Just replaced an article on an undergraduate reading list that was 15 pages long with one that is 47 pages. I have become all that I despised as a hungover 19 year old and I love it.

It’s on for a very brief time but if you happen to find yourself in Paris unexpectedly as I did this week I highly recommend going to the small, simple, but worthwhile Marc Bloch exhibition at the Pantheon (presented to celebrate his and Simonne’s entry)

A hell of a 1-2 punch in this 1885 school logbook here: '7th. Mr Jaques absent from school today - No reason sent. 8th. Mr Jaques came to school this morning and informed me that the cause of his absence was Cholera'

Interested in a PhD in historical demography/population studies at @camunicampop.bsky.social, @camunigeography.bsky.social, Cambridge University? We have 3 suggested topics (see thread): contact me to discuss, or to suggest your own idea. Apply by early December for funded places.

'I punished a boy for using coarse language in School, & in the Afternoon his mother came & used the same kind of language before the whole school'. An absolute queen standing up for her boy Bradford Parish Church School Logbook 1863

"Excuse me for saying that your answer to my letter contains less of argument and reasoning than of injurious insinuation, claptrap declamation, and revolutionary menace". RIP George Poulett Scrope (1797-1876), you'd have loved BlueSky / peak Twitter discourse

Well that will teach me to check for celestial events the next time I book theatre tickets for a random Wednesday starting at 7

Nobody is as committed to the work from home mindset as the guy I just saw on the bus wearing Zoom merch

I love living in a multicultural city of a thousand languages but I do think it should be a legal requirement that if you have a big row outside it should have to legally be in the one I personally speak so I can listen in

Faculty's decision to make us actually record holiday days (instead of the previous practice where nobody took days off) is going swimmingly as their records currently suggest that I partied so hard on every public holiday this year that it counted as two or even three days off. What a Chirstmas!

Also I voted bright and early this morning and when the R*form woman on the door wished me a good morning I instinctively said “Not for you I hope” which might be the politest rebuke of those wankers possible

I cannot believe my university is now making us record when we take annual leave instead of just saying “meh go away whenever”. Don’t they realise that if I know how many days I have left I might actually take them instead of just working everyday?

I’ve spent so much time over the last few weeks reading Victorian civil service letters I’ve found I’ve started to talk in keeping with their general style, a source of great discontent amongst many of us here. I have the honour to be Your most Obedient & humble servant A Wakelam, esq

Bradford Chamber of Commerce learned in 1916 what many of us knew already: women love trams.

In the 18th century jury trial was eroded for poor debtors, instead being dealt with by magistrates (sounds familiar to me). Decisions were arbitrary and the poor suffered. MPs, intellectuals, and even local tradesman spoke out in defence of the ‘the ancient and valuable privilege of trial by Jury’

Just found in the Department for Education archives the perfect band name and album cover for starting the hottest indie band of 2007

'that they have now determined to ... to' WHAT DID YOU DETERMINE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TELL ME WHAT YOU DETERMINED

I’m at the national archives and just walked past somebody carrying a bundle of documents with massive “TOP SECRET” stamps all over it and a date mark of 1944. Is it bad form to sit next to them and read over their shoulder?

“And Tiny Tim, who did not die” clearly implies that either Tiny Tim is still alive in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty five or that he regenerates like the doctor either of which fills me with abject terror.

Birmingham, my home city, is a fantastic city, with fantastic people- a success story. It has its problems, like anywhere. But the obsession the online right has with it is as transparent as it gets.

Ah the Victorian period, when it was more important to save a few pennies on a second sheet of paper than for the recipient of your letter to be able to read what you’d written

Loving all the various “this is what causes low birth rates” posts tonight when we still haven’t fully worked out what caused them to start declining IN 1850 (when kids were still very much at work and there was no easy contraception)

Richard J@preachypreach.bsky.social · last yr.

I do love my kids, but so much of this can be explained by them being unavoidably bloody hard work and if you no longer have the structural need for free labour, and can easily control your fertility, this explains about 90% of this

Begging 19th Century writers to just be normal for five minutes was apparently a fools errand. I'm several pages in and none the wiser at what should be a mild complaint about an aspect of Bradford society c.1820: 'Tweedle, Tweedle, Tweedle, Some Catgut to my Feedle' (??)

Seeing a lot of critical responses from medievalists about this BBC 1066 thing. As an early modernist, just to say that I'm happy to confirm that medieval people were indeed covered in dirt all the time and did all sound like they were in the Wurzels.

There is no better feeling when travelling abroad than your phone magically picking up Eduroam

I maintain that early modern historians remain the most whimsical historians

Followed by 'Jewish Credit, Debt, and Economic Integration in Eighteenth-Century London', by @awakelam.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....

Campop blog #50: In 2021, 76% of UK women with children at home were employed: a century earlier about the same % were engaged in 'home duties'. @awakelam.bsky.social explores patterns and implications from the 1921 census @camunicampop.bsky.social www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2025/05...

'Miss Ashworth ... sang the air "Pious Orgies" tastefully and correctly', sometimes its ok to acknowledge the meaning of a word has changed without trying to work out what it used to mean using a work laptop. (Todmorden and Hebden Bridge Weekly Advertiser 8th March 1862)