Home

Blog Posts

  • GCSE Congratulations

    I just wanted to write a quick post to congratulate my home-schooled tutoring pupil on her GCSE results.  I taught her for two of her subjects: she got a B for iGCSE history and a 9 for  iGCSE English Language.

  • MedRen 2018 Part 1

    This is the first in a short series of posts about my trip to the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference in Maynooth during July 2018. The Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, known as MedRen, was a slightly scary undertaking for me. I’ve only been to one music conference before, where I presented a paper on…

  • Premodern Reading Group Celebrates Singing the News

    Back in June, I was invited to lead the final session of Lancaster University’s Premodern Reading Group (Twitter @lancasterpremod) in a celebration of my first book, Singing the News.  We had a fantastic poster: PremodernRG_22ndJune18. We had grapes.  We even had cake (although the mind boggles over what the university English Department kitchen is doing with…

  • Why Did Charles I Lose His Head?

    I’ve been asked to run the history department’s residential summer school for Edge Hill University this year.  The topic that I’ve chosen is the Civil War, but with a long view that encompasses 100 years of history.  I’ve spent quite a while trying to come up with a blend of activities which will give students…

  • Amsterdam

    The final post in a short series based on my recent trip to the EDPOP conference in Utrecht.  Although this one isn’t about EDPOP itself, it’s about Amsterdam. It seemed a long way to go, not to see anything.  As I wasn’t going to be able to fly back to the UK at a reasonable…