On Saturday 17 June 2023, I led a cast of students and professionals to put on the world premiere of John Balshaw’s Jigge in Brindle, where it was first written around 350 years ago. It was a fantastic experience for all concerned, and I’m pleased to say that the audience seemed to enjoy it as…

Long time readers of this blog will know that for a couple of years I was the administrator for the Social History Society. The role is run as a postdoctoral position out of the History Department at Lancaster University and helps to keep a newly-minted PhD in academia while they try to get an academic…

Back in June, we gave a live performance of John Balshaw’s Jigge at the Community Hall in Brindle where it was written in the seventeenth century. Having cast the performers, they were left to learn their parts for several weeks until we had two intensive days of rehearsal at the beginning of June – these…

There have been several things keeping me busy over the last few months. One of the biggest was the live performance of John Balshaw’s Jigge that we gave in Brindle on 17 June. It was a fabulous experience for all concerned. Last autumn I engaged a director I know who lives in the Isle of…

This year, the only new module I ran was my ‘dates’ module. At Lancaster, we are still running on terms, and the first years have a short course after Easter that is only three weeks long, centred around a significant date in history and intended to do some in depth source analysis. There are only…