All this 'oh you must use AI, it's the second coming' has me scratching my head. I LOVE everything about researching & writing my books. I love that the work drives me crazy, invades my dreams, interrupts my walks. I love the challenge. This is living! Pity they've given up on themselves.

Let’s see if I can remember how this goes…

@laurajcleaver.bsky.social · yesterday

Today I have mostly been thinking about medieval embroidery as a form of inspiration…

Horror story…

@madden1826.bsky.social · 2d ago

Friday 4th. At Musm....employed...in takg extracts for an analysis of the Comedy of Babio...& afterwards...in Mr. Forshall‘s room, trying the experiment of gall...on the Cott. MS Tib. A. XV. containing Alcuin’s letters. It succeeds very badly... #otd 😲 full entry: www.madden1826.com/4-august

Saturday 5th. From ½ past 9 till ½ past 4. at Musm. Contd. Subdivns. In Mr Forshall's room for an hour & ½. and shall now give up the gall process, & endeavour to decipher the remaining letters propriis oculis... #otd full entry: www.madden1826.com/5-august

📢PROJECT UPDATE📢 You may have seen the news that the University of Exeter, home of the wills project, has placed 500 academics at risk of redundancy. The project leader Prof. Jane Whittle & project co-investigator Dr Laura Sangha are both at risk, alongside almost all of the History department. 1/

I need some help with this Arabic (?) word in this RAF navigator's 1941 diary. He writes that he was told it was a universal Arabic greeting for "Good morning" or "Good day" but I'm struggling to find something similar online. Thank you so much if anyone can help

The Reading Museum copy of the Canterbury Embroidery is a wonderful achievement! I prefer viewing it to the much-vaunted original because: a) it’s free b) it’s close to where I live c) it is displayed around a balcony space as if in a medieval hall d) I have never known it to be over-crowded.

Little flower wreath pressed in a 1771 edition of the works of William Penn 🌸

A fun evening @ials.bsky.social to celebrate their collection of legal fiction. Don’t think @barristersecret.bsky.social was there… 📚👩‍⚖️

Today I have mostly been thinking about medieval embroidery as a form of inspiration…

Very short notice (deadline 18 August) but we're advertising a 0.5fte lectureship in public history for next year. Covers my 3rd year undergraduate course on public history of Rome (ancient to modern) plus some MA public history teaching.

After the success of the 2026 sessions, and because fragments never rest, please have a look at our #medievalfragments session for #IMC2027! We are open to any type of fragments, from anywhere.. get in touch!

📚"Covers designed by folk who didn't bother to read the book" Episode 2: Henry James, 'The Turn of the Screw' (1898) The novel is a #C19th gothic tale of a governess caring for 2 cherubic children who may or may not be in league with ghosts. Also...that's a nut.

Dr Laura Eastlake@victorianmasc.bsky.social · 4mo ago

📚"Covers designed by folk who didn't bother to read the book" Episode 1: Florence Marryat's Blood of the Vampire (1897). This book features a female vampire who doesn't know she's a vampire, who drains life not blood, and is enjoying a holiday in a Belgian seaside town. #BadBookCovers #C19th

📚"Covers designed by folk who didn't bother to read the book" Episode 4: The Great Gatsby. “They say he killed a man, and bought that big-ass palace with the money he made from his Magic Mike themed speakeasy”

Dr Laura Eastlake@victorianmasc.bsky.social · 2mo ago

📚"Covers designed by folk who didn't bother to read the book" Episode 3: Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim” (1901). Colonial adventure novel about an orphaned Irish boy who meets a Tibetan lama in Lahore and together they are drawn into the “great game” of imperial espionage. Nice shoes, babe.

Monday 31st... On my return home, I found a letter also from Geo. Grant, requesting me to procure for his brother a work on Greek Coins in English, with a great many plates,- and of a small size. They are a couple of asses for their pains! ... #otd full entry: www.madden1826.com/31-july

Wednesday 2d... read a curious notice in the Asiatic Journal, of some Egyptian rolls of papyrus lately purchased by the K. of France, and also of a work written by a German (Seyffarth) against Champollier ... He is clearly wrong... #otd full entry: www.madden1826.com/2-august

Thursday 3d... went to the Western Institn. & ... took home with me the first Vol. of Taylor’s Transln. of Pausanias to read, 8° 1824 I find the transln. itself is written on so absurd a plan, that it confuses & obscures the description completely... #otd full entry: www.madden1826.com/3-august

Listening to Elisabeth van Houts talking about her new book on Empress Matilda on the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social newbooksnetwork.com/empress-mati...

Definitely the case here. In two weeks we find which 9 of 12 in my group will be gone. The other 3 will then have a month to prepare and find hourly-paid replacements for all the classes across two degrees. And supervise 25 PhDs. Plus admin and pastoral care and research. Management doesn’t care.

Glen O'Hara@gsoh31.bsky.social · 4d ago

If you're arriving at uni this autumn, or maybe dropping your kids, remember that there could be a ghostly phalanx of absent redundant staff, lost modules and degraded degrees making it a very unhappy place. It may *look* the same, but it won't *be* the same. www.ft.com/content/e5b0...

Good to be back! We loved the current Love's Labours Lost. Giants! And a Hercules. A highlight of a good weekend. My ten year old even thought it worth standing for 2 1/2 hours...

July Statistics On 1 July Madden returned to London from Oxford. He spent most of the month working at the British Museum, and took new lodgings at 42 Half Moon Street, Piccadilly. He regularly dined (with or without his brother Henry) in Rupert Street, and occasionally walked to Fulham to visit…

July Statistics

On 1 July Madden returned to London from Oxford. He spent most of the month working at the British Museum, and took new lodgings at 42 Half Moon Street, Piccadilly. He regularly dined (with or without his brother Henry) in Rupert Street, and occasionally walked to Fulham to visit his uncle. He crossed the Thames to Lambeth in search of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and went to the Haymarket Theatre.

madden1826.com

Just gonna go ahead and share this again, 'cause it keeps being annoying relevant.

Work in progress…

Students' subject choices have a lasting impact. Ensuring students can benefit from a broad and balanced curriculum must remain a priority. 🧵

Today university fees rise again, while thousands of academics across the country face job cuts, crushing workloads and shattered morale. Students deserve better than this broken system of unfair repayment that widens inequality. Abolish fees and fund universities properly!

Goldsmiths is doomed.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 4d ago

Ignore the Russell Group-fixated headline. The universities with the largest declines are: Lincoln Bishop (down 51.4%), University for the Creative Arts (down 50.5%), Norwich University of the Arts (-40.4%), Falmouth University (-35.1%) and Goldsmiths, University of London (-30.0%). 1/2

Tuesday Aug. 1st. at Musm. from ½ past 9 till 4. Contd Subdivn. of Voyages & Travels in Class Catalogue. Dined in Rupert St. & sat in the Green Park till 9. I generally read Herodotus till eleven oC. #otd

My copy of Manuscript Studies arrived today 🎉 It contains an essay on how medieval manuscripts ended up in @marshslibrary.bsky.social to accompany our new catalogue. Also available online: muse.jhu.edu/issue/56871

I love capturing those moments where London Underground trains line up perfectly with station posters. With a little patience and a bit of luck, you can end up with some wonderfully amusing and unexpected shots.

hello hivemind. I’ve a wild plan to stage an apprentice riot from the 1590s, as part of a public practice-as-research event. unfortunately the original location, Tower Hill, is a no go. can anyone suggest venues with outdoor spaces (preferably London) that might be open to this sort of thing?