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…

The other evening I enjoyed a talk from Euan Rogers of The National Archives, who gave a talk at Lancaster for the Centre for War and Diplomacy on the history of treason over 700 years. He began by pointing out that treason reflects a real sense of betrayal, but also has a legal definition which…

On Tuesday, I went to a lecture held by Lancaster University’s Centre for War and Diplomacy on Theory and Practice in Military Medicine during the English Civil Wars: New Evidence from Civil War Petitions by Ismini Pells. This was obviously of interest given the period, but also because one of my students a couple of…

Back in February I was privileged to go to the University of California, Santa Barbara for the English Broadside Ballad Archive 25th Anniversary Conference, so here is my third post about my first ever trip to the States, of which I have some very fond memories! After a delicious lunch, with the best beef sandwich…