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  • Getting to Know John Balshaw – Part 3

    This is the third in a short series of posts on my research into John Balshaw’s Jig. It’s a short ‘musical comedy’ written by a man in Brindle, Lancashire, in the mid-seventeenth century.  I found the manuscript in the British Library a couple of years ago, and transcribed it, and I’ve already written a blog…

  • Getting to know John Balshaw – Part 2

    This is the second in a short series of posts on my research into John Balshaw’s Jig. It’s a short ‘musical comedy’ written by a man in Brindle, Lancashire, in the mid-seventeenth century.  I found the manuscript in the British Library a couple of years ago, and transcribed it, and I’ve already written a blog…

  • Getting to Know John Balshaw – Part 1

    This is the first in a short series of posts on my research into John Balshaw’s Jig. It’s a short ‘musical comedy’ written by a man in Brindle, Lancashire, in the mid-seventeenth century.  I found the manuscript in the British Library a couple of years ago, and transcribed it, and I’ve already written a blog…

  • Working through Lockdown

    Since I finished my teaching for this year at Lancaster, I’ve been keeping busy in several ways.  For one thing, I’ve taken a more hands on role in home schooling my daughter – so far it’s mainly been English Literature and science, but we’ll start feeding the history and music back in after half term. …

  • Social History Society Blog

    Back at the beginning of the year I was asked to write a blog post about Singing the News for the Social History Society website. I decided to take the Cromwell ballads as my starting point to think about what songs can tell us about 16th century England. You can read my post here.