NEW - The NHS has been warned by Yvette Cooper to prepare for potential annual summer crises caused by extreme heat with the same pressures as winter, as heatwaves caused by the climate crisis become routine in the UK. www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

NHS must prepare for annual summer heat pressures, says Yvette Cooper

Health secretary says global heating means UK hospitals and GPs will have to prepare for summer as well as winter peaks of demand

theguardian.com

Stripped of net zero.

Financial Times@financialtimes.com · yesterday

UK to strip back procurement rules to focus on job creation, says Louise Haigh ft.trib.al/7S4mjRA

Institutional investors on North Sea drilling: “If what you’re trying to achieve is the trifecta that most governments appear to be looking for ... affordability, energy independence and decarbonization,” then increasing North Sea drilling “doesn’t achieve any of those."

Investors Raise Alarm on Prospect of More UK North Sea Drilling

Institutional investors are raising concerns over the prospect of UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham supporting more oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.

bloomberg.com

I genuinely say this to students all the time. It‘s an empirical fact.

@lastpositivist.bsky.social · 2d ago

I genuinely do talk about this a fair bit. My extremely boring opinion is that Paradise Lost is the single greatest work of literature out there and I will never stop loving it.

'I am now writing on Saturday, 2nd of August, seated quietly in Mr Curran’s bookroom in his rural retreat, 4 miles from Dublin… ' My co-authored piece on William Godwin’s six-week visit to Ireland in the summer of 1800, hosted by the Irish Patriot lawyer John Philpot Curran, is now on open access:

‘A nation in its last moments’: William Godwin’s visit to Ireland, 1800 - History Ireland

Godwin’s letters have left us an eyewitness account of aspects of Irish social and political life at a critical moment in the country’s history. In June 1800 the Irish ‘patriot’ MP and barrister John ...

historyireland.com

Thomas More in Utopia (1516), as timely as ever: “When I run over in my mind the various commonwealths flourishing today, so help me God, I can see in them nothing but a conspiracy of the rich, who are fattening up their own interests”.

'I am now writing on Saturday, 2nd of August, seated quietly in Mr Curran’s bookroom in his rural retreat, 4 miles from Dublin… ' My co-authored piece on William Godwin’s six-week visit to Ireland in the summer of 1800, hosted by the Irish Patriot lawyer John Philpot Curran, is now on open access:

‘A nation in its last moments’: William Godwin’s visit to Ireland, 1800 - History Ireland

Godwin’s letters have left us an eyewitness account of aspects of Irish social and political life at a critical moment in the country’s history. In June 1800 the Irish ‘patriot’ MP and barrister John ...

historyireland.com

On #YorkshireDay, enjoy this lovely railway poster of the Yorkshire Dales by Ladybird artist Ronald Lampitt

Glad someone senior from the sector is pushing back. Labour MPs need to understand the serious real anger from graduates and the people who produce them. And the dangerous financial situation they have allowed to fester, or indeed worsened, in one of Britain’s leading sectors.

Labour has harmed universities as much as Trump, London School of Economics head says

LSE vice-chancellor Larry Kramer points to domestic student fees freeze, international student limits and rise in employers’ national insurance

ft.com

Lovely to read this tribute to the gifted teaching of @kovesi.bsky.social. Most worthwhile 'esteem indicator' any academic could hope for.

Marianne Doherty@mariannedoherty.bsky.social · 5d ago

My school English teachers taught me to pass exams but I never really understood what we were doing. But @kovesi.bsky.social was my first tutor at uni who talked about his love of The Magus and John Clare and helped me begin to realise it could also be about stuff you enjoyed and found interesting.

Il y a encore quelques gouvernements sérieux.

Leo Hickman@leohickman.carbonbrief.org · 7d ago

++BREAKING++ The UK and Spanish governments have issued a joint statement overnight: "[We] agreed that this summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life." www.gov.uk/government/n...

I've wanted to write this @theguardian.com country diary on a special place in #JohnClare and my family's lives for a while now. Many thanks to the Gatekeepers and the Puddocks for helping me... #countrydiary #naturewriting @johnclare.bsky.social @kovesi.bsky.social

Country diary: In poet John Clare’s garden, I contemplate my ancestor who lived here too | Nic Wilson

Helpston, Cambridgeshire: I picture Henry as a young lad, hiding in flowerbeds, chasing butterflies, learning to love nature

theguardian.com

Sir John Sinclair later wrote to William Godwin, author of Of Population (1820), asking him to comment on the 1821 draft of his Code of Political Economy. The exchange is published in Volume IV of the OUP Letters of William Godwin, due out in the next few months, Deo volente.

Paul Stephens@paulstephens.bsky.social · last wk.

Sir John Sinclair, ‘Remarks on a Pamphlet Intitled, "The Question […]" by William Huskisson, […] Together with Several Political Maxims regarding Coin and Paper Currency, Intended to Explain the Real Nature, and Advantages, of the Present System’ (London, 1810) #EconomicHistory #Romanticism

Sir John Sinclair later wrote to William Godwin, author of Of Population (1820), asking him to comment on the 1821 draft of his Code of Political Economy. The exchange is published in Volume IV of the OUP Letters of William Godwin, due out in the next few months, Deo volente.

Paul Stephens@paulstephens.bsky.social · last wk.

Sir John Sinclair, ‘Remarks on a Pamphlet Intitled, "The Question […]" by William Huskisson, […] Together with Several Political Maxims regarding Coin and Paper Currency, Intended to Explain the Real Nature, and Advantages, of the Present System’ (London, 1810) #EconomicHistory #Romanticism

Reginald Mills became a member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1930, the date of this work depicting the Cornish coastline. At the outbreak of WW2, he joined the Auxiliary Fire Service and made a series of dramatic paintings recording the London Blitz.

#OTD 1834: death of English poet and polymath Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the quince which William Godwin longed to engraft upon his apple-tree, 'melting & combining several of your modes of feeling ... into the substance of my mind' (Godwin to Coleridge, 5 September 1800; Letters, ii. 169).

Pretty Black horehound #StillFlowering in Ely. #WildflowerHour

Issue 161 (Summer 2026) of the Dublin Review of Books (www.drb.ie) is now available. Essays and reviews by Yvonne Galligan, Carla King, Julian Padraic Young, Patricia Thane, Charlie Lynch, Eamon Maher, Brian S Campbell and many others. All on free access, as is our archive, all 19 years of it.

Walking in our farm's rainforest with the melting heat of these days, I am filled with such inexpressible anger at what is being done to our once stable climate. The richest 1% are actively, knowingly, and uncaringly sabotaging the future for all of us, and for the rest of the planet's life.

July Hollyhocks at dawn, Shandy Hall.

Common mallow in Ely. #WildflowerHour

The NHS was founded 78 years ago today. It was built after the devastation of the Second World War when the country was bankrupt - but when the people demanded a society built on fairness and dignity for all. Today, we must defend the right to healthcare and rebuild our social security system.

FACT OF THE DAY. 5 July 1948. Britain’s National Health Service came into operation. It was led by Aneurin Bevan, Labour’s Health Minister. It offered treatment free at the point of delivery to all citizens irrespective of income. It’s one of the most important social reforms in British history.

the FT in 1984: 'Why coal-miners are leaving mining'

4th July 2026 05.55

Physical books. You own them. They don't require updates. They don't surveil you or collect and sell your data. They are a genuinely safe hallucinogen that leaves you smarter and more empathetic and with a longer attention span the more you use them. Free from the library. What's not to like?

'Hey for the New Jerusalem! The Millenium! And peace and eternal beatitude be unto the soul of Thomas Paine.' (Thomas Holcroft, 1791.) Thanks @gclaeyshistory.bsky.social et al. for all their painstaking work, & congratulations on the timely publication of this landmark scholarly edition.

Gregory Claeys@gclaeyshistory.bsky.social · last mo.

Tomorrow is the official publication day for Thomas Paine: Collected Writings, in 6 volumes, from Princeton University Press. Just in time for the 250th...

It’s a huge one! Today we publish Paradise Lost in the Oxford Milton, ed by Thomas Corns & David Loewenstein. I can’t begin to describe the herculean effort & sheer commitment that the project has demanded of the editors - it’s awe-inspiring to witness this triumph global.oup.com/academic/pro...

28th June 2026 11.55