Edinburgh Uni The situation is more complex then social media suggests, says Dr Robert Irvine 'Edinburgh is now teaching more Scottish literature to more students than ever before' @heraldscotland.bsky.social www.heraldscotland.com/news/2657437...

The Martha Mills Young Writers’ Prize 2026: the Winners! www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/blog/2026/se...

The Martha Mills Young Writers’ Prize 2026: the Winners! | London Review Bookshop

The Martha Mills Young Writers Prize 2026

londonreviewbookshop.co.uk

These cuts disproportionately target the arts & humanities: the Business School loses only three courses; the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures loses 48 – many of these are joint degrees, removing the optional breadth of study which has always been one of the appeals of a Scottish degree

Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco@joshpizpom.bsky.social · 2w ago

EXC: 90 programmes in Edinburgh University's College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences are to be closed. The casualties, which include 48 language and literature programmes, will be 'taught out', w/ no admissions after 2027. @heraldscotland.bsky.social www.heraldscotland.com/news/2655839...

Five-week strike at Edinburgh University at start of new academic term #StopTheCuts #SaveHE www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/school-...

Students returning to Edinburgh University will be met with weeks of strike action

Students could return only to find their lectures and seminars cancelled over what union boss Jo Grady called “academic vandalism”

edinburghnews.scotsman.com

Not sure what to think about this.

The Centre of African Studies is the only academic institute in Scotland of its kind - with its own budget, space, and leadership - and has produced, and brought to Edinburgh, generations of scholars. The proposal to close ('restructure') it diminishes the university, and Edinburgh, as a whole.

Karen Gregory@karengregory.bsky.social · 2w ago

Protect African Studies @ Edinburgh docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Hotel du Lack

London Review of Books@lrb.co.uk · 3w ago

‘It wasn’t Martin Amis or Iris Murdoch who was the great existentialist of the Thatcher period, but Anita Brookner, a writer much closer to the dark edge of Europe.’ Andrew O’Hagan on the British novelist, online now from the next issue. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

This is utterly horrendous for everyone working and studying at University of Brighton, & the community more widely. It also feels like Brighton is the canary in the mine – their unjustifiable 2023 cuts have since been emulated across the sector. Will this removal of workers' rights come for us all?

Daniel C. Blight@danielcblight.bsky.social · 3w ago

***URGENT PLEASE SHARE*** University of Brighton management have announced today that they ‘give notice of termination of all collective agreements’. This is a fundamental erasure of workers' rights. Management have announced the termination of all contractual documents, which includes:

***URGENT PLEASE SHARE*** University of Brighton management have announced today that they ‘give notice of termination of all collective agreements’. This is a fundamental erasure of workers' rights. Management have announced the termination of all contractual documents, which includes:

University and College Union (UCU)@ucu.org.uk · 3w ago

UCU members at Brighton University face the threat of derecognition. We have called an emergency rally tomorrow at 1:15pm. It would be amazing to see as many #TUC26 delegates as possible in attendance. 58-67 Grand Parade, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN2 0JY

🧵 It’s great that we’re “attracting talent,” as they say, but where’s the half-billion $ to hire permanently the generations of beyond-excellent, Canadian-trained academics who have been forced into precarious positions by systematic defunding by federal & provincial gov’s for the past 30 years?

Why Ivy League professors are leaving Trump’s U.S. for Canada’s new $541-million research program

AI researchers, Ivy League professors, and at least one winner of the MacArthur “genius” grant will move to Canada from the U.S. with funds from the federal government’s research chair program.

thestar.com

Never was a book so anticipated (by me). 'You don’t finish “The Disappearers.” It finishes you' – Dwight Garner's review is itself something of a maximalist’s feast and brilliantly conveys the thrill of being completely consumed by a novel.

Howard French@hofrench.bsky.social · last mo.

I don't think I've ever read such an ecstatic book review by a major critic. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/30/b...

For all the righteously (yet politely) outraged Canadians, Make Ontario Lake Again hats, from a Blue Jays-loving friend exitveloapparel.com/products/mak...

Make Ontario Lake Again hat

Lake Ontario hat - not Lake America. Stop Trump from renaming Lake Ontario with this dad hat that turns MAGA into MOLA. Comes in a variety of colours to say hands off Lake Ontario.

exitveloapparel.com

Parton's legacy as a songwriter, a performer, a personality, and a beacon of warmth and acceptance all make her one of the greatest to have ever done it. But when you add the truly astounding level of her philanthropy...what is there to say? She inspired decency and shamed the wicked. All hail.

Dolly Parton, among a thousand other amazing things she did in her life, gifted over 330 million books to kids through her Imagination Library program. Her passing is a tremendous loss to the world, but you can support the program today to keep it going imaginationlibrary.com

Here's the official announcement of Parton's passing from her reps, along with the request that in lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to be made to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library at www.imaginationlibrary.com

Alex Zalben@azalben.bsky.social · last mo.

Dolly Parton, among a thousand other amazing things she did in her life, gifted over 330 million books to kids through her Imagination Library program. Her passing is a tremendous loss to the world, but you can support the program today to keep it going imaginationlibrary.com

I’m not sure I want to live in a world without Dolly in it 💔💔💔 I still remember first hearing her voice when I was a toddler (Love is Like a Butterfly on a scratchy tape) and declaring my love for her – and I have loved her ever since. We are so lucky to have had her with us.

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · last mo.

Dolly Parton has died at 80

The latest issue of Bim is out & is typically rich and wide in scope, with wonderful archival material, & much new exciting work, both critical & creative. I'm also very pleased to see my review of Alison Donnell's recent Lost and Found: An A to Z of of Neglected Writers of the Anglophone Caribbean.

It is still very unreal to see this, but I am so pleased to have Leverhulme ECF funding that will allow me to continue this research on Jamaican and Caribbean literary and intellectual history over the next few years– I'm really looking forward to participating in ongoing conversations in this area!

Leverhulme Trust@leverhulme.ac.uk · last mo.

Leverhulme Early Career Fellow @annagirling.bsky.social’s project @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social will allow us to reimagine colonially inflected genealogies of cosmopolitanism, aestheticism and Caribbean literary history. www.flipsnack.com/leverhulmetr...

Leverhulme Early Career Fellow @annagirling.bsky.social’s project @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social will allow us to reimagine colonially inflected genealogies of cosmopolitanism, aestheticism and Caribbean literary history. www.flipsnack.com/leverhulmetr...

‘The most cosmopolitan country on Earth’: cosmopolitanism, aestheticism and Jamaican literary culture in the mid-twentieth century

Anna Girling’s project will develop the first complete account of Jamaican ‘cosmopolitan worldmaking’

flipsnack.com

Don't trust the cover - this is actually the Alan Hollinghurst on Ronald Firbank issue of the LRB: 'Firbank’s apparently unnaturalistic technique crystallises something about our apprehension and construal of real life, as the mind’s eye adjusts to the mystery of others’ thoughts and motivations.'

London Review of Books@lrb.co.uk · 2mo ago

Issue 48.14/15 is now online, featuring: @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social on Nolan’s 𝘖𝘥𝘺𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘺 T.J. Clark on the Chauvet cave paintings Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite on the general strike of 1926 @will-davies.bsky.social on Neets and Alan Hollinghurst on Ronald Firbank. Read online now at www.lrb.co.uk

Excited to offer a fully funded PhD with Maeve Ryan and I at KCL. Details below. www.kcl.ac.uk/study/fundin...

CRSW / AHRC Doctoral Studentship: Narratives of Enslavement and their Legacies | King's College London

King’s College London’s Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War (CRSW) is pleased to announce a fully funded AHRC doctoral studentship, jointly supervised by English and War Studies.

kcl.ac.uk

See what the fuss is all about 😇 www.waterstones.com/book/the-inn...

The Inn at the Foot of Mount Vengeance by Chiara Bullen | Waterstones

Buy The Inn at the Foot of Mount Vengeance by Chiara Bullen from Waterstones today! Click and Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over £25.

waterstones.com

It was a proper dream come true moment at my sold out launch event in Glasgow on Tuesday!! I could not have asked for a better way to launch The Inn at the Foot of Mount Vengeance ♥️🏔️ I'm so grateful to everyone who came and picked up a copy!

Writers against fascism & Franco. Great thread.

Anna Girling@annagirling.bsky.social · 8mo ago

In June 1937 Nancy Cunard, on behalf of various left-wing thinkers, asked 'writers and poets' to state where they stood on the Spanish Civil War. Although the focus was on Spain, the question was framed in terms of anti-fascist internationalism and commitment: 'ironic detachment will no longer do'.

The news of brutal cuts to the Arts and Humanities at Exeter and elsewhere highlights the self-destructive nature of the ´strategies’ being pursued across UK HE. Exeter’s English Dept was rated the best research unit in English in the country in RAE 2008. 1/4

A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.

They would care if it was Oxbridge, but Oxford and Cambridge (both astronomically over-represented in UK politics, media, civil service) are thriving unchanged. What seems to us like the torching of a sector, the foreclosing of myriad futures, must seem like a puff of smoke on a distant horizon...

will pooley@willpooley.bsky.social · 3mo ago

the media and voter messaging should be this: the current government and the government in waiting do not want your children to be able to go to university, they will not support people in the UK to do original research, they do not care about job losses in one of the largest sectors in the economy

Please apply, share, tell your students: four Edith Wharton Society essay/research awards, deadline 30th July: Elsa Nettels Prize for a Beginning Scholar; Award for Archival Research; UG Research Prize; Carole Shaffer-Koros Mid-Career Scholar Award edithwhartonsociety.wordpress.com/2026/06/13/c...

I spoke to @scotsman.com about social class as a dominant inequality which rarely speaks its name in Scottish politics. Holyrood is dominated by a professional polo class and has failed to meet the trade union movement’s hopes for a ‘workers’ parliament’.

Is social class Holyrood's hidden inequality?

A new study shines a harsh light on the Scottish Parliament’s class representation

scotsman.com

Hot birds, cold beer – just as Virginia would have wanted.